The “I” or “Self” in Whitman’ Song of Myself
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. This is the starting of "Song of Myself", a poem by Walt Whitman included in his work Leaves of Grass . In this poem Whitman seems to put himself in the center, but the "self" of the poem's speaker - the "I" of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. This is an expansive persona exploding the conventional boundaries of the self. A clear understanding of the opening lines is very important to know the nature of self in Song of Myself. The first and second lines might give us a notion of egotism and megalomania. As John Updike (1978:33) notes that the "I" and "myself" are the "superb subjects" of the poem, the "exultant egotism which only an American could have voiced." But when we come to the third line, ...