Walt Whitman and the Image of the Poet-Bard after the Publication of His Novel Life and Adventures of Jack Engle

Abstract

The image of Walt Whitman is presented as a synthesis of a number of ideas of the world's philosophers, cultural studies scholars, literary scholars and critics writing about him. Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of the Poet-Priest becomes the intellectual form to be fulfilled through his forthcoming physical and mental-emotional performance. Whitman applies it to his attempt to live as a poet and turn his life into a poem. Behind it all lies a plan connected to the poet's self-creation as the bard of the nation, whose autobiography fits into his chosen mission. This plan, however, does not include his prose publications. As a result, Walt Whitman's creative path is explored in a broader context that has a significant impact on the poet's image. Thus, the discovery of the novel written in 1852 entitled Life and Adventures of Jack Engle and rediscovered in 2017 (Stefan Radev, 2018), reveals valuable facts that not only shift certain paradigms but definitively reinforce the iconic image formed. Spirituality itself, so highly valued and omnipresent in his writing, charges him with constant positivity. Thus he too, as a poet, becomes an eternal optimist, devoid of guilt, which had its beginnings in the rediscovered novel.