Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
2008-2009
August 7
Joost Elet
Dr. Leen Maes
“Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal-en Letterkunde: Engels – Nederlands.””

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Acknowledgements
First of all I would like to thank my family. My mother and father and their respective partners have been very supportive in times of difficulty. My brother has been a great support proving that he is a true brother in the metaphorical sense of the word as well. I would also like to thank my promoter for this thesis, Leen Maes, whose advice, patience and words of encouragement proved to be of great importance. Then, I would like to express my gratitude to the many professors who over the years at the university have shared their wisdom with me and the other students and have formed our critical minds.
Thank You.

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Table of contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………2
Motivation……………………………………………………………..4
Introduction……………………………………………………………6
1.
Henry Miller and the American Transcendentalists………………….13
2.
Henry Miller and Whitman’s Transcendentalism…………………….28
3.
Henry Miller and Whitman, the Modernist…………………………..48
4.
Henry Miller’s Modernist Interpretation of Transcendentalism……..64
Conclusion…………………………………………………………....76
Works Cited…………………………………………………………..80

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Motivation
The subject of this thesis is concerned with the American transcendental view on the development of the human soul in relation to the modernist works Tropic of Cancer and
Tropic of Capricorn. As such, it connects arguments of a spiritual nature with literature.
Spirituality plays quite an important role in the works of many modernist authors. Typically the catholic approach to the soul is neglected in it. This view of the soul is replaced by a more personal spirituality loosely based on different spiritual movements such as astrology and eastern religious movements. The openness to spiritual movements can also be encountered in
Walt Whitman’s and Henry Miller’s body of work. Although science was already making claim of the perception of the truth in the 20 th
century of Miller but in the 19 th
century of
Whitman as well, it had not yet won the minds of most of the writers and philosophers in the western world. Transcendentalism can, apart from being a literary movement, be perceived as a spiritual movement as well, the union of both being considered self-evident.
The transcendentalists proclaimed a personal spirituality in which intuition plays a primordial role. They considered intuition to be a divine impulse that narrows the gap between man and nature. Thus they encouraged mankind to regain the state of a natural being, disobeying the external imposition set upon man by external influences such as society and government. Their thinking was clearly influenced by the natural surroundings and landscapes they preferred to dwell in.
Since Whitman belonged to the literary generation right after the American transcendentalists, his poetry occupied an intermediary position between transcendentalism and modernism. From a historical point of view, there was an increase in the aforementioned external influences as America became increasingly urban and industrialized during his life.

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This was translated in enormous growths of population in big cities such as New York. As a consequence life in nature became decreasingly important for the Americans. Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass consists of an interesting mix between those two influences. He adapted ideas and philosophies of the American transcendentalism to the changing environment.
At the beginning of the 20 th
century nature lost its importance in the eyes of the inhabitants of the city, such as Henry Miller. The social abilities of the New Yorkers became a tool for surviving in the unforgiving city. As such, external and social influences overcame the voice of intuition. Still, Miller was influenced by the transcendentalists, especially by Emerson and
Whitman. Therefore it is interesting to analyse how this influence is reflected in his prose.
I chose to analyse the influence on the books Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn because they have been written in the beginning of Miller’s career. Interesting about these books is that they came into existence only after Miller had learned to listen to his intuitive voice and finally became able to write accordingly. As such, the influence of American and
Whitmanian transcendentalism is clearly discernible in the Tropics.

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Nature, New York and Nihilism in a Transcendental Context
Introduction
This thesis analyses the influence of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1891) on Tropic of
Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1938) by Henry Miller. The influence of one artist upon the other can be interpreted in many ways. In this particular case it is very hard to prove which aspects of Whitman precisely influenced Miller. Although there are many philosophical, thematic and formal similarities between the works of both writers, this can also be said of other artists and philosophies. Miller is a well-read man, who is inspired by ideas and ideologies from many writers. Therefore it is my strategy to analyse the similarities in themes, philosophy and form that predominate the works of both writers. As such, a detailed summary of the possible influences of Whitman upon Miller is represented.
Neither is it my opinion that Whitman is the only influence on Miller in the discussed topics. For example, when I discuss the aversion of both writers against the omnipotence of the Catholic Church it is obvious that many others, whom Miller has read as well, have similar perspectives on this subject. Furthermore, the discussed topics are sometimes of a broad and general nature. Profound analysis sometimes results in detailed differences between both writers due to the different personalities of Whitman and Miller and the different time in which they lived. For example, in the chapter about the modernistic influences of Whitman on
Miller, it will be concluded that they are both experimental writers concerning their use of form. Miller, however, chooses a much more chaotic and experimental form than Whitman.
The degree to which Whitman experiments must be considered in the perspective of his time and related to the literature of his day. However, this work will demonstrate that there are too

7 many similarities in both writers’ philosophies and themes for Whitman’s influence to be denied. I believe that by discussing if not all then at least most of the similarities, I will be able to prove my point.
Tropic of Cancer relates the adventures of Henry
1
in Paris. It is a highly fragmented book with seemingly unrelated chapters. This reflects Henry’s chaotic, dithyrambic lifestyle in
Paris. It is a semi-autobiographical work that reflects the most violent and sexual wanderings of Miller’s restless mind without any discernible constraints. It is the story of a man who has just lost his beloved and has to come to terms with himself and his past. At the end of the book Henry’s frantic lifestyle is resolved by a transcendental experience while he observes the
Seine. In Tropic of Capricorn Miller presents fragments of his life, again using a very chaotic and fragmented structure. It deals with his youth and adolescence in New York but also with the time he spent in Paris. Misery, poverty and loneliness are the main themes but this is not mirrored in the sometimes humorous writing style. Miller tells about Henry’s suffering with a spiritual acceptance on the one hand and a delight in overstatement on the other hand. Leaves of Grass is Whitman’s quintessential poetic work that has been reedited seven times in the course of his life. It deals with a variety of themes, going from the ideal American society to the divinity of the soul, the perfection of the human body and many other subjects.
The impact of Whitman on Miller is most obvious in the following quote in which Miller refers directly to Whitman and to his verse in Song of Myself: “I am the poet of the Body and
I am the poet of the Soul” (48).
In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death. Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said. The future belongs to the machine, to the robots. He was the Poet of the Body and the Soul, Whitman. The first and the last
1
Although the character in both the Tropics is named after Henry Miller, the person and the writer, it is extremely important to make a distinction between the character and the writer. Therefore I will refer to the character as “Henry” and to the writer and person as “Miller” throughout this thesis

8 poet. He is almost undecipherable today, a monument covered with rude hieroglyphs for which there is no key. It seems strange almost to mention his name over here. There is no equivalent in the languages of Europe for the spirit which he immortalised. Europe is saturated with art and her soil is full of dead bones and her museums are bursting with plundered treasures, but what Europe has never had is a free, healthy spirit, what you might call a MAN. (Cancer 241)
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Here, it is already clear that the difference in time between both authors plays an important role. Miller states that Whitman has said everything that can be said about America.
Nevertheless, the America Whitman writes about has changed much compared to America in
Miller’s time. Whitman is the poet of the Body and the Soul of America, but Miller states that in his own time body and soul are deemed of less importance than machines and robots.
Whitman starts writing just before the industrialisation. “During the last quarter of the 19th century, urbanism for the first time became a controlling factor in national life. This was a period of economic expansion for the nation. Capital-intensive industrialism was changing the nature of the economic system, rapidly changing America from a rural to an urban continent”
(Glaab 132) . During this process, man becomes subordinate to a system that disregards the individuality of its subjects to the advantage of making profit for larger organisations.
Working men are degraded to mere tools of companies. As such, they have to execute the same action over and over again and become metaphorical robots, part of a machine.
Whitman admires the perfection of each man individually and challenges his readers to become aware of their own perfection and divinity, as such coaxing them to fully develop their inner divinity. Hence the well-known beginning of Song of Myself: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself / And what I shall assume, you shall assume” (1-2). After the industrialisation, however, the individuality of man becomes more and more neglected and
2
Throughout this thesis I will refer to Tropic of Cancer as Cancer and to Tropic of Capricorn as Capricorn in the parenthetical documentation

9 becomes incorporated in the greater good of industry and society. Therefore the poet of the body and soul has become irrelevant in the eyes of Miller’s contemporaries.
The previous fragment illustrates clearly that Miller has read Whitman and that he admires him greatly. It does not make clear how and to what extent Miller is influenced by him.
However, in praising Whitman’s endeavouring of singing the beauty of the body and soul and as a consequence the strength of each individual, some degree of recognition and identification must be involved. If Miller says about the grey poet that he has expressed whatever there is of value in America, then a certain amount of agreement between the two writers about what is and what is not valuable can be deducted from it. This demonstrates a shared philosophy of values that deviates from the general tendency toward an industrial way of thinking about people in Miller’s time. This will be the main argument of this thesis: to demonstrate the shared philosophy of both writers on writing as well as on their vision of the world and humanity from the perspective of their own time. On top of that, in the final chapter, I will try to demonstrate the difference in approach to the shared philosophy and explain the origin and the reason why Miller, as a modernist and in a different time, ends up agreeing with Whitman on various philosophical subjects. It will be shown that Miller’s work contains an intricate relationship between modern nihilism and various transcendental views.
The reason for opting to analyse the influence of Whitman on Miller, and not for example the influence of Emerson on Miller, is that Whitman and Miller do not constrain themselves to the principles of one literary movement. As will be demonstrated in the beginning of the next chapter, Whitman is obviously influenced by the American transcendentalists and particularly by Emerson, for who he has great admiration. This transcendental, Emersonian influence is especially perceptible in the first edition of Leaves of Grass. In the following editions, however, Whitman starts experimenting increasingly. More and more he attains a personal style in which the transcendental range of ideas is reformed and remain but a basal

10 influence. Thus Whitman achieves a strange mix of both the transcendental and the modernist movement. Of the latter he can be considered a pioneer because he anticipates the modernist movement by a few decades, the exact number of years depending on the discussion of the exact date of birth allocated to the beginning of the movement. Although he is broadly perceived to be a modernist writer, Miller’s work contains many transcendental influences. It is very interesting to compare his philosophic visions with Whitman whose work is generally perceived to be of transcendentalist nature with modernist characteristics.
That Whitman is a transcendentalist has been proven and understood by many, including
Emerson. The transcendental characteristics of Miller’s work, from a philosophical point of view, are less well-known. Therefore I will first analyse the transcendental aspects of his work in the following chapter of this paper. In order to exclude confusion, because Whitman can not be considered an example of pure transcendentalism, I will firstly extract the similarities in philosophical viewpoints between Miller and some of the founding fathers of
American transcendentalism, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Since transcendentalism and modernism play an important role in this thesis, I will now situate these literary movements in time, summarize the most important aspects of it and mention some of the leading figures. The start of American transcendentalism can be situated around 1836, when Emerson publishes Nature. The “Transcendental Club” is founded in the same year. The ideology of the transcendentalists has both literary and religious or spiritual roots. On the one hand they protest against intellectualism in American literature in their time, on the other hand they react against the ruling religious belief that there is only one God and that He, unlike humans, was perfect. The transcendentalists believe that the soul of every single man is divine and that man is initially perfect. However, in order for the perfection of man to be maintained throughout life, contact with and admiration for the grandness of nature is necessary. As such it is possible to develop one’s intuition, which the transcendentalists

11 oppose to intellectualism. Some of the most important transcendentalists are Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Amos Bronson Alcot. In this thesis I will mainly refer to Emerson for three reasons. First because he is the founding father of the American transcendentalists. Secondly because a mutual respect and admiration exists between him and Walt Whitman, as will be elaborated in chapter two. Thirdly because many ideas of his philosophical texts can be extracted from Henry Miller’s Tropics.
Modernism can be situated from the end of the nineteenth century until 1930. There is, however, no agreement on the end date among various literary critics. Some even claim that the modernist movement in literature is still ongoing. Nevertheless, the term high modernism is generally situated from the beginning of the twentieth century until the nineteen twenties.
The historical context for the modernist movement is the birth of the metropolis as we know it and the commencement of industrial capitalism. Both historical events lead to a renewed idea of identity. Due to changed cultural circumstances, life is perceived to have become increasingly fragmentary. This implies that identity is no longer a fixed phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century. In literature this is expressed by the voluntary use of subjectivity in semi-autobiographic poetry and prose. Modernists also pay attention to the adequacy of language to describe the abrupt change of the historic and sociological climate.
Therefore the traditional forms of poetry and prose of the 19 th
century are replaced by more experimental modes of writing. It is nevertheless very difficult to define modernism in literature because there are huge differences among modernists. As a result of this, many separate, short-lived, modernist groups can be perceived, such as Dadaists, futurists, imagists, etc. Some of the leading figures of modernism are Ezra Pound, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence and Gertrude Stein.
In this thesis I will first analyse the effect transcendentalism has on the books Tropic of
Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller especially in relation to Walt Whitman’s

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Leaves of Grass. In chapter one I will therefore firstly demonstrate the philosophical influence of the well-known founders of transcendentalism such as Emerson and Thoreau on the
Tropics, since they have influenced Whitman as well as Miller. In order to demonstrate the specific influence that Whitman’s philosophy has on Miller’s two novels it is important to make an initial distinction between the typically transcendental influences on Miller and which are visible in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as well, and the influences that can be related to Whitman in particular.
Chapter two explores how Whitman interprets transcendentalism in his own way – which is a dogma for each transcendentalist. I will analyse the transcendental characteristics of
Whitman’s work and distinguish those that do (not) influence Miller directly. The reason why some characteristics do not have an influence on Miller’s work can be retraced to and explained by the time spirit. In this context, Whitman and Miller for instance have different views about America and democracy.
Since Whitman’s work expresses a transitional phase between transcendentalism and modernism, aspects of modernist thinking already appear in his work. The free form of the verse, the apparent lack of structure and the subjectivity of his confessional style demonstrate such modernist thinking. Many of these aspects are to be found in Miller’s prose as well. The third chapter will explore these issues.
The last chapter will specifically deal with the features in Miller’s Tropics that clearly differ from transcendentalism and identifies them as modernistic works. However, these features remain indirectly connected to transcendentalism. An example concerns Miller’s attention for the metropolis as opposed to Whitman’s love for nature. I will also demonstrate that Miller makes use of transcendentalism to overcome his destructive nihilistic viewpoints.

1.
Henry Miller and the American Transcendentalists
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This chapter focuses on the basic aspects of transcendentalism that can be encountered in
Miller’s Tropics. These concepts constitute only part of the typical aspects of Miller’s work that will be discussed. There are several transcendental concepts that are clearly present in it, some of which are the transcendental viewpoint on materialism, the inherent divinity of mankind, the importance of intuition and isolation, and the transcendental perspective on
American society.
These characteristics can also be encountered in Walt Whitman’s body of work. Vernon
Louis Parrington states the following about Whitman: thus instructed the “great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,” became curiously Emersonian in all its amplifications. There is the same glorification of consciousness and will, the same exaltation of the soul, the same trust in the buried life that men call instinct, the same imperious call to heed the voice of innate
Godhood; and round and about this “perfect and free individual” is a mystical egocentric universe wherein the children of men may luxuriate in their divinity.
(Parrington 857)
This fragment which refers to the first edition of Leaves of Grass, demonstrates that the poet
Walt Whitman answers the transcendental demands for poetry. Philosophically Whitman and
Emerson agree in the beginning of Whitman’s literary career. The same characteristics appear in the following editions of Leaves of Grass, but Whitman gradually finds his own voice and adds personal elements.
Miller also shares many characteristics with the transcendentalists. This will be proven by excerpting some theoretical philosophy of transcendental texts that can also be retraced in the
Tropics. There is, however, one element that does not have the same emphasis in Miller’s

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Tropics as in the work of the transcendentalists; the influence of nature upon personality. This difference will be explained and elaborated upon in the last chapter of this thesis.
The transcendentalists see materialism in opposition to spiritualism. This is clearly shown in the ideological distinction between the ancient Eastern world and the Greek and Roman empires, as defined by Orestes A. Brownson: two systems then disputed the Empire of the World; Spiritualism represented by the Eastern world, the old world of Asia, and Materialism represented by Greece and Rome. Spiritualism regards purity or holiness as predictable of Spirit alone, and Matter as essentially impure, house of the soul, its only hindrance to a union with God, or absorption into his essence, the cause of all uncleanliness, sin and evil, consequently to be contemned, degraded, and as far as possible annihilated.
Materialism takes the other extreme, does not recognize the claims of Spirit, disregards the soul, counts the body everything, earth all, heaven nothing, and condenses itself into the advice, “Eat and drink for tomorrow we die”. (11)
The principle of this opposition is essential to this thesis. In both Tropics Henry tries to develop his personal spirituality in a society that is permeated by the idea of materialism. The
Tropics focus on this gradual and individual struggle and the obstacles that Henry has to overcome. The period in which the Tropics are situated, broadly from the end of the nineteenth century until the end of the thirties in the twentieth century, is considered by Miller as the heyday of materialism. He relentlessly attacks the injustice of this system by emphasizing the degrading circumstances in which the less fortunate are forced to live. That the degradation and “uncleanliness” should be “as far as possible annihilated” is another subject matter he agrees upon. This explains the violent nihilism in the Tropics, an aspect of
Miller’s work that will be analysed in the last chapter. Furthermore, the distinction between

15 these two types of society is agreed upon by American transcendentalists who are also advocates of a system based on spiritualism.
The following fragment illustrates Miller’s thoughts about materialism. He describes men living according to the material ideology as soulless spirits. This is reminiscent of the idea that materialism does not “recognize the claims of Spirit”.
Our western world! – When I see the figures of men and women moving listlessly behind their prison walls, sheltered, secluded for a few brief hours, I am appalled by the potentialities for drama that are still contained in these feeble bodies.
Behind the gray walls there are human sparks, and yet never a conflagration. Are these men and women, I ask myself, or are these shadows, shadows of puppets dangled by invisible strings? They move in freedom apparently, but they have nowhere to go. (Tropic of Cancer 246)
The ironic characteristic of the western world is that the freedom offered by it is not nourishing the soul. According to Miller it even limits the freedom of the soul. Henry is more inclined to spiritualism than to materialism because subjects of a material society are guided by invisible strings. They are expected to work very hard in order to obtain as much money as possible. In doing so, they become distracted from their soul because they lack the freedom and the time to find out who they really are. Since they are not in touch with their soul, they are in Miller’s view, only shadows of what they could be. This constant quest for money and material goods is also denounced by Thoreau. He claims that: “absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it” (Resistance to Civil Government 556).
At the beginning of his Parisian period Miller lives the life of a beggar for some time. He counts on the generosity of his friends for meals and places to stay. In his biography of Miller
Brassaï mentions that when Miller arrives in Paris, he possesses nothing more than a

16 toothbrush, a razor blade, a pen case and a ball-point, a rain coat and a Mexican cane.
Therefore, Brassaï adds, he only has to face two problems: what to eat and where to sleep
(10)
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. Yet, despite his lack of money and property, Miller’s sense of freedom is greater than ever. He does not associate his poverty with unhappiness. This is illustrated by the following passage of Tropic of Cancer:
With that bottle between my legs and the sun splashing through the window I experience once again the splendour of those miserable days when I first arrived in
Paris, a bewildered, poverty-stricken individual who haunted the streets like a ghost at a banquet. Everything comes back to me in a rush – the toilets that wouldn’t work, the prince who shined my shoes, the Cinema Splendide where I slept on the patron’s overcoat, the bars in the windows, the feeling of suffocation, the fat cockroaches, the drinking and carousing that went on between times, Rose
Cannaque and Naples dying in the sunlight. Dancing the streets on an empty belly and now and then calling on strange people. (22)
According to this passage, Miller does suffer in those days but he remembers them with joy.
He is unconcerned with money and therefore feels different from the shadow puppets. He feels perfectly free to do what he wants without having to respond to any material demands.
Interestingly, his poverty is the price that he gladly pays for his freedom. This alienating relation between poverty and happiness is reflected in the choice of words. He speaks about
“the splendour of those miserable days” and “dancing the streets on an empty belly”.
According to Emerson, when one lives his or her life without material concerns, a spiritual evolution takes place: the outward man perishes but the inward man is strengthened day by day. Spiritual things begin to show more real than material things. The belief in God grows
3
A cette époque, toute sa fortune consistait en ene brosse à dents, un rasoir, un carnet et un stylo, un imperméable et la canne mexicaine qu’il avait apportée avec lui de l’Amérique

17 strong, whilst the whole world seems to him only an apparition – a contemporary creation from the everlasting Wisdom. (Sermon CXXI 63)
Emerson explains that materialism must be abolished in order for the inward man to be strengthened. Miller is interested in the “inward man” as well. In the beginning of Tropic of
Capricorn Miller similarly states that “there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self
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, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter” (11). At that point one can begin the inward search for divinity in one’s self, another important transcendental theme.
“His own Culture,- the unfolding of his nature, is the chief end of man. A divine impulse at the core of his being, impels him to this” (Emerson, ‘Introductory’ lecture to Human Culture lecture series 214). In both Tropics Henry is on an inward search for personal divinity. Miller states that: “at the very bottom of the ladder, chez the spermatozoa, there is the same condition of bliss as at the top, chez God. God is the summation of all the spermatozoa come to full consciousness” (Capricorn 184-5). This can be connected to Emerson’s belief in the divinity of mankind. In Miller’s eyes, the ultimate beginning of life, “chez the spermatozoa”, is divine. The inward adventure implies going back as far as possible, to the core of his being.
He relates the requirements of materialistic society with a lack of spiritual development. The more one retreats, the closer one gets to divinity inherent to mankind. As such the
“spermatozoa” evolve into fully grown men who must become conscious of their initial divinity.
This inward regression, back to the beginning of life, is also an aspect of transcendentalism. In practice this means that a grown man must maintain some of the qualities he had as a child: “the lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood” (Emerson, Nature 127). Emerson refers to the man in his perfect natural state as
4
Many of the fragments out of the Tropics contain italicizing. I have nowhere throughout this thesis added italicization myself

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“the lover of nature” which explains the difference between Emerson’s transcendentalist man who has retained the spirit of infancy and Miller’s regression to childhood. The protagonist of the Tropics has lost the spirit of infancy due to living in a materialistic society and the lack of natural surroundings. He therefore endeavours to go back to his childhood in an inward quest:
“I want to become more and more childish and to pass beyond childhood in the opposite direction” (131). It is clear that Henry blames the loss of the spirit of infancy on the obligation to be a responsible member of society. An adult working man is restricted in many ways.
What will happen the next day, is already planned. Time becomes fixed.
What I am thinking of, with a certain amount of regret and longing, is that this thoroughly restricted life of early boyhood seems like a limitless universe and the life which followed upon it, the life of the adult, a constantly diminishing realm.
(Tropic of Capricorn 117)
It is also a question of free will and not being under the command of an employer or anybody else. When the young Henry dwells in the streets, he is free to do what he wants as long as he comes home for dinner. A man who is able to preserve this freedom is more likely to take part in experiences of a spiritual, personality-forming nature than one who repeats the same action over and over again for days on end. In The Transcendentalist Emerson describes how transcendentalists who are able to retain their spirit of infancy are looked upon jealously by others who have not been able to do so. Their universe never diminishes. This turns them into extraordinary people. The universe remains limitless in their eyes.
They ( the perfect transcendentalists ) prolong their privilege of childhood in this wise, of doing nothing, - but making immense demands on all the gladiators in the lists of action and fame. They make us feel the strange disappointment which overcasts every human youth. So many promising youths, and never a finished man! (373)

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Similar to Miller, Emerson laments the fact that the promising youths are not able to fulfil the promise. Sometimes a wise man must be able to do nothing. It is better to do nothing than to work on something that is meaningless in respect to the discovery of the self, appears to be the Emersonian credo.
Children’s ability to react intuitively is a third concept of transcendentalist philosophy which recurs in Miller’s work.
The inquiry ( to the deepest core of the self
5
) leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, which we call
Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. (Emerson, Self-Reliance 327)
This fragment shows us how intuition is related to the adventure “inward toward the self” and the regression to childhood. Pure and childlike intuition is more important than the tuitions or education that a child receives afterwards according to Emerson. Miller agrees that the primary wisdom is a greater wisdom than educational wisdom: “the learning we received only tended to obscure our vision. From the day we went to school we learned nothing: on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions” (Tropic of Capricorn 117). An important discrepancy with regard to Miller’s literary work can be found in this quote as Miller eventually becomes a writer for whom “words and abstractions” are crucial. Such contradictions are inherent to intuitive writing that characterises transcendentalist tracts. Miller clarifies his position with regard to language: words are never just words, even when they seem just words. For the hand that writes there is the mind that reads, the soul that deciphers. Some write syllabically, some cabalistically, some esoterically, some epigrammatically, some just ooze out
5
Addition of the author

20 like fat cabbages or weeds. I write without thought or let. I take down the dictation, as it were. If there are flaws and contradictions they iron themselves out eventually. If I am wrong today I am right tomorrow. (Henry Miller on Writing
104)
He claims that he just writes down the dictation of his mind. He also refers to multiple interpretations of his writings. As such, whatever may be wrong today, might be right tomorrow. This suggests that all interpretations are determined by the reader of the text.
Consequently all contradictions do not matter in the end because so much depends on the interpretation of it. Each reader may interpret a fragment in his or her own particular way.
Therefore contradictions and inconsistencies are subordinate to intuitive writing. Making sure that a text remains consistent until the end only serves rational writing. Miller claims the right to be inconsistent and illogical in his texts. He believes that the flaws will iron themselves out because every new opinion is proof of progress made during the discovery of the self. There can be no standstill in the evolution of thoughts and opinions while awareness of intuition grows. Emerson expresses similar views:
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. (Emerson, Self-
Reliance 324)
Self-trust is considered an important aspect of intuition in Emerson’s vision because intuition can lead to controversial opinions. As a consequence a high level of confidence and self-trust is needed to defend one’s opinion against opposition from the majority of society permeated by the ideal of rationalism. Since knowledge by intuition omits rational steps toward the formation of an opinion, it may be perceived as inconsistence. Emerson stresses the importance of not being “loath” to disappoint others, because this leads to less trust in oneself

21 and one’s intuition. The formation of an opinion can be affected by external influences that form obstacles for intuitive knowledge. So, only those who are able to trust themselves have the chance of becoming original, intuitive thinkers. Therefore only those who dare to rely on their intuition and deviate from the common opinion are able to become extraordinary persons breaking ground for new insights in life:
Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton. Every great man is an unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If any body will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. (Emerson, Self-Reliance 336)
In transcendentalist philosophy intuition is clearly an important prerequisite of uniqueness and geniality. To achieve those qualities, to be a genius or an original thinker or artist, one must trust oneself and be inspired by one’s own intuition.
The disadvantage of being an extraordinary person is the opposition from the mainstream audience which fails to understand the self-willed scientist, artist or thinker. The artist can evoke negative criticism and scandal by addressing subjects that are considered to be taboo.
The American establishment for instance reacts against the indecent and amoral passages in
Miller’s Tropics by banning the books in the United States. According to the transcendentalist conceptualisation of his work Miller’s novels can be interpreted to be relying on intuition. The
Tropics explicitly explore the suppressed and darker aspects of the soul. As such Miller takes a unique and original stance toward morality. It is thus that Miller becomes a champion of the sexual revolution which is to take place more than thirty years later. When commenting on a specifically shocking passage in Tropic of Cancer Kingsley Widmer claims that: some readers, who apparently respond with shock to Miller’s lack of moral concern here, attempt to explain away such behaviour by reference to his Marginal

22 circumstances, or to epater lé bourgeoise , or to the author’s immorality. While these characteristics may have some general applicability to Miller, they lack specific relevance because they quite miss the bemused amoralism in his presentation of the perverse logic of the heart – especially of his own heart. (29)
In other words, apart from shocking his readers, Miller also presents a sincere account of the instinctive, intuitive thought. He does not consider the consequences of his words or how they may be perceived. He turns off his mind and writes what is on his heart, by intuition. His goal is to awake the shadow puppets or to enliven the dead, as he puts it several times in the
Tropics. This means that Miller endeavours to make the conditioned people aware of the uncivilized, pure and intuitive part of their disregarded, ‘dead’ soul. This results in a shockeffect due to the sometimes scabrous and violent contents of the Tropics. It is that which evokes so much protest about his work and his personality. This can be considered a conservative reflex to defend the materialistic society to which Miller opposes. He believes that if nobody suppresses his or her darker thoughts and acts accordingly, civilized society is in danger. The following discomforting violent fragment is an example of this: “if I could throw a bomb and blow the whole neighbourhood to smithereens I would do it” (Tropic of
Capricorn 205). The description of this evil act only serves to emphasise that the people who live in this particular neighbourhood, do not live in harmony with their intuition. Miller therefore wants to promote a new start by annihilating them. Thus, living true to intuition can be harmful for the materialistic society. Of course, this fragment does not imply that Miller is really capable of doing such a horrific deed. Merely thinking it is not equal to actually doing it. To throw a bomb on the neighbourhood is therefore just an intuitive thought. It is, however, a truthful reflection of his thoughts.
As mentioned before, Emerson also believes in the honest reflection of the truth, even when it foregrounds controversial ideas.

23
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it – else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. (Self-Reliance 322)
According to both Miller and Emerson the truth should prevail over goodness when they are at cross-purposes. As a consequence, actions or words that may be perceived as evil or driven by the doctrine of hatred should be considered to be uttered when the truth is endangered.
Such actions or words are not popular with the establishment, therefore Emerson avoids his family when he writes. In other words, he thinks their opinion subordinate to the task he sets himself and he remains true to his intuition in spite of it.
This attitude can only be accomplished in isolation from the masses. It facilitates the exclusion of the outside, popular opinion upon the intuitive truth transcendentalist strives for.
Therefore transcendentalists are advocates of a secluded life. Miller, and Whitman as well, give a highly personal interpretation to this. They are both capable of mental isolation while they live in the city. They create a personal environment in which their mind and soul can self-sustain. In other words: an environment apart from the influence of materialists. Miller’s way of achieving this isolation is to run away from New York and to migrate to Paris. This explains why he writes about the “the splendour of these miserable days” when he describes his first days in Paris (Cancer, 22). Being there in total anonymity allows him to forget about his family and the people he knows from his old neighbourhood. He is ready to take a fresh start. There he is finally able to write intuitively. In the thirties many American artists live in
Paris and this enables Miller to make new acquaintances on the basis of his own choice. There he succeeds in surrounding himself with kindred spirits and is able to fully develop his personality and to answer his artistic calling. From Miller’s point of view this is impossible in
America.

24
Once every few years I was on the verge of making this discovery of the self , but in characteristic fashion I always managed to dodge the issue. If I try to think of a good excuse I can think only of the environment, of the streets I knew and the people who inhabited them. I can think of no street in America, or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on towards the discovery of the self. (Miller, Tropic of Capricorn 11-12)
His personal freedom and development are inextricably bound up with his migration from
America. He denounces the negative influences and the constraints of American society.
Miller needs to be physically separated from America in order to achieve his goal. In his fierce renunciation of American society, he is supported by transcendentalists who claim that society hinders self-reliance.
Emerson does recognize, however, that it is not easy to release one’s self from the entanglements of society. It presupposes a certain degree of self-reliance already present in man.
And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others. (Self-Reliance 332)
It is thus that Miller’s migration to Paris enables him to become “society, law to himself”. The necessity of this migration may be due to the fact that Miller never isolates himself physically from the buzzing city life while he lives in New York. As such, he is permanently influenced by the city. He strongly believes, however, that the constant thrill of the city life, the frantic buzz on the surface, serves as a diversionary tactic to prevent people to become aware of their inner strength and divinity.

25
Most of us live the greater parts of our lives submerged. Certainly in my own case
I can say that not until I left America did I emerge above the surface. Perhaps
America had nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that I did not open my eyes wide and full and clear until I struck Paris. And perhaps that was only because I had renounced America, renounced my past. (Tropic of Capricorn, 45)
In Paris Henry is able to achieve the mental isolation he needs, to take the next step in the discovery of the self. This is not only due to circumstances in the French capital, but also due to the fact that Henry is able to redefine himself completely. His personality becomes a tabula rasa and he no longer feels the need to be accountable for his acts and personality toward other members of society. As such Henry is able to circumvent conformity. As an American in Paris he truly becomes the outsider he already felt he was in America. There the external influence of his family and his social network hinder him to set him himself apart from society. In Self-Reliance Emerson states that:
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity. (321)
Society imposes obstacles on its subjects, preventing the elaboration of one’s own insights, culture and liberty because it requests conformity, which is the contrary of the individualism
Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists plea for. So, the pressure of the social network requires conformity, which hinders the discovery of the self. This explains why Emerson states that: “We must go alone. Isolation must precede true society” (331 Emerson, Self-
Reliance).
Therefore, transcendentalists refuse to comply with the rules of society. Certainly when those rules are in contrast with their own instinct and feeling. Exemplary for this outlook on

26 society is the text Resistance to Civil Government by Thoreau. His view is that society should serve the individual and not the other way around. Consequently, society does not have the right to impose on its subjects rules and tasks they do not intrinsically agree with:
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator. Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. (548)
Miller agrees with this way of thinking. In the chapter about Tropic of Capricorn in his book about Miller, simply called Henry Miller, Widmer states that Miller is clearly influenced by
Thoreau: “In Miller’s touchingly confused account of his quest for a private salvation from the purgatory of ordinary America, there always arises a didactic and Thoreauvian moral fervency” (102). Widmer adds to this that Miller’s final abolishment of America and its culture provides him with the freedom of mind to live according to transcendental laws and consequently his own individual law:
By going, in his mind anyway, to the extremity of resentment and rejection, of anger at maturity, he dismisses America and the all-too-ordinary, inverts reality to memory and fantasy, and becomes “an angel” free to create his own country and cosmos. (109)
By rebelling against American society, Miller becomes able to develop his inner self in accordance with transcendentalists’ philosophy.
In conclusion of this chapter I hope to have proven the general transcendental influences in the discussed books by Henry Miller. In the Tropics Miller opposes materialism because it distracts mankind from the discovery of the self. Transcendentalists connect the discovery of the self with the inherent divinity of mankind. Miller does not use the same terminology in

27 that respect, but is interested in the relation between humanity and divinity. Intuition is an important aspect of inner divinity for transcendentalists, because the mere existence of it cannot be related to material evidence. For Miller this means that he learns to rely on his intuition during the writing process. Furthermore, to fully develop the inner self and become aware of one’s intuition Miller experiences that isolation from his former environment is essential. Unlike the transcendentalists he does not seek this isolation in remote, natural areas of America, but in Paris. There he is finally able to go his own way without the negative influence of the surrounding cultural environment. Furthermore he encounters kindred spirits who are not judgemental about his lifestyle and his writing. In leaving America, he feels less restricted by societal conditions, which make him realize the burden American society has been on him. In refuting such society he is again supported by the transcendental ideas about the flaws in society which prevent its subjects from becoming truly free. Thus, Miller’s writing and the lifestyle he propagates in it, are clearly influenced by the transcendentalists.

2. Henry Miller and Whitman’s Transcendentalism
28
Whitman and Miller both have a lot of philosophical values in common with transcendentalists. This chapter examines Whitman’s own specific interpretation of the philosophy of transcendentalism, as distinct from the general transcendentalist-philosophical themes which I outlined in the previous chapter. I firstly examine Whitman’s approach to the ideal American democracy based on the principle of the inner divinity of mankind. This I compare with Miller’s denouncement of American society, which is more in line with the convictions of the American transcendentalists. Miller’s philosophical ideas gradually evolve from social commitment to individualism. As a young man, Henry does not denounce the
American society as fiercely as he does after his migration to Paris. Whitman’s social ideal functions as an intermediate stage in the forming of Henry’s personality toward individualism.
Consequently, Whitman’s influence is palpable in the formation of Henry’s vision of
American society. Next I analyse the outlook on religion and spirituality of both artists. The openness toward different spiritual movements is discernable in the work and philosophy of both writers. Recurring principle in their interest in spiritual movements is the emphasis on the development of the self.
At the start of Whitman’s literary breakthrough he and Emerson write to each other about
Leaves of Grass. Emerson praises Whitman’s poetry because it reflects many of his own ideas on poetry. In his first letter addressed to Whitman after the initial 1856 edition of Leaves of
Grass, Emerson writes: dear Sir--I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It

29 meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy
Nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our Western wits fat and mean. (Whitman, Prefatory Letter to Ralph
Waldo Emerson 1856 731)
Emerson is enthusiastic about Whitman’s natural, intuitive style. This evokes great power in
Whitman’s poetry according to Emerson, possibly because it is devoid of contrived language that due to the formal demands, used to be the standard in Anglo-Saxon poetry, except in the romantic literary period. As will be discussed in the following chapter, the form of Whitman’s poetry is innovative and exceptional. Furthermore it does not make use of end-rhyme consistently, although it has enormous rhythmical qualities. Emerson claims to see great power in it and by that he undoubtedly refers to Whitman personally as well as to his poetry.
The leader of the American transcendentalists feels a spiritual affinity with this younger poet.
As a consequence he must have considered Whitman to be one of those few who, like himself, have developed their inner divinity.
The letter further contains Emerson’s famous words of praise: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career” (731). Whitman is thrilled with these words and he publishes extracts from this letter in his next edition of Leaves of Grass without asking Emerson’s permission. This is not appreciated by Emerson and their alignment gradually disintegrates as a result of it.
Whitman’s poetry as well evolves away from the transcendental Emersonian principles afterwards, employing increasingly more experimental writing methods. It is clear, however, that at least in the beginning of his career, Whitman is definitely influenced by the transcendental ideas on poetry as well as by the philosophy of transcendentalism. According to John Townsend Trowbridge, Whitman “freely admitted that he could never have written his poems if he had not first "come to himself," and that Emerson helped him to "find himself"” (168).

30
“The discovery of the self” to which Miller often refers, as discussed in the previous chapter, is apparently also important to Whitman, but he does not elaborate upon it as much as
Miller does in the Tropics. It is a step Whitman seems to take for granted in the wider view of an evolving American society, i.e. he assumes that the discovery of the self will be a natural evolution in the life of every American simply by reading Leaves of Grass. “While planning this edition (the third) and writing poems for it, Whitman saw his project as “ The Great
Construction of the New Bible “ ( Notebooks 1:353)” (Eiselein 253). This implies that he intends to generate the same spiritual impact with Leaves of Grass as the bible has had. In a sense, Leaves of Grass can be considered to be a prescriptive poetic work encouraging its readers, the American people, to become conscious of their inner divinity and to develop it.
On the basis of this evolution, Whitman wants to found an ideal American democracy based on comradeship between citizens. In Starting from Paumanok , a poem that first appears in the
1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman tries to persuade Americans to follow him in the creation of a new American society, based on the ideal spiritual democracy. In it he writes about a “dweller in Mannahata my city, or on southern savannas, / Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner in California, / or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring”
(4-6). The enumeration of these different types of Americans symbolises his eagerness to involve all Americans, regardless of their occupation. Whitman concludes the first stanza with: “I strike up for a New World” (14). This verse anticipates the rest of the poem where he explains what the new world will be like. It is a world where everyone is persuaded of their inner divinity and Whitman is willing to be the spiritual guide during this process of awareness. “Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant, /
Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all” (46-47). Whitman chants are to be used for vivification of the soul. This is the task he sets himself to. He makes use of poetry to make

31 people aware of their inner divinity. He does realize, however, that there is still a long way to go. In part seven, he states that: “I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough, / None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough, / None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is” (91-93). He tries to coax his readers to consider this, because awareness is the first step in the process of the discovery of the self. One can only live in an intuitive way and as such envelop divinity in oneself if this condition is met. It is clear, as a consequence, that Whitman wants to generate a spiritual reconversion in the souls of his readers. Contrary to the traditional American transcendentalists who only advise people how to live, promoting individualism, Whitman relates this process of awareness to the founding of a spiritual American democracy. In part ten he cries out to his fellow American:
“My comrade! / For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclusive and more resplendent, / The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.”
(131-133). As the quote indicates, to Whitman love and democracy are inextricably related to each other and should be the basis of comradeship between Americans. He acknowledges divinity in every American and therefore feels united with them. This explains why religion, the third greatness, plays such an important role according to Whitman. If everybody becomes aware of the same spiritual principle and attains the same divine harmonious state of being, which is the basis of his personal religion, there is no reason why all Americans should not get along.
Louis Vernon Parrington explains Whitman’s vision of American democracy as one that is based on personal freedom. If from that freedom: emerges a proud and self-conscious individualism ... then democracy on a grand scale will be possible and the self-reliant citizen will take his place in a free creative society. The ideal of the growing man, and the ideal of the perfect State –

32 broadly social rather than narrowly political – these were his twin ideals; and the tie that is to bind men together in spontaneous solidarity is love. (863)
In his poetry Whitman appears to be convinced that the ideal society is bound to happen.
Therefore the words “I celebrate myself, / and what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (1-3) in Song of Myself underline his vision of unity and equality of everybody. The importance of the self as well as the conviction that everybody will assume what he assumes, his spiritual convictions, are reflected in these lines.
Therefore instead of directly advising his fellow American citizens on how to achieve a celebration of the self, Whitman expresses the belief that this will come naturally if the
Americans use their personal freedom the way he advises them to. Although his ideas are also based on the search for the divine self, the fact that Whitman relentlessly writes about a better and improving ideal society, sets him apart from earlier transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson. In For you O Democracy (Leaves of Grass, edition of 1891) he writes: “For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! / For you, for you I am trilling these songs” (117). The fact that he serves a greater good, not only his personal spiritual development, together with his political involvement in American society mark a distinction with the individualism of American transcendentalists who denounce the principle of society
(see chapter 1). It can not be denied, however, that Whitman is influenced by both authors in his poetic construction of his ideal society, because its foundations are the citizens who are in touch with their inner divinity.
Therefore he pays a great amount of attention to common people in his poems. He is especially interested in observations of others when he witnesses sparkles of their divinity but he also writes about less divine persons, careful to leave nobody out. This results in long catalogues of wide-ranging individualities and professions. An example of one of these catalogues can be encountered in part fifteen of Song of Myself. Whitman writes about the

33 spinning girl that “retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel” (271) and the prostitute who “draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck” (305) to the connoisseur who “peers along the exhibition gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways” (291).
Whitman is sincerely interested in all living men and women in his poems, but he especially pays attention to the common people. If the ideal democracy would ever be realized, their spiritual evolution is of primordial importance. As a consequence the exalted poet clearly has a lot of respect for them: the messages of great poets to each man and woman are: Come to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm that there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another
… and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of the supremacy within them. ( Preface 1855 720)
By trying to evoke from his readers the “consciousness of the supremacy within them”
Whitman tries to unify everybody by emphasizing that all have equal merit. In this attempt, however, he is blind to the imperfection of mankind. He tends to glorify the positive qualities of common Americans, ignoring their less convenient characteristics. In fact, in his characterization of the American common man, he praises all the values that are important to himself.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies ...
.
But the genius of the United
States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlours, nor even in its newspapers or inventors
… but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy – the picturesque

34 looseness of their carriage … their deathless attachment to freedom – their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean – the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states.
(Preface 1855, original ellipsis 712)
Much of the critique on Whitman is based on the fact that his vision is too idealized. He barely gives negative comments of Americans. The expectations he has of them are unrealistic. Van Wyck Brooks claims that although Whitman’s vision of America is intriguing in theory, it is practically impossible to implant it on a living society.
The social ideal of Whitman is essentially a collection of raw materials, molten and malleable, which take shape only in an emotional form. This emotional attitude is at bottom the attitude of a perfectly free personality, naturally affirmative, naturally creative; the rude material of right personal instinct. (835)
Whitman’s social ideas are interpreted as a utopian dream, but Brooks ignores the massive spiritual change that Whitman presupposes. Consequently, to claim that his social ideas only take shape in an emotional form, does not take the spiritual side of the social democracy into account. It is not a mistake to suppose that if everybody becomes as spiritually aware as
Whitman claims to be, that a perfect democracy would be possible. In my view, the practical inapplicability of his social ideas stems from the fact that a massive spiritual reconversion is almost impossible to accomplish. It are not his social ideas that only take shape in an emotional form, but his spiritual, religious ideas. Brooks also states that: to ignore this distinction, as most of the direct disciples of Whitman have done, is to go wrong utterly. And in fact Whitman himself ignored the distinction, and himself went wrong. Perfectly right in all his instincts, perfectly right so long as he kept to the plane of instinct, he was lost on the plane of ideas. (835)

35
Brooks refers to the distinction between the emotional form and the applicability of
Whitman’s ideas in this fragment. In stating that when Whitman follows his instinct he is unable to suggest applicable ideas about society, he again ignores the presupposition that a massive spiritual reconversion is required before Whitman’s ideas can ever come into existence. Transcendentalists argue that the internal instinct is a better advisor than external ideas that undermine the independence of the soul. This, however, does not imply that society itself can be ruled by intuition and instinct. Whitman’s ideal consists of a spiritual democracy in which there is little need of government since all citizens are already perfect, divine creatures. This aspect is not taken into account by Brooks in his critique on Whitman.
In this respect D.H. Lawrence’s criticism of Whitman is more profound. First he praises
Whitman for his self-knowledge: “by subjecting the deepest centres of the lower self, he attains the maximum consciousness greater, perhaps, than any man in the modern world”
(844). Then he questions the method Whitman uses to transmit his consciousness to others:
Now Whitman’s way to Allness, he tells us, is through endless sympathy, merging.
But in merging you must merge away from something, as well as towards something, and in sympathy you must depart from one point to arrive at another.
Whitman lays down this law of sympathy as the one law, the direction of merging as the one direction. Which is obviously wrong. Why not a right-about-turn? Why not turn slap back to the point from which you started to merge? Why not that direction, the reverse of merging, back to the single and overweening self? Why not, instead of endless dilation of sympathy, the retraction into isolation and pride?
(846)
Lawrence seeks an explanation for the fact that one who seems to have found spiritual peace, still wants to engage with societal problems. It can be argued that Whitman is simply incapable of doing this. He encourages the common people to be his equal, but spiritually

36 evolved as he is, the meaning of what he conveys becomes elusive. This is due to the distance, from a spiritual as well as from a literary point of view, between the common man and the exalted poet. How can a man who has resolved his inner conflicts still be in touch with outer conflicts which are a reflection of the inner conflicts of the others? Maybe the reason why he idealizes other Americans so much is that he looks at the world from the perspective of his own inner peace. This may very well be the reason that he ignores the imperfections of
American society and its citizens. Fact remains that Whitman’s all-encompassing theory of the ideal society supposes a spiritual evolution of every single American. This is the most difficult step towards his democracy, but he, who has attained the maximum state of consciousness according to Lawrence, underestimates the obstacles evolving American society imposes on the average American. Take for example the increasing amount of people that move to the cities from the end of the 19 th
century onwards. As discussed in chapter one,
Emerson and Thoreau emphasize the importance of isolation in order to become aware of inner divinity. In other words, outside influences must be avoided as much as possible. This is hard to accomplish for an inhabitant of a big city, who is continuously surrounded by thousands of people. This is one of the reasons why the ideal democracy is unrealistic.
Ernest Smith states that:
Whitman’s resistance to resolution, the affirmation through the interrogative, and the engagement with uncertainties sure to remain uncertainties are characteristic strategies in the poet’s attempt to connect mystically with all humanity and, by extension, his readers across the formidable barriers of space and time. (234)
So, Whitman certainly tries to persuade his readers to become spiritually aware of themselves, but he remains vague about his insights and truths. He considers it self-evident that his readers will automatically agree with his views and deems it unnecessary to give clear, unequivocal instructions to his readers. He expects from his readers an intuitive reading method adapted to

37 his intuitive writing method. His theory of poetry is by definition participatory and agonistic.
“The reader will always have his or her part to do,” he writes, “just as much as I have mine”
(Reynolds 48). This is a questionable strategy that causes a lot of interpretive problems. More important however, is the question why he expects to make a difference if the readers he wants to reach and convince are not living or reading by their intuition? His political, philosophical and spiritual convictions can thus only be understood by people with similar convictions. Consequently, Leaves of Grass is incapable of causing the spiritual enlightenment needed to make the ideal democracy possible. In the following paragraph
Miller’s point of view on American society is discussed in relation to Whitman’s idealized view.
Miller’s Tropics reflect the story of Henry’s evolving vision of life and society. Both are intrinsically connected. The books relate how Henry’s actions, misery, accidents and observations lead to a spiritual evolution of the narrator. Both books end with a cathartic experience that changes his spiritual state of being due to the incessant scrutiny of the self.
Miller gives a detailed account of how he attains this evolved state of being. This is distinct from Whitman in Leaves of Grass. The grey poet persuades his readers to become spiritually aware of their inner divinity, but he fails to deliver practical instructions. Another difference between Miller and Whitman is that the former considers individualism the best way to gain spiritual insights and to discover the self. This is more in line with the convictions of Emerson and Thoreau. Before he finally realizes this, however, Miller is more interested in the suffering of others and is fixated on how to improve society for the people in need. This initial world vision is more closely linked to Whitman’s philosophy.
At the beginning of Tropic of Capricorn Henry works for a telegraph company as a hiring manager for messengers. To be a messenger in the beginning of the twentieth century in New
York is considered a degrading job because it generally means that the job applicants are out

38 of other options. There Miller witnesses the suffering of others. The inability to help others constitutes Henry’s own suffering. He lends money to all those who are in need of financial help. Eventually he does not have enough money left for himself, his wife and his child:
I was constantly urged not to be too lenient, not to be too sentimental, not to be too charitable. Be firm! Be hard! they cautioned me. Fuck that! I said to myself, I’ll be generous, pliant, forgiving, tolerant, tender. In the beginning I heard every man to the end : if I couldn’t give him a job I gave him money, and if I had no money I gave him cigarettes or I gave him courage. But I gave! (Capricorn 6)
Up until this point in his life, Henry shares with Whitman a firm belief in goodness and compassion, and acts accordingly. Both of them want to change the world and society drastically. Miller tries desperately to prevent anybody from falling by the wayside. He is driven by love for his fellow-man. It is important to remark that Henry has already distanced himself from conventional materialistic convictions. He does not care about the value of money and has no problem giving it away to those who are in need of it. His employers encourage him to be hard and firm, but he does exactly the opposite of what is expected of him. This illustrates the differences between the environment Miller lives in and Whitman’s environment. In order to survive in the metropolis that New York has become during the twenties - approximately the time when Henry works for the telegraph company - it is already commonly accepted that one has to gather as much money as possible, without any compassion for his fellow-man. “In America, far more than in Britain, the Industrial
Revolution brought hope and opportunity. Americans felt that almost anyone who worked hard and had a bit of luck could become a millionaire” (Ross 51). This mode of thinking causes a widening gap between the rich and the poor. In their attempt to gain as much money as possible, those who succeed in this mission remain blind for the poverty and misery caused by the unequal distribution of capital. No matter how many people Henry tries to help

39 singlehandedly, he is unable to make structural changes to the increasing amount of poverty and misery that he witnesses. This eventually leads to a feeling of frustration and anger that bothers him enormously:
Other people wore themselves out tugging and straining and pulling: my strategy was to float with the tide. What people did to me didn’t bother me nearly so much as what they were doing to others or to themselves. I was really so damned well off inside that I had to take on the problems of the world. And that’s why I was in a mess all the time. I wasn’t synchronized with my own destiny, so to speak. I was trying to live out the world destiny. (Tropic of Capricorn 255)
In his effort to be helpful to his fellow-man, Henry forgets to pay attention to his own inner well-being. He claims to be “well-off inside”, but this is contradicted by his disturbed intern balance due to his inability to help the others: “And that’s why I was in a mess all the time”.
This leads to outbursts of desperation about the state of mind of the people in America:
Every one is so utterly, confoundedly not himself that you become automatically the personification of the whole human race, shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling, cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so forth. (Miller, Tropic of Capricorn 89)
In their struggle to survive, New York citizens have to perform actions that, in Miller’s view, prevent the discovery of the self. Instead of endeavouring to become independent, selfrelying individuals, they act according to socially successful strategies. It is impossible for
Miller to tell the difference between the thousands of human beings he encounters. The discovery of the self involves accepting one’s flaws, but also one’s uniqueness and this is what Miller fails to see in others. They all imitate each other because they believe that it is

40 their best chance to become socially and financially successful. Thus their ‘self’ is formed by external influences. The internal, intuitive voice, which is supposed to make of them unique individuals, is completely ignored. This explains why Miller eventually prefers individualism over social commitment. He realizes that an ideal democracy such as Whitman advocates, can not be attained if so little people are inclined to discover the self. From his own experiences in
New York he learns that the material philosophy is incompatible with the discovery of the self: “All this active life, preceding the final act of desperation, led me from doubt to doubt, blinding me more and more to the real self which, like a continent choked with the evidences of a great and thriving civilization, had already sunk beneath the surface of the sea” (Tropic of
Capricorn 292).
This contradiction between Henry’s idea of how people should live and the reality of how people live in America is resolved when Henry moves to Paris. He presents the city as one where it is easier to discover the self. The following fragment from Tropic of Cancer demonstrates this:
And God knows, when spring comes to Paris, the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise. But it was not only this – it was the intimacy with which his eye rested upon the scene. It was his Paris. A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen, to feel this way about Paris. Paris is filled with poor people – the proudest and filthiest lot of beggars that ever walked the earth, it seems to me. And yet they give the illusion of being at home. It is that which distinguishes the
Parisian from all other metropolitan souls. (74)
Whereas in New York the inhabitants must become like the other inhabitants of the city and therefore imitate each other, Miller describes Paris as a city with an identity that is formed by the individuality of the inhabitants. Henry believes Paris to be an exceptional metropolis.
Unlike the ruling American philosophy that considers poverty to be a personal failure, poverty

41 is not considered a failure in the French capital when Henry arrives there. In his biography about Henry Miller, Brassaï qualifies this perception: “The crash of 1929 reached France a little later and this was exactly at the time Miller arrived in Paris. He had chosen the right time to arrive” (11)
6
. The financial crisis causes an increase of poverty in Paris in the thirties.
There probably are so many victims of the crisis, that poverty is socially acceptable at that moment in time. It is not due to personal failure. In America, the general tendency is to conceal one’s poverty because in doing so one avoids social exclusion. Hypocrisy is motivated by the societal context. Miller believes that therefore Paris differs much from New
York. Widmer states the following about this: “Miller, with his usual angry asides for
America, which point up much of the significance of his role abroad, claims that in Paris, at least, the viciousness of what is called ‘making a living’ lacks the hypocritical American claims of opportunity and freedom” (33).
Under these circumstances, Paris symbolizes personal liberation for Henry. It is not a coincidence that he is able to write his first successful novel in Paris. He feels comfortable in the artistic milieu and is able to collect his thoughts in a more conveniently arranged manner.
When he overviews his life in America retrospectively in his quest for the discovery of the self, Henry comes to the conclusion that New York and American society altogether are destructive for the development of the self. He holds American society responsible for the shortcomings, in relation to the discovery of the self, he perceives in Americans. His advice to them is to stop taking part in the working attitude that prescribes the endless accumulating of money to the disadvantage of others. In his view, the system is too cruel and it hinders the development of the self. Therefore it is better to live in the margins and to refuse being an active member of society:
6
Avec quelque retard la crise atteignit la France au moment même où Miller arrivait à Paris. Il avait bien choisi son heure.

42 once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman , that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I belong to the earth. (Miller, Tropic of Cancer 255, original italics)
By separating himself from any form of society, Henry grows more and more sympathetic toward individualism. This is comparable with the individualism and the isolation from society transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson advocate. Miller defines humanity as the people who belong to men and governments. He, however, refuses to obey rules imposed by others and consequently claims not to belong to humanity anymore. This quote implies the exact opposite of Whitman’s intentions. Whitman considers every man to be a potential spiritually evolved creature and emphasizes everyone’s unity and equality. Miller on the other hand, believes that whoever values spiritual progress important, is exceptional and no longer belongs to humanity. The majority of people are not interested in spiritual development.
Whitman’s idealism is sharply opposed to Miller’s realism and despair. Free from any constraints Miller follows his own needs and his own needs only.
This raises the question in what respect Whitman has an influence on Miller. Miller eventually prefers individualism over the Whitmanian ideal social democracy which unifies all Americans. Firstly Henry feels unable to develop the self in a satisfying manner in
America. This implies that the ideal democracy consisting of divine subjects that Whitman predicts, has not at all been realized according to Henry. However, his lamentations about the state of America and the spiritual state of mind of Americans demonstrate clearly that he supports the Whitmanian ideal. The difference between them is caused by the fact that he does not share Whitman’s optimism in respect to it. Whitman, in his pre-war poetry at least, presents his social and spiritual ideals as a realistic and possible picture of the near future.

43
Miller, from the perspective of his own time, does not even dream of hoping that such a utopian society is a realistic alternative for American society. It must be taken into account however, that before Miller finds the writing style he is now famous for, he has been writing for a long time. He explains why his preceding work is unsuccessful: “I was describing the
New world – unfortunately a little too soon because it had not yet been discovered and nobody could be persuaded it existed” (Tropic of Capricorn 260). This could also be a comment of Miller on Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. American citizens constantly discard poetic spiritual ideals for short-term material concerns.
While into the air so black and beautiful the brothers of man, the poets, the diggers of the future, were spitting their magic lines, in this same time, O profound and perplexing riddle, other men were saying: “Won’t you please come and take a job in our ammunition factory. We promise you the highest wages, the most sanitary and hygienic conditions. The work is so easy that even a child could do it”. (Tropic of Capricorn 270)
A second important aspect of Whitman’s transcendentalism is his view on religion. The grey poet is a zealous advocate of personal religion and spirituality. In his poetry he wants to convince his readers of the importance of asking themselves spiritual questions instead of simply agreeing with catholic and other religious doctrines without thinking it through.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait awhile … perhaps a generation or two… dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place … the gangs of cosmos and prophets en masse shall take their place. A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new

44 breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things.
(Preface 1855 729)
Using the basic transcendental idea of self-reliance, Whitman dismisses the priests of their task and replaces them by poets and prophets on the one hand, but also by spiritually interested citizens who become their own priest. In other words, according to Whitman each person has to fill in religion personally to their own advantage. The churches to come will not have to be built for the priests but for themselves. Unmistakably an implied criticism on
Catholicism can be encountered in the previous fragment.
Criticism on Catholicism can also be found in Miller’s work. Miller’s attack on the catholic religion is much more direct than Whitman’s. The Tropics display a feeling close to hatred for it. Relating the story of Henry’s father’s treatment by a priest, Miller explains why the Catholic Church fails in its intention to be an all-encompassing religion. After a long period of ailment Henry’s father recovers thanks to the moral help of a priest in which the old man has set all his hopes. He gets attached to the priest. When the priest is offered a bigger and more lucrative parish because of his talent and ambition, he leaves his former church behind. As a result Henry’s father ends up bitter and alone and his health aggravates once again. Miller seems to convey here that it is inappropriate for a spiritual person to be driven by materialistic ambitions. Therefore Miller’s outbursts against Catholicism are outspoken and harsh:
In the street I had often passed a priest with a little prayer book in his hands laboriously memorizing his lines. Idiot , I would say to myself, and let it go at that.
In the streets one meets with all forms of dementia and the priest is by no means the most striking. Two thousand years of it has deadened us to the idiocy of it.
(Tropic of Cancer 261)

45
The uncomfortable mix of spirituality and materialism is responsible for a religion that does not serve the interest of its followers as much as its own interests. This explains Miller’s aversion.
Furthermore to Miller as well as Whitman the Catholic Church is insufficiently spiritual and does not focus enough on the personal aspect of religion. Therefore both authors show a lot of interest in alternative religions without being converted to one in particular. Whitman, for example, grows up among Quakers. According to David S. Reynolds “the poet’s mystical side owed much to the Quaker doctrine of the “inner light”, by which believers received inspiration not from preachers or scriptures but from divine voices within themselves” (6-7).
Whitman shows interest in all kinds of religion and mystical groups during his entire life.
Reynolds also claims that: “like the eighteenth-century deists, he denied the specialness of any single religion and forged a broadly ecumenical outlook that embraced all religions” (76).
Miller has a similar view on religion and especially during the writing process of the
Tropics: “During his years in Paris, he became increasingly influenced by the visionary in a more impersonal sense – astrology, Zen Buddhism, and several occultist doctrines
(Swedenborginaism, Jewish Mysticism, etc.)” (Widmer 108). Especially the release of suffering which is of elementary importance in Zen Buddhism is important in this thesis, because it helps Henry in the discovery of the self. The manner in which Henry deals with suffering will be further investigated in chapter four of this thesis.
For Whitman religion and spirituality are important aspects of everyday life. He does not believe that life is merely a preparation for an afterlife as it is presented in the religions of revelation. He considers “the spiritual life as an organic, ongoing process of exploration rather than a journey toward a defined goal, such as the conventional Protestant belief in a heavenly afterlife” (Smith 240-1). Perfection is not something that can only be attained in heaven as the
Christian doctrine suggests. In Song of Myself Whitman states that:

46
There was never any more inception than there is now
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. (40-44)
Life, in other words, is a constant search for spiritual improvement, a search for perfection here and now, according to Whitman.
This idea can also be discerned in Miller’s Tropics. Tropic of Cancer is an account of
Henry’s progress in the discovery of the self. It is the history of a short, but important phase in
Henry’s life, at the end of which spiritual improvement is reached, resolving Henry’s restlessness. Tropic of Capricorn deals with Henry’s past, from his youth until his present state of being. It recounts the different stages of the discovery of the self in which Henry learns to deal with the difficulties of emotional struggles in his life. It also tells about the way his experiences in life, external and internal, change his state of being. Henry refers to each important emotional or spiritual state that as a rebirth:
The man who is reborn is always the same man, more and more himself with each rebirth. He is only shedding his skin each time, and with his skin his sins. The man whom God loves is truly a right living man. The man whom God loves is the onion with a million skins. To shed the first layer is painful beyond words; the next layer is less painful, the next still less, until finally the pain becomes pleasurable, more and more pleasurable, a delight, an ecstasy. (Miller, Tropic of
Capricorn 209)
In other words, each rebirth symbolizes a spiritual improvement that brings him closer to the discovery of the self and closer to obtaining the perfection Whitman perceives in everyday life.

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In this chapter I have dealt with the influence of Whitman’s interpretation of transcendentalism on Miller. Miller turns out to be only indirectly influenced by the ideal spiritual democracy Whitman stands for. They both agree on the necessity of each man to evolve spiritually, but Miller realizes that an ideal society is an impossible, utopian dream.
This convinces him to opt for a more individualistic philosophy. Paying too much attention to the suffering of others disturbs his internal balance and hinders his personal spiritual evolution. Therefore he turns his back on society. As a result he gets one step closer to the discovery of the self. Although he eventually dismisses Whitman’s idealism, it has contributed to the individualistic philosophy that sets him free. The idealism is clearly an important step toward his spiritual evolution based on individualism. Whitman’s vision on religion and spirituality is characterized by his openness to multiple spiritual movements without constraining himself to one in particular. The same pattern can be found in Miller’s work. Miller also seems to have adopted from him, but also from others no doubt, that life is an ongoing spiritual process in search for perfection here and now.

3.
Henry Miller and Walt Whitman, the Modernist
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This chapter deals with the modernist traits in both Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Miller’s
Tropics. Interesting for this thesis is that there are similarities in the aspects of modernism that can be encountered in their works. Many aspects of Whitman’s work already anticipate modernism, a literary style that many critics estimate to have begun around the time of
Whitman’s death in 1892. At the beginning of his career, especially in the first edition of
Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s work mostly corresponds to the transcendental notions of literature. Little by little, in the following editions, he involves elements in his poems that would later become associated with modernism. Some of those elements can also be encountered in the Tropics. Whitman as well as Miller are stylistically and thematically innovating, have an ambiguous relationship with autobiography, treat sexuality openly and in both author’s work the city functions as a recurring theme.
Firstly I will treat the search for innovation from a formal point of view, secondly from the point of view of language. Michael Soto’s definition of modernism is interesting in that respect: “ ‘Modernism is the term used to describe art and literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that self-consciously breaks with the past and actively seeks new forms of expression” (1). These new forms of expressions can be manifold. In Leaves of
Grass Whitman creates a formally innovating manner of writing poetry. His verses lack any concern for rhyme and structure within the stanzas, but are focused especially on rhythm and musicality. Nevertheless “Aesthetics interested him only as the means to his purpose, and his purpose was to reveal the eligibility of his reader for the immortal and the good, not to make a poem for its own sake, although if he succeeded, the poem was worthy for its own sake”
(Blodget xxiv). Thus he creates a new form of expression, which comes as a consequence of

49 following his intuition during the writing process. “More than once he testified to his intuitive approach. “I do not suppose,” he said, “that I shall ever again have the afflatus I had in writing the first Leaves of Grass ,” and he spoke of his experiment as a radical utterance out of the abysms of the Soul” (Blodget xxix).
Especially the sensitiveness to musicality is remarkable in Leaves of Grass. This is considered a typically modernist aspect of both prose and poetry writing according to Daniel
Albright: “Music has always been the most temporally immediate of the arts, the medium most sensitive to the Now. And it is not surprising that, at the dawn of the twentieth century, music became the vanguard medium of the Modernist Aesthetic” (1). Whispers of Heavenly
Death from Leaves of Grass (1868) is a good example to illustrate this mechanism. The rhythm of the poem is indicated by the commas within the verses, which announce a short break: “I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, / Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing”. The musicality in these lines is reached through repetition of entire words on the one hand, as in “see, just see” and repetition of parts of words on the other hand, as in “Mournful-ly slow-ly” and “silent-ly”, but also in “swell-ing” and “mix-ing”. Whitman also uses alliterations, such as “see skyward” and “silently swelling”. However, as mentioned before, what matters to him in the first place is the content. In creating a musical context, he creates a natural flow in his poetry that reflects the natural images he evokes. So contrary to various modernists, he does not strive for autonomous poetry in which the form is more important than the content. The imagery of nature as an indispensable phenomenon for gathering immaterial insights in the human soul is clearly the most important message
Whitman is trying to convey with this poem. “On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, / Some soul is passing over” (10-11). The content of this poem consists of an intuitive impression.
This combination of an innovating form of expression and the intuitive writing method is a modernistic approach to poetry because of the musicality.

50
Miller’s writing style seems to reflect similar principles. Of course his medium is prose, whereas Whitman excels in poetry, but the form of the Tropics comes into existence as a consequence of his intuitive writing method. This results in rhythmic, musical language use and little emphasis on structure and form as well. Tropic of Cancer consists of a number of fragmentary chapters which are only vaguely related to one another. As such fragmentary, frantic life in the city is mirrored. Miller is totally uninterested in a plot sequence. Of both
Tropics this book seems to incline most toward autonomous art. In the end, however, Henry finds peace of mind, by observing the Seine:
Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space – space even more than time. The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me – its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed. (318)
In spite of the structural fragmentation throughout the book, Miller comes to a surprising conclusion in the end which does convey a message. Similar to Whitman in Whispers of
Heavenly Death he finds refuge in natural imagery. He allows his mind to escape from the city. With a renewed insight in the condition humaine his perpetual restlessness comes to an end. He denounces frantic city life and emphasizes the importance of a tranquil mind to develop the self.
Tropic of Capricorn is an even more fragmentary book than Tropic of Cancer .
Widmer states about these books: “Were Cancer was a series of roguish episodes, Capricorn carries anti-art a step further in its free flow of fantastic associations and disassociations, to express the transcendental power of the subjectivity of Henry Miller” (99). Tropic of Capricorn lacks the subdivision into chapters. Around the middle of the book (159) Miller inserts a space followed by the ironical title ‘An Interlude’. This chaotic structure reflects the chaos in

51
Henry’s life. In the book the narrator introduces one character after another, and makes them disappear just as easily. He also tells many seemingly unrelated anecdotes that occur in
Henry’s youth and present. The only point of reference throughout the book is the discovery and development of Henry’s self. Just as the formal disorder in Leaves of Grass, the structural disorder in Tropic of Capricorn serves as proof of the intuitive, unconfined writing method. It is thus that the transcendental qualities of the book hold a prominent place. The chaotic structure mirrors the chaotic aspects of his life. Henry refuses to take part in the structural machinery of the materialistic lifestyle and as a consequence life itself becomes less structured. To Brassaï Miller explains his unwillingness to fill in structural expectations:
During our meetings, I used to blame Miller for his lengthiness, his repetitions, his wandering digressions, often very remote from the treated subject. He answered me with his laid-back mandarin smile, that his Chaos was beautiful and deliberate, that he did not look for order, but for something similar to a rough river, impetuous, undulating toward the sea, tearing loose and carrying everything it encountered on the road. (44)
7
Miller compares his writing and Henry’s adventures to a river. Just as a river he carries in his stream everything he encounters, everything that falls on his path; the beauty as well as the ugliness. Dependent of the impulses he receives Henry is free to go wherever and whenever he wants to go. This forms the basis of his constantly varying adventures by which the discovery of the self is continuously evoked. Consequently, the new form of expression, typical for modernism, also reflects the transcendental aspects of this book.
7
Lors de nos entretiens, il m’est arrivé de reprocher à Miller ses longueurs, ses répétitions, ses digressions vagabondes, souvent à mille lieues du sujet traité. Il me répondait, avec son sourire tranquille de mandarin, que son chaos était bel et bien délibéré, que lui ne cherchait ni logique ni ordre, mais quelque chose de semblable à une rivière en crue, comme dire le Mississipi, impétueuse, déferlant vers la mer, arrachant et important avec elle tout ce qu’elle rencontre en chemin, charriant dans ses flots boueux mille choses hétéroclites: arbres déracinés, meubles, cadavres…Ecrire, pour Miller, c’était être emporté par le flot à la derive…

52
As mentioned before, the novel’s language also has poetic and musical qualities.
Furthermore, Miller emphasises the importance of music in general. Henry used to play the piano when he was younger, and this also helped him to get certain insights, which Miller discusses in his prose works. The following fragment shows Miller’s vision on music and serves as proof of the musicality of his writing at the same time.
I heard the gestation of a new world, the sound of torrential rivers taking their course, the sound of stars grinding and chafing, of fountains clotted with blazing gems. All music is still governed by the old astronomy, is the product of the hothouse, a panacea for Weltschmerz. Music is still the antidote for the nameless, but this is not yet music . Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is allsufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods, the abracadabra which the learned and the ignorant alike muff because the axle has been unhooked. (228, original italics)
Miller considers music to be a language that relates directly to the soul. Therefore, Miller tries to write as musically as possible. This can be perceived in the repetitions of words and the rhythmical clusters divided by commas that dictate the rhythm when the text is read aloud.
However, Miller’s aim is not to create a beautifully structured melody, on the contrary: “In between “The Midnight Fire Alarm” and “Marche Militaire” I would get my inspiration, which was to destroy all the existent forms of harmony and create my own cacophony”
(Tropic of Capricorn 226).
Another aspect of the new forms of expression that both writers introduce is the use of popular language forms. In Whitman’s case the reason can be found in his eagerness to involve large groups of readers in his poetry. In his endeavour to create an ideal democracy, he especially wants to appeal to the common people, as explained in the previous chapter. “As an American “singer”, Whitman in his poetry would strive for naturalness and what he called
“a perfectly transparent, plateglassy style, artless,” characterized by “clearness, simplicity, no

53 twistified or foggy sentences” (51 Reynolds). Nevertheless, even today many interpretational problems surround Whitman’s poetry. As such, it must be acknowledged that he does not succeed in his quest for simplicity in relation to the meaning of his poetry. Even Miller, who admires Whitman greatly, avows this: “He was the Poet of the Body and the Soul, Whitman.
The first and the last poet. He is almost undecipherable today, a monument covered with rude hieroglyphs for which there is no key” (Tropic of Cancer, 241). The interpretational problems stem from the intuitive writing style that tries to encompass almost everything there is order to demonstrate the pervading, universal unity he strongly believes in. Consequently, Whitman makes use of common low-class language as well as high-class learned language. The following fragment that deals with the cruelty of European wars of the past out of Song of the
Broad-Axe from Leaves of Grass illustrates this:
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds
The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,
The power of personality just or unjust. (87-93)
In it Whitman uses unvarnished terms such as “flames, blood, drunkenness, madness” and
“the hell of war” which leave nothing to the imagination. Instead of “stealing” he uses the more informal “rifling” that emphasizes the roughness of the thieves. This is then mixed with a term such as “brigands” that clearly stems from French and as such displays Whitman’s extensive vocabulary. If Whitman had written “screams of women in the gripe of bandits” instead, it would have been more in tone with the rest of the verses. This kind of terminology

54 no longer belongs to the jargon of spoken English. Other words that contrast with the more outspoken terminology are “tumultuously”, “disorderly”, “bigots” and “executive”. This combination, however, does not lead to more readers in his own time, but to more negative criticism. The common people are not attracted by the exalted language use and the literary critics do not approve of this contorted language use because they do not understand the underlying reasons for it. In “Song of Myself and the class struggle in language” Andrew
Lawson speaks of Whitman’s contemporary critic Norton: “Whitman's language appeared to
Norton as a strange 'compound', a disconcerting 'mixture' of 'Yankee transcendentalism and
New York rowdyism'” (377).
Other contemporary critics share Norton’s opinion. As a consequence, in his own day, the grey poet’s work is not as successful as he had hoped to be. This then is the risk of creating and using a new form of expression: many readers do not fully grasp the meaning of the work because they are unable to look beyond the alienating writing method. “Whitman offered the rawness of a perceiving intelligence and didn't care what most readers desired from books— he lacked the pretension of a literary manner (at least, an expected manner), one detached from the crude self-inspection that formed his art” (Logan 22, original italics).
Thus his style is not literary elevated, at least not in the perception of his contemporaries, and he refuses to be associated with the literary expectations of his day. Although he is convinced that he has attained a level of spiritual elevation, this is not translated into a sense of superiority. He frequently compares himself to the common people. He admires them for their honest, natural labor. He feels a strong connection between himself and what is referred to as the lower class. Therefore, he calls himself “one of the roughs” in Song of Myself (1).
Miller’s language use is based on similar principles. It also consists of a mix between elevated and rough language. He too varies between intellectual vocabulary and outspoken language. Especially in his anger at society, Miller does not withhold from saying what is on

55 his heart, making use of an aggressive style and shocking vocabulary. He feels perfectly free and unbound to do this because he is a marginal figure while he writes it, excluded – by his own choice – from society. He lacks any feeling of responsibility toward others, and thus writes directly about what is on his mind without the least concern for what others may think of his persona as a result of his work.
If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defences left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world. (Miller, Tropic of Cancer 250)
So Miller, as an angry young man, wants to explain his rage and wants to convey his unconcealed vision of the truth. To tell the truth, for Miller, is equal to speaking his mind without inhibitions. In this fragment he uses a strange mix of colloquial expressions (such as
“go to smash” and “blown to smithereens”) and pseudo-scientific language about atoms and their indestructible elements.
Miller is most famous for the vulgarity in his books. This is evoked in his writing style and the manifold sexually explicit passages. As an advocate of the truth, he feels obliged not to omit Henry’s sexual life in the Tropics. Many descriptions of sexual adventures can be encountered in the two discussed books. It is not improbable that this occurs in a reaction against the conservative atmosphere surrounding sex in the United States. The air of

56 hypocrisy that sexuality was surrounded with due to the Catholic doctrine is one of the crucial taboos of America in the beginning of the twentieth century that Miller wants to break. The high number of sexual scenes involving loved ones as well as prostitutes or just girls Henry meets are perceived to be solely aiming at a shock-effect. This explains why the Tropics are banned in the United States and in the United Kingdom immediately after the release of the books. However, sexuality is always connected to something else in Miller’s work. In the following fragment, sexuality is connected to the Catholic Church. It clearly demonstrates the hypocrite standards catholic people have to live up to in relation to sex, even if it goes against their natural desires.
She was talking to me blubberingly about what a good Catholic she was and how she had tried not to sin, and maybe she was so wrapped up in what she was saying that she didn’t know what I was doing, but just the same when I got my hand in her crotch and said all the beautiful things I could think of, about God, about love, about going to church and confessing and all that crap, she must have felt something because I had a good three fingers inside her and working them around like drunken bobbins. (Miller, Capricorn 236)
The catholic hypocrisy consists mainly of the difference between what the girl says and what she allows to happen. Miller always speaks his mind and as a consequence this fragment illustrates the discrepancy between intuitive desires and the limits imposed upon it by religion. Miller’s conception of the truth is to “translate all that is in your heart” (Miller,
Tropic of Cancer 250).
Miller does not only connect sexuality to Catholicism, but to spirituality as well. It often leads to new insights in life because it is one of the human needs that are still related to nature and intuition. If Emerson claims that to follow one’s intuition leads to the discovery of the inner divinity of mankind, this implies that the intuitive act of sexuality is also an intrinsic

57 part of the discovery of the self. According to Widmer this leads to especially spiritual fragments in Miller’s work. “The high low fusion of vulgar and intellectual language expresses the intimate relation of the obscene and the exalted. In some of his most obscene lines, Miller achieves a holistic poetry” (31). The following fragment perfectly illustrates how eroticism is linked to spirituality:
A glance at that dark, unstitched wound and a deep fissure in my brain opens up: all the images and memories that had been laboriously or absent-mindedly assorted, labelled, documented, filed, sealed, and stamped break forth pell-mell like ants pouring out of a crack in the sidewalk; the world seizes to revolve, time stops, the very nexus of my dreams is broken and dissolved and my guts spill out in a grand schizophrenic rush, an evacuation that leaves me face to face with the
Absolute. (Cancer 247-8)
The connection between sexuality and divinity is for Miller a life-long process of regression back to the womb. He describes this process as “the ovarian trolley”.
Miller’s primary goal is to get back to a primordial, original state of psychic freedom, his wish to return to a state before his inscription as a subject in the symbolic (in the Lacanian sense) or social order and a successful resolution of the oedipal complex. His wish is to go back in time to the stages before the traumas of birth. Autobiography thus conceived appeals as a regressive process of return to the womb, to a condition of biological dependency in which the organism is absolutely free of any social constraints. (Widmer 131)
Miller uses the image of the foetus in the womb to describe the ideal spiritual world. Peace and rest can be found in a womb-like state, where everything is at hand and were mankind is still in its perfect initial state without the burden of society.

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Whitman also pays a great deal of attention to sexuality in his work. Ernest Smith states that “In many of the new poems of the 1860 edition, such as “Starting from Paumanok”,
Whitman continues to challenge readers to conceive of spirituality in a broad, open sense, connecting the spiritual with the physical, the possibility of afterlife with earthly life” (247).
In Starting from Paumanok Whitman names the conditions for connecting the afterlife with earthly life. “Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a new world” (14), he writes. It is unequivocally clear that sexual repression - whether stemming from hetero- or homosexual desires - have to be eliminated from the ideal world on earth. Whitman also writes:
I will sing the song of companionship,
I will show what alone must finally compact these,
I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me,
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me. (86-89)
The “burning fires” refer to his sexual desires. If those fires are not released from the body, they will “consume” him. This consuming can be interpreted as a danger for his mental health if he is not allowed to found his “own ideal of manly love”. Therefore, repressing one’s sexuality has to be avoided; otherwise the “new world” is not attainable. Sexual desires are also an aspect of human life and should not be ignored: “And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious, And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future” (166-7). The sexual organs, just as any part of the human body, have to be celebrated according to Whitman. No matter what one desires sexually “all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any” (171) and “Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it! ” (187). Thus sexual satisfaction is a desire equal to any

59 other human desire. It is a prerequisite for the ideal world on earth for Whitman too.
Consequently, poets should not withdraw from writing about sexuality.
Openness toward sexuality is also discernible in Miller’s Tropics. It is nevertheless doubtful whether Whitman would have appreciated Miller’s detailed descriptions of the act of making love. Reynolds states that: “Despite the sexual frankness of Whitman’s poetry, he had a moralistic attitude toward pornography” (101). He adds to this that “Whitman had a deepseated belief in the sacredness and purity of sex when rightly treated” (105 Reynolds). From that point of view, Miller is much more down to earth.
Another aspect of modernism that Whitman pioneers is his use of autobiographic writing.
When he mentions himself in Leaves of Grass, he does not necessarily refer to his persona. A great discrepancy exists between the poet, Walt Whitman and the actual person Walt
Whitman. This subjectivity is typical for modernism: “modernism put an end to the belief in the unity and uniqueness of the subject. The self, confronted with its darker, unintelligible and uncontrollable side, lost its confidence, became multiple, fragmentary” (Moroni 1).
Especially the use of the word “I” is multi-layered in certain poems of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman sees the self as part of a whole, humanity. This has already been discussed in the previous chapter. He is convinced of the idea of unity to the extent that he would sometimes write “I” while it could be interpreted as “we, Americans” or “we, the people”. He seems to consider his judgement of human nature to be extremely developed and he feels as if the lives of all Americans are reverberating within him. As such, the “I” in Leaves of Grass cannot be considered to be equal to the person Walt Whitman. “When Whitman in ‘Song of Myself’ describes himself as ‘Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding’, he is not giving an accurate account of himself. In real life, Whitman was, ordinarily, placid. He was not known for overindulgence in ‘eating, drinking’. As for ‘breeding’, he did not have children.” (Reynolds 29). In this particular case, it seems that Whitman is trying to establish a

60 connection with common Americans, or at least with the image he has of common Americans, by identifying with them.
Whitman has a very intricate view of the self and especially of the limitless soul. In Salut
Au Monde!
(1856), Whitman represents his soul as if the whole world lives in it. “Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens” (14). In fact, he represents himself as if he is an omniscient God. He transcends objective reality discernable by the senses, and explores the possibilities of his soul. He can hear “the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems (29)” and “the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule (32)”. He can see “plainly the Himalayas (50)” and the “Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts (55)”. Not only does he claim to be able to break the boundaries of space, he also breaks the boundaries of time: “I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons
(97)”. What Whitman conveys here, is that he feels connected to everything in the world through space and time and that man has equal possibilities to become divine everywhere. He uses this technique of the omniscient poet to emphasize and promote his vision of unity: “My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth, / I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, / I think some divine rapport has equalised me with them” (212-14). Consequently, the use of “I” in this poem is used to evoke a spiritual atmosphere. What Galway Kinnel states about Song of Myself is also applicable to this poem: “ ‘Song of Myself’, the song of one man, becomes the song of a tribe. What begins as autobiography is transmuted and opens out into the inner autobiography of us all” (Kinnel
223). By making his readers aware of what he sees, he makes it possible for them to see it as well, in their fantasy, during the reading process. The poem consists of a cultural and geographical education. This is meant to open the eyes of the readers to the intangible grandness of the world. Thus the “I” becomes the world and the reader as well.

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The influence of various cultural activities in the city can also be demonstrated through
Whitman’s use of “I”. According to Reynolds, Whitman is, among others, inspired by a contemporary playwright:
Whitman shared the interest in the new oratorical style based on audienceperformer interaction. If Beecher told his hearers he was studying “you”, Whitman expressed a similar eagerness to develop what he called an “animated ego-style” of oratory with “direct addressing to you .” If Beecher wanted his hearers to surge all around him, Whitman wrote poetry of unexampled intimacy. (46)
In Salut au Monde! The audience-performer interaction can be illustrated by the questions in lines 5 until 13. These lines consist of questions that are posed to the character “Walt
Whitman” (“What widens within you Walt Whitman? (5)”. The rest of the poem consists of answers to these questions. The poet has inserted a series of questions by an unnamed character in order to be able to give the answer. As such he creates the atmosphere of a play in which questions and answers can be formed by the audience. It is as if the readers ask those questions to Whitman and become involved in the poem. This formula of reader involvement becomes amplified in chapters 11 and 12 of the poem in which the poet addresses all possible readers all over the world directly: “Health to you, from me and America sent! (194)”. The
“I” as such stands for Americans, and “you” for other readers all over the world with whom
Whitman and consequently all Americans send a message of unity. This creates an intimate bounding between the reader and the poet, as well as between Americans and the rest of the world. Therefore the use of “I” in Leaves of Grass is multi-layered and has meaning beyond the person and poet Walt Whitman. This intricate relationship between the “I” in literature and the actual persona behind it is typical for modernism and is innovative in Whitman’s time.

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Miller makes use of similar methods. His writing is seemingly autobiographical, but there is a difference between what happens to Miller, the writer and Henry, the character. Although
Miller claims that he values truth highly, a lot of Henry’s adventures are overstated and fantasized. As mentioned before, Miller’s conveyance of the truth emphasizes the honesty of his thoughts, no matter how cruel or sexual the nature. It does not convey the truth about his deeds. Brassaï claims that “In his eyes the truth is not the exact reproduction of the facts and events, but the flood of images they trigger in his imagination, the truth he looks for in his self, that he wants to present of his self” (167)
8
. It is an immaterial truth. When the material truth is concerned, however, Miller does not always relate the things that happen to him accurately. In the Miller biography by Brassaï who is mentioned as a French photographer in
Tropic of Capricorn, Brassaï gives an example of Miller’s twisting of the truth. In Tropic of
Cancer Miller relates how he has allowed a French photographer to take pornographic photographs of him in exchange for money and that afterwards they went to a brothel together
(193). Brassaï states firmly that this has never happened: “not once have I been to a brothel with Henry; I have never recruited him as an extra for the purpose of taking pornographic pictures – as a matter of fact I have never made pornographic pictures” (148)
9
. Consequently, the “I” in the Tropics is also used metaphorically. What happens to Henry is often overstated or understated in function of his arguments. In the given example Miller aggravates his misery. The image this evokes is that he has to accept the most degrading jobs in order to sustain himself. This foregrounds the cruelty of materialistic society and the difficulties that a dissident citizen has to cope with to make a living.
In conclusion it is clear that Whitman’s and Miller’s discussed works contain similar aspects of modernism. They both invent a new form of expression to give shape to their
8
La vérité n’est pas non plus pour lui la notation exacte des faits et des événements, mais le flot d’images qu’ils déclenchent dans son imagination, la vérité qu’il cherche en lui-même, qu’il veut donner de lui-même.
9
Pas une seule fois je ne suis alle avec Henry dans un bordel; je ne l’ ai jamais embauché comme “figurant” pour des photos pornographiques – je n’en ai d’ailleurs jamais fait.

63 perception of the world. Both writers opt for a structural freedom, Whitman by choosing for a natural rhythm in his poetry, Miller by his extremely fragmentary writing that seems to lack formal structure. Furthermore they choose a mix of language that contains exalted, sometimes intellectual as well as popular and, in Miller’s case, even vulgar elements. Whitman pays attention to sexuality in Leaves of Grass, although his more puritan convictions make him address the theme with more subtlety than Miller. Whitman’s language use is less outspoken than Miller’s. Subjectivity in semi-autobiographic writing has also been discussed in this chapter. Whitman and Miller make use of this concept to reflect their personal truth. In
Whitman’s case this consists of the fact that his poetic persona identifies with all Americans.
Miller on the other hand makes use of over- and understatement in the Tropics.

4.
Henry Miller’s Modernist Interpretation of Transcendentalism
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This chapter deals with the differences between Whitman and Miller. I endeavour to relate these differences to time and the differences in personality. An important difference between the discussed authors is that Whitman writes his poetry from the point of view of someone who has already established his inner divinity. In Miller’s work, this is more complicated. His truthful reflection of the human mind offers a unique insight in the development of Henry’s personality and the discovery of the self. Gradually, the realization of the inner divinity of mankind is recognized by Miller. In Tropic of Cancer Miller writes about his turbulent years in Paris. Fragmentarily he describes Henry’s adventures while he yearns to see his beloved again. He is in despair and has lost control of his life. Tropic of Capricorn on the other hand is a flashback of Henry’s life so far, told from the perspective of the older Henry who has discovered his inner divinity and has learned from his experiences. It relates how his experiences and environment have formed him into the man he is at the moment of writing.
Thus, a careful analysis of both books reveals an interesting evolution of a man who discovers not only the self, but also the nature of mankind and the possibilities of developing their inner abilities. It is clear that Miller spends much more time explaining how he comes to discover the self than Whitman.
For Whitman and the transcendentalists it is simple: whoever wants to develop intuition and inner divinity needs to spend time in nature and take example from it. Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking (1859) is a poem from Leaves of Grass in which this principle can clearly be demonstrated. It also illustrates the privileges of spending one’s youth in a natural environment. The poem deals with the young Walt Whitman observing a couple of lovebirds in the spring. Impassioned by the love story, he comes back to the scene for weeks on end.
When after a while the female bird does not return to the nest, the male bird cries in agony for

65 her during days and weeks but she does not come back. This scene teaches Whitman a great deal about suffering when he is still a young boy.
Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach,
With the thousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
(or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,)
The sea whisper’d me. (174-183)
The word Whitman is referring to is the word ‘death’, mentioned in the preceding verse (173).
By watching nature closely Whitman experiences the tragedy of life at a very young age and he realizes death is all around us. Unlike most he does not develop an aversion against death.
For him it is a “strong and delicious word”. The perpetual retreating and gushing forward of the sea makes him aware of the timelessness of the universe and of his soul. The songs of the bird make the young Whitman sing himself and awaken in him the poet he is to become.
Clearly the influence of nature on Whitman as a person as well as a poet can not be underestimated.
Henry, however, is raised in the city. Consequently he rarely gets in touch with nature during his youth. Living in New York, his most important teachers are the books he reads and the people he deals with. For him to search for the self and to live by his intuition is much more complicated. Furthermore, the required isolation as described by Emerson and Thoreau

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(chapter 1) is practically impossible in a metropolis. He is constantly surrounded by thousands of people. Whitman, who also used to live in the city of New York for a period of time, understands this problem. That is why it is necessary to keep going back to nature every once in a while, according to him. This can be deducted from the poem Me Imperturbe. When man is alone in nature, he is able to put his life in the city into perspective:
Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all or mistress to all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, (1-4)
Alone, surrounded by a natural environment, Whitman becomes part of nature. The parameters set by others are depreciated. Nature represents irrationality to Whitman because it is not one of man’s inventions. Nature cannot be ignored and man does not master it.
Consequently, man becomes aware of his own meaningless littleness in respect to it. This makes it easier to accept that he is only part of natural machinery of which he has no control.
For Whitman this means that he has to become as “passive, receptive, silent as they” (Me
Imperturbe 3). Whatever happens to natural things does not change their inner state of peace.
When something, for example a plant, dies, the natural process will make sure that it is replaced by something else so that the process, the cycle is never stopped or out of balance.
Death is endlessly transformed into life. This is the example Whitman takes from nature, as the two last lines of the poem indicate: “Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, / To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do” (7-8).
Whitman enjoys living in the city. The first forty years of his life his relationship with New
York is good. He enjoys the diversity of the cultural events the big city has to offer. “Gaudy,

67 vibrant New York glutted Whitman's passion for all the mixed entertainments of “art and heart” (Thomas). Also according to Thomas, Whitman is well more at ease with his complex social and sexual identity in the big city, because it offers chances for less traditional relationships. In City of Orgies, Whitman declares his love to the city. He loves the city not because he enjoys the rows of the houses, or the processes in the street, or because it gives him the chance to meet and have conversations with other intellectuals but because “As I pass
Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love / Offering response to my own – these repay me / Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me”. Whitman thus takes advantage of the city as well as of nature. The concentration of many forms of art and culture attract him to the city, the grandness and spirituality attract him to nature. This dual relationship between the city and nature is also part of the reason why Whitman is a pure transcendentalist but already a pioneer of modernism. According to Sara Blair, modernism is a reaction against the “seismic shifts in the organisation of cultural and political life, largely in the direction of increased mobility, technological complexity, and social heterogeneity”
(Levinson 163). The rise of the city can also be considered an important change in the organisation of cultural life.
Miller, on the other hand is born and raised in the city. As a youngster he rarely sees impressive natural landscapes. Consequently, he is never able to learn from nature as
Whitman did. Furthermore, the realization of how big the city is, has an enormous impact on his personality. He grows up in a confined neighbourhood where everybody knows everybody: “In the little old neighbourhood from which I was uprooted as a child there were these parallel vertical planes on which everything took place and through which, from layer to layer, everything was communicated, as if by osmosis” (Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 195).
This community does not represent the ideal of a perfect natural surrounding transcendentalists prescribe but Henry does grow up there, feeling perfectly safe. At a certain

68 point in his youth, however, a first breach in his conception of the world, caused by the impersonality of the city, manifests itself. First his idyllic neighbourhood is invaded by
Jewish migrants. This quickly and suddenly changes the face of the street.
It was about the time of the invasion that the authorities decided to change the name of North Second Street to Metropolitan Avenue. This highway, which to the
Gentiles had been the road to the cemeteries, now became what is called an artery of traffic, a link between two ghettoes … In short everything was becoming metropolitan , in the odious sense of the word. (Tropic of Capricorn 169)
The osmosis disappears suddenly and unexpectedly. The local government transforms his street into a highway. As such his neighbourhood, that has had many similarities with a village originally, undergoes an enormous metamorphosis and truly becomes part of the metropolis. Miller has much trouble adapting to the life of the metropolis in New York. In his work, the Big Apple is presented as a cold city, a monstrous human construction where there is no place for feelings.
Again the night the incalculably barren, cold, mechanical night of New York in which there is no peace, no refuge, no intimacy. The immense, frozen solitude of the million-footed mob, the cold, waste fire of the electrical display, the overwhelming meaningless of the perfection of the female who through perfection has crossed the frontier of sex and gone into the minus sign, gone into the red, like the electricity, like the neutral energy of the males, like planets without aspect, like peace programmes, like love over the radio. (Miller, Tropic of Capricorn 108)
Miller uses the metaphor of the mechanical to represent Henry’s opposition against the city.
This image is enforced by the metaphor of coldness. As such, the million-footed mob is depersonalized. It consists of humans, but there is no warmth between them. Therefore, regardless the size of the crowd, the metropolis suggests solitude.

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Whitman’s vision of the city clearly contrasts with Miller’s view on it. The same pattern can be recognized in the differing view of Whitman and Miller on society. Nevertheless,
Whitman’s idealized vision of the city cannot be considered to have indirectly influenced
Miller’s vision, as is the case for the idealized vision of American society. Not once in the
Tropics a token of sympathy for the American metropolis can be encountered. Nor does
Miller ever express the hope that the situation in the metropolis all over the world will ever improve. Whitman, on the other hand, indicates in Song of the Broad-Axe what the perfect city must be like. According to him the citizens are what is most important in a city, not the buildings, the manufactures are the steamships on the river (102-3). This demonstrates his belief in the possibility of such a city and the hope that his advice may be taken seriously by the inhabitants of cities: “A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, / If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world”. Both writers’ contrastive vision of the city can thus be explained by the fact that life in the city undergoes a drastic change at the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century it has become clear that the most important aspect of the city is not the population but the industry.
During the last quarter of the 19th century, urbanism for the first time became a controlling factor in national life. This was a period of economic expansion for the nation. Capital-intensive industrialism was changing the nature of the economic system, rapidly changing America from a rural to an urban continent. (Glaab 132)
As a result of it, New York’s citizens are regarded as workmen in the first place. The city becomes impersonalized.
Miller writes about the impersonality of the city very often. Whitman is not aware of this phenomenon in the first part of his life. In both Tropics Henry never gets used to the impersonality and the indifference citizens of a great city adapt in order to conserve their mental health. Georg Simmel asserts that:

70 if the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the city should be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small town, in which one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom he has a positive relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition. (37)
This explains Henry’s tendency to help out every job applicant when he is responsible for hiring and firing messengers in the telegraph company. He is not able to preserve his sympathy for his friends and relatives as other inhabitants of big cities do. This reaction can be due to the sudden change his neighbourhood undergoes. As a result of his incapability to become indifferent to the suffering in the city, Henry is infuriated by American society.
Seeing others suffer makes him suffer too. Henry’s reaction towards this is extreme nihilism.
Maybe this reflects the unthinkable mental condition Simmel mentions. Gradually Henry becomes numb for the suffering of others because he realizes that no matter how hard he tries, there is nothing he can do for them, except writing a book about it. Thus his state of mind shifts into the other extreme.
I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true.
One can starve to death – it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death throws another cog into the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbour, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to earn a living. (Miller, Capricorn 281)
Henry’s nihilism is often of a violent nature caused by his impotence to make significant changes in society. Georg Simmel also states about the inhabitants of a metropolis:
Instead of reacting emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance through the intensification of

71 consciousness, which in turn is caused by it. Thus the reaction of the metropolitan person to those events is moved to a sphere of mental activity which is least sensitive and which is furthest removed from the depths of the personality. (32)
This is the description of the state of mind of most metropolitans. It explains why transcendental thoughts are generally far removed from the thoughts of the metropolitans. As a consequence, making changes in the minds of people presupposes an impossible revolution in society and in city life. Under these circumstances, namely that people are furthest removed from the depths of personality; it is out of the question for most metropolitans to search inward for the discovery of the self.
The foregoing makes clear that Whitman and Miller have a very different outlook of the city. Whitman sees continual lovers when he looks at the inhabitants of New York, whereas
Miller focuses on the suffering of those who fall by the wayside.
When I think of this city where I was born and raised, this Manhattan that
Whitman sang of, a blind, white rage licks my guts. New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui , the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves…. A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness.
(Miller, Tropic of Cancer 74)
This is one of the big differences between both writers. Whitman is very optimistic and idealistic in his poetry about the faith of mankind even about the evolution of the city. Miller is more pessimistic and nihilistic about that subject in his prose.
After he moves to Paris, Henry’s problems with the impersonality of the city decline. For him the French capital is an exceptional capital. I have already argued in chapter two that
Paris is much more forgiving for poverty than New York. Even the poor people “give the

72 illusion of being at home. It is that which distinguishes the Parisian from all other metropolitan souls” (Miller, Tropic of Cancer 74). Consequently, a man in Paris does not need to be hypocritical about his poverty, is less interested in material, external impressions and is less far removed from the depths of personality. This facilitates the discovery of the self.
Therefore Miller suffers less from seeing the others suffer. A poor Parisian still has a shot at happiness.
Apart from the state of mind of inhabitants of the city, there is however, another subject that causes much suffering in Miller’s work; his lost love Mona/Una. Although Henry’s suffering is personal, lovesickness is a universal phenomenon. When she leaves him behind in
Paris, Henry becomes lovesick. When he is informed of her death while she is separated from him, he mourns her death.
Passing under the viaduct along the Rue Broca, one night after I had been informed that Mona was ill and starving, I suddenly recalled that it was here in the squalor and gloom of this sunken street, terrorized perhaps by a premonition of the future, that Mona clung to me and with a quivering voice begged me to promise that I would never leave her, never, no matter what happened. And, only a few days later, I stood on the platform of the Gare St. Lazare and I watched the train pull out, the train that was bearing her away. (Miller, Tropic of Cancer 188)
Such accumulation of suffering may lead to a depression, but in the case of Henry it leads to detachment of suffering. At that moment in his life, he has lost everything. He has very few material possessions and his beloved has died. He is obliged to let everything go. As a consequence his personality becomes a blank page. He attains a metaphorical rebirth. The culmination point of his suffering as such completes his regression to childhood. He gets closer to the transcendental demands of the ideal man. He has nobody or anything left to

73 respond to. His personal despair has reached the lowest depth possible and he becomes completely isolated from the rest of the world.
When I was completely emptied, when the loneliness had reached such a point that it could not be sharpened any further, I suddenly felt that, to go on living, this intolerable truth had to be incorporated into something greater than the frame of personal misfortune. I felt that I had made an imperceptible switch into another realm, a realm of tougher, more elastic fibre, which the most horrible truth was powerless to destroy. I sat down to write her a letter telling her that I was so miserable over the thought of losing her that I had decided to begin a book about her, a book which would immortalize her. It would be a book, such as no one had ever seen before. I rambled on ecstatically, and in the midst of it I suddenly broke off to ask myself why I was so happy. (Tropic of Capricorn 304)
Thus Miller develops his genius. He invents a literary form that is highly personal and he finally becomes able to write an original, experimental book, Tropic of Cancer that establishes his name. The first edition of this book is released in 1934, which means that Miller is already forty three years old when his first successful book is published. Apparently, a different perspective towards suffering is necessary before he can become a productive artist. A spiritual catharsis is required in order to attain the redemption of suffering. “Suffering has never taught me a thing; for others it may still be necessary, but for me it is nothing more than an algebraic demonstration of spiritual inadaptability” (Tropic of Capricorn 296). At this point
Henry has reached a level of spiritual consciousness that transcendentalists would undoubtedly have approved.
His attention shifts from the negative characteristics of the society that surrounds him to the positive development of his own qualities. Miller’s initial destructive, violent nihilism is from that moment onwards transformed into a constructive nihilism:

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The world at balance, a world reduced to zero and no trace of remainder. Not the zero on which Van Norden turned his flashlight, not the empty crack of the prematurely disillusioned man, but an Arabian zero, rather, the sign from which spring endless mathematical worlds. (Miller, Tropic of Cancer 249)
This new form of nihilism is one that has a positive influence on the creativity of the artist.
The character Van Norden in the fragment symbolizes what Henry used to be like. It stands for a disillusioned form of nihilism of which there is no way out. At his all time low, however, with the accumulation of his poverty in Paris, having lost his love and forsaken his family, he looks at it from another perspective. He transcends his personal misery and failure, turns it upside down and comes to the conclusion that his loneliness and despair actually dispose him of all future obligations. A spiritual rebirth takes place. “The man who is reborn is always the same man, more and more himself with each rebirth.” (Tropic of Capricorn 209). The spiritual process of being reborn brings him closer to his original self. As such he gets closer to the regression to childhood. This opens up a new world for him that can be filled with whatever he chooses for. For the first time in his adult life he becomes truly free. He reconnects to the limitless universe of the child.
It can be concluded that although the city is a typical modernist theme, Whitman’s and
Miller’s outlook on it is very different. Whitman is able to flee from the business of the city through meditation in nature whereas Miller never considers this option. As such Whitman profits especially from the benefits of the city and is able to ignore the negative aspects of it.
Furthermore the image of the city has changed much from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. Whitman’s idealized view of it can not be applied to New York in the beginning of the twentieth century. The process of industrialization has lead to impersonality that makes the citizens subordinate to economic progress. Instead of fleeing to nature, Miller migrates to
Paris right after the financial crisis of 1929. Henry feels more at home there. However, when

75 he hears of the death of his beloved Mona, his world is threatened by collapse. Instead it leads to a spiritual catharsis that frees him from every possible constraint. He feels as if he is reborn and finally attains the regression to childhood. As such his intuition is restored and he is finally able to become a successful writer. This spiritual catharsis leads him closer to the spiritual consciousness of Whitman and the transcendentalists.

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Conclusion
In this thesis I have investigated the influences of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on Miller’s
Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. I have done this by searching for philosophical, thematic and formal similarities in the works of both authors. I do acknowledge that part of these similarities can be based on coincidence and that there are many other influences on
Miller by other writers, philosophers and even plain acquaintances.
In the first chapter I have extracted the general transcendental aspects from Miller’s
Tropics. I demonstrated that the transcendentalists oppose materialism, because it hinders the spiritual development. Therefore Emerson claims that it is better not to attach importance to possessions. Henry agrees with this credo. He lives in poverty for some time in the beginning of his Parisian period, but nevertheless finds happiness. Emerson also states that a man should maintain some of the characteristics that are apparent in childhood because children have easier access to their intuition. Miller agrees with this as is proven by his longing for a regression to childhood. Intuition can lead to inconsistency according to Emerson, but it rewards the intuitive person with unique abilities that may form an original artist.
Inconsistency, however, sometimes evokes the depreciation of the mainstream public.
Therefore the transcendentalists propose isolation from the masses. Henry seeks isolation in
France where he is freed from the pressures of American society. Thoreau renounces society in general and again Miller agrees with this transcendentalist view.
The second chapter dealt with Whitman’s interpretation of transcendentalism, compared with Miller’s views. Whitman relates the discovery of the self to an ideal spiritual American democracy. By writing Leaves of Grass he tries to convince his readers to become aware of their spiritual divinity. The idea is that if everyone becomes spiritually developed by following his guidelines, all problems will be resolved. He especially tries to involve the

77 common man, but his sometimes enigmatic writing method complicates this evolution. In the
Tropics it becomes clear that an ideal society is not possible according to Miller. Henry is compassionate for his fellow-man, but has to accept that he is unable to structurally help him.
The frustration over his lack of power leads to an aggressive form of nihilism proving that he is not adapted to living in a metropolis. He only relates his unhappiness to the metropolis when he moves to Paris. There he embraces the idea of nihilism.
Due to the hardship of everyday life, he is much more realistic than Whitman. Whitman and Miller do agree on the damaging effect of the Catholic Church on its believers. Especially Miller is very outspoken in his denouncement of the Catholic Church. Both prefer a form of spirituality that is directed to the self instead of to an invisible God. As a consequence they are very interested in various spiritual movements without ever limiting themselves to one in particular.
The third chapter explores the aspects of modernism that can be encountered in the discussed works of both writers. Each in their way seek a new form of expression in literature.
Whitman and Miller are both formally innovative and both have a musical writing style. In
Leaves of Grass this reflects the search for a natural, intuitive language. In the Tropics the chaotic structure reflects the fragmentary city life. Whitman strives for simplicity in his poetry but this only leads to a mix of popular language and exalted, intellectual language. Miller mixes intellectual language with popular and even vulgar language. This is sometimes shocking but it results from the fact that he sincerely writes down what he has on his mind.
Therefore he does not withhold from writing sexually explicit passages. He perceives the sexual act to be closely related to intuition. Whitman also writes about sex because he believes sexual repression is unhealthy. Subjectivity is another modernist aspect that can be encountered in the work of both writers. In Leaves of Grass the “I” is multi-layered. In the
Tropics the narrators tend to over- or understate his adventures.

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Chapter four analyses the differences between Miller and Whitman and explains the long road Henry has to take before he is able to achieve a state of spiritual consciousness comparable to Whitman. This is due to the different approach both writers have on the city.
Whitman combines the benefits of the city with the grandeur of nature. Henry does not take advantage of the beneficiary effects of nature. Furthermore, Whitman’s idealized view of the city no longer applies to Miller’s time. The city has changed since the end of the nineteenth century and has become increasingly impersonal due to the industrialization process. As a result of this Henry becomes more and more nihilistic. Only after his migration to Paris and the death of his beloved, Miller turns his nihilism into something positive. He experiences a metaphorical rebirth and from then onwards radically chooses for individualism.
In conclusion of this thesis, I believe that it is clear that Miller and Whitman share a lot of philosophical values, that their works contain a lot of thematic similarities and that they apply similar writing methods. A certain amount of influence of Whitman on Miller can hardly be denied. The most striking difference between these two writers, however, is related to
Whitman’s idealized view as opposed to Miller’s realism and individualism. This difference can nevertheless be partially related to the evolution of New York into an unforgiving metropolis, far removed from Whitman’s ideals.

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