"Undrape!": On Naked Readers in Melville and Whitman

• Published in: Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 2010-09, Vol.28 (1), p.1-18
• Main Author: Trachtenberg, Alan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American literature; Criticism and interpretation; Essay; Melville, Herman; Melville, Herman (1819-1891); Poets; Whitman, Walt; Whitman, Walt (1819-1892); Works
• ISSN: 0737-0679; 2153-3695; 0737-0679
• DOI: 10.13008/2153-3695.1948

A sight picturesque enough to French sailors, and to American readers, but the picturesque quickly dissolves into a scene of comic distress, when Her Highness, catching sight of a sailor also elaborately tattooed, immediately proceeds to uncover more of his body, delighted at his "bright blue and vermilion pricking" (80). [...]his own naked flesh proves the source of his most deeply felt vulnerabilities: fear of being cannibalized, and fear of being tattooed, inscribed with the tribal hieroglyphics. [...]the exquisite interrogation of the grass in "Song of Myself," that begins "How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he," is a series of guesses, each guess a provisional metaphor (the flag of my disposition, the handkerchief of the Lord, a child, the beautiful uncut hair of graves) designed to prove the inadequacy of any single metaphor and to indicate that the experience itself is a "uniform hieroglyphic," uniformly and universally ineffable (LG, 34). Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book-from "society"-from city house, street, and modern improvements and luxuries-away to the primitive winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm'd bushes and turfy banks-away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilizee life-from entourage of artificial store, machine, studio, office, parlor-from tailordom and fashion's clothes-from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in those watery, shaded solitudes.