I'd Rather Be Blue

Whitman made lots of notes on his own work, and hey, who doesn't? Really, no one is ever satisfied with what you make. There's always something you think you can do to make it better. Ah, the curse of art.

Anywho, I found the annotations on page 51 of The Blue Book to be quite interesting. Admittedly this page is not as note heavy as was probably ideal, but there were two things I found interesting.

First, was Whitman's decision to change the "e" in "earth" from a capitol to a lower-case. A capitol "Earth", seems more... I don't know, formal? Respectful? It's a proper noun, a name, it's giving a bit more life to it, I feel. Almost as if you are talking about a person. Which , if you look at the line, almost makes more sense.

"Far-swooping, elbowed Earth! Rich, apple-blossomed
        Earth!
Smile, for YOUR LOVER comes!" (Blue Book version)

Whitman is speaking of/ to the earth as a personified figure. So really, it would make sense to capitalize the "e". So I find it curious that he decided to change that, to take away that little bit of extra personification. (Although apparently he agreed, because the 1860 version capitalizes the "e" again. Curiouser and curiouser).

Next, in Whitman's notes, he completely crosses out the following line:

"Thruster holding me tight, and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride
         hurt each other."

And yet, this line still appears in the 1855 and the 1860 version almost completely unchanged. HOWEVER, the line is removed in the 1867 version. While not my favorite line in the poem, I wonder what it is about it that bothered Whitman. Or even more, what saved it for those first two versions. Cutting out an entire stanza is a tough choice for a writer. And to go back and forth like that means that there had to have been something about it that both bothered Whitman and spoke to him, because he only ever included it, or removed it. He never changed it.

I dunno. I find it interesting...