Memoranda during the War
by Walt Whitman
"I was in the habit of reading to the men. They were very fond of it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces." ― Walt Whitman, p 55.
Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War is the best book I have read about a seldom thought about aspect of the Civil War. Having gone to Washington D. C. at the end of 1862 to visit his wounded brother George, Walt stayed there to tend to the sick and wounded through the end of the War. He writes about the known and the unknown, the anonymous soldiers who all too frequently did not survive their wounds.
"Common People . . . to me the main interest of the War, I found, (and still, on recollection find,) in those specimens, and in the ambulance, the Hospital, and even the dead on the field.)" (p 6)
The narrative displays the sort of interior history that you cannot get in history books. There is present in his prose a sort of ethereal innocence at times and an immediacy that comes from the contemporaneous notes that Whitman maintained in small notebooks. Throughout the narrative is imbued with thoughts of Homer's Iliad that Whitman held close to his heart. But even closer to his heart were the beautiful young boys who were being sacrificed on the battlefields. The contradictions of those he saw who would often be dead before the week was over contrasted with the bodies that lay on the battlefields, sometimes for a week or more before they were retrieved.
He found time to insert his observations from his walks around Washington. One poetic moment he described The White House at night; "the brilliant gas-light shining---the palace-like portico---the tall, round columns, spotless as snow . . ." What a contrast with his days in the hospitals surrounded by blood-soaked wounded soldiers, too young to be called the veterans that they were.
He concludes the narrative with his speculations about the future for the country. This provides a fitting ending for what is a fascinating, moving, and above all a heartfelt account of our greatest poet's experiences during the Civil War.
"Common People . . . to me the main interest of the War, I found, (and still, on recollection find,) in those specimens, and in the ambulance, the Hospital, and even the dead on the field.)" (p 6)
The narrative displays the sort of interior history that you cannot get in history books. There is present in his prose a sort of ethereal innocence at times and an immediacy that comes from the contemporaneous notes that Whitman maintained in small notebooks. Throughout the narrative is imbued with thoughts of Homer's Iliad that Whitman held close to his heart. But even closer to his heart were the beautiful young boys who were being sacrificed on the battlefields. The contradictions of those he saw who would often be dead before the week was over contrasted with the bodies that lay on the battlefields, sometimes for a week or more before they were retrieved.
He found time to insert his observations from his walks around Washington. One poetic moment he described The White House at night; "the brilliant gas-light shining---the palace-like portico---the tall, round columns, spotless as snow . . ." What a contrast with his days in the hospitals surrounded by blood-soaked wounded soldiers, too young to be called the veterans that they were.
He concludes the narrative with his speculations about the future for the country. This provides a fitting ending for what is a fascinating, moving, and above all a heartfelt account of our greatest poet's experiences during the Civil War.
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