Whitman’s urban kaleidoscope

Walt Whitman lived in the New York area and spent most of his life in urban environments, so it is perhaps not surprising that he should have declared his intention to chant urban life at the very outset of Leaves of Grass, thus laying the foundation stone of his reputation as the first American poet to celebrate the city. What is perhaps less known about Whitman is that behind his posturing as an urban guide and celebrant of urban life, is an understanding of the more shadowy recesses of the urban environment. Like a kaleidoscope, Whitman’s poetry provides what might be called a two-mirror model which yields a constant flow of ever-shifting pictures, or perspectives, just as he promised in the 1855 Preface:“I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains [...] You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.”Walt Whitman viveu em Nova Iorque e passou grande parte da sua vida em ambientes urbanos. Não será, portanto, de estranhar que logo no início de Leaves of Grass tenha declarado ser sua intenção cantar a vida urbana, constituindo-se, assim, como o primeiro poeta americano a celebrar a cidade. O que talvez muitos desconheçam é que, por detrás da pretensa atitude de orientação e de celebração da vida urbana, está uma compreensão do lado mais obscuro do ambiente citadino. Tal como um caleidoscópio, a poesia de Whitman apresenta um modelo de espelho-duplo que produz um fluxo constante de perspectivas, ou imagens em movimento, conforme prometido no Prefácio de 1855: «I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains [...] You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.»