Enter into the thoughts of | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: Enter into the thoughts of
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00112
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
Repository Title: Enter into the thoughts of the different theological faiths
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1
Content: This manuscript was likely written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing materials for the first edition of Leaves of Grass . The idea of "[e]nter[ing] into the thoughts of the different theological faiths" described in this manuscript probably connects to the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman also used the term "koboo" in that poem. Gary Schmidgall glosses the term "koboo" as referring to "a native of Sumatra," and Andrew Lawson has noted that Whitman apparently picked up the reference from a book by Walter M. Gibson, an American adventurer ( Walt Whitman, Selected Poems, 1855–1892 , ed. Gary Schmidgall [New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999], 488; Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006], 91). The manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the reverse is not available.