Whitman and Eliot

I will not descend among  professors and capitalists,
--I will turn the ends of my
trowsers up around my boots,
and my cuffs back from
my wrists and go with
drivers and boatmen and men that
catch fish or work in the field,
I know they are sublime --Walt Whitman, unpublished manuscript

Published for the first time, I believe, in 1984, in Walt Whitman: Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, edited by Edward Grier.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. --T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

C.K Williams remarks "Eliot surely could not have been familiar this when he wrote in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' ' I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.' How odd"[1]. But that is Williams' style, clumsy irony, un-pursued hints (there is no need to hint; we are not idiots).

I find the divergence more interesting than the convergence. Whitman's lines were composed during the burst of confidence and creativity of Leaves of Grass; they are the lines of a beginning, of a brash awareness of talent[2]. Eliot's are distinctly not. The works converge in theme, but each looks another way.



[1] C.K Williams. 2010. On Whitman. Princeton University Press, p.37.
[2] Williams' provides an extended quotation from the accompanying letter for a submission to Harper's:

"'Is there any other poem of the sort extant--or indeed hitherto attempted?
You may start at the style. Yes, it is a new style, of course, but that is necessitated by new theories, new themes--or say the new treatment of themes, forced upon us for American purposes. Every really new person, (poet or other,) makes his style--sometimes a little way removed from the previous models--sometimes very far removed.
Furthermore, I have surely attained headway enough with the American public, especially with the literary classes, to make it worth your while to give them a sight of me with all my neologisms. The price is $40. Cash down on acceptance...
Should my name be printed in the programme of contributors at any time it must not be lower down than third in the list. If the piece is declined, please keep the MS. for me to be called for. Will send, or call, last of next week.
--Walt Whitman'

Harper's rejected the poem." (2010, p.47)