Hear Walt Whitman (Maybe) Reading the First Four Lines of His Poem, “America” (1890)

Of all Amer­i­can poets, almost no one looms larg­er than Walt Whit­man. As I once heard an old poet acquain­tance say, Amer­i­can poets don’t need Shake­speare and the Bible; we’ve got Dick­in­son and Whit­man. Indeed, Whitman’s voice emerges from the past like some Amer­i­can Moses, show­ing the way for­ward, open­ing his arms to hold his frac­tious coun­try­men togeth­er. One can blovi­ate all day about Walt Whit­man. He tends to have that effect. But even Whit­man, he of the ser­pen­tine lines full of the car­go of the con­ti­nent, stretch­ing from left mar­gin to right, ocean to ocean, could be rel­a­tive­ly suc­cinct, and even about his favorite sub­ject, Amer­i­ca. Take his poem “Amer­i­ca” from 1888:

Cen­tre of equal daugh­ters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, endur­ing, capa­ble, rich,
Peren­ni­al with the Earth, with Free­dom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, tow­er­ing, seat­ed Moth­er,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Now, believe it or not, you can hear what may well be the voice of Walt Whit­man, Amer­i­can Moses, emerg­ing from the past to read the first four lines of “Amer­i­ca,” from a wax cylin­der record­ing above. Most like­ly cap­tured in 1889 or 1890 by Thomas Edi­son, this read­ing was orig­i­nal­ly found on a cas­sette called “The Voice of the Poets,” dis­cov­ered in a library by Whit­man schol­ar Lar­ry Don Grif­fin. The cas­sette, made in 1974 and includ­ing the voic­es of Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay and William Car­los Williams, takes the Whit­man audio from a 1951 NBC radio pro­gram, whose announc­er, Leon Pear­son, claims comes from a wax cylin­der record­ing made in 1890.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the ’74 cas­sette tape, which land­ed in libraries across the coun­try, seemed to go unno­ticed by schol­ars until Grif­fin men­tioned it in the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review in 1992. This men­tion sparked debate about the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ing, and once schol­ar­ly debate is sparked, the fire can burn for decades, whole careers built on its embers. In this case, some schol­ars, includ­ing his­to­ri­an Allen Koenigs­berg, argued that since no orig­i­nal wax cylin­der has appeared, and men­tion of the record­ing in Edison’s cor­re­spon­dence is incon­clu­sive, the prove­nance is sus­pect. Fur­ther­more, Koenigs­berg argued, the record­ing qual­i­ty seems too good for the peri­od. His con­clu­sion comes backed by the analy­sis of audio experts. Accord­ing to The Edis­on­ian, a Rut­ger’s Uni­ver­si­ty Edi­son newslet­ter:

Ana­lysts for both the Library of Con­gress and the Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein Archives con­sult­ed on the case and agreed that the clar­i­ty of the record­ing was beyond what could be achieved in 1889 or 1890… the sound analy­sis along with the doc­u­men­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties led Koen­ings­berg to con­clude that “the sup­posed Whit­man record­ing is a fas­ci­nat­ing fake.”

On the oth­er side of this debate is the edi­tor of the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review, Ed Fol­som, who presents his case in an arti­cle sim­ply titled “The Whit­man Record­ing,” in which he dis­cuss­es prob­lems with the Library of Con­gress analy­sis. Yet anoth­er par­ti­san for authen­tic­i­ty, William Grimes—who cov­ered the con­tro­ver­sy for The New York Times points out that the voice sounds like what Whitman’s would have, and he makes a com­pelling argu­ment that the poem would not at all be the obvi­ous choice for a fake. Grimes cites unnamed “spe­cial­ists in the his­to­ry of the phono­graph,” whom, he writes, “agree… that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of out­right fraud or a hoax is unlike­ly.”

And on it goes. No one can defin­i­tive­ly set­tle the case, unless new evi­dence should come to light. With no inten­tion of malign­ing Ed Folsom’s good faith, I can imag­ine the Whit­man Quar­ter­ly edi­tor want­i­ng this to be true more than his­to­ri­an Koenigs­berg and the LOC ana­lysts. But I also want it to be Whit­man, and so I’m glad to make an exu­ber­ant leap of Amer­i­can faith and think it’s him. From Edi­son wax cylin­der record­ing, to radio broad­cast, to cas­sette, to mp3, over more than a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poetry—it would be a per­fect­ly Whit­manesque jour­ney.

via @stevesilberman

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness