Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington.Daniel Mark Epstein Daniel Mark Epstein (born 25 October 1948 in Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, dramatist and biographer. Epstein earned his B.A. from Kenyon College. He has been awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome (1977), the Robert Frost Prize, . Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington. New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Ballantine, 2004. The Greek historian Plutarch said the biography of the individual gains in significance when it is paired with another. This book uses that idea to detail the parallel lives of America's greatest statesman and America's greatest poet--beginning with the day Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy elegy, in Greek and Roman poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse (i.e., couplets consisting of a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line). The form dates back to 7th cent. B.C. in Greece and poets such as Archilochus, Mimnermus, and Tytraeus. Whitman composed after Lincoln's assassination Assassination See also Murder. assassins Fanatical Moslem sect that smoked hashish and murdered Crusaders (11th—12th centuries). [Islamic Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 52] Brutus conspirator and assassin of Julius Caesar. [Br. in 1865. The narrative begins in 1857 in Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County. As reported in the 2000 U.S. Census, the city was home to 111,454 people. The land on which Springfield is today was first settled in the late 1810s, around the time Illinois became a , law office. There we find the future president reading aloud from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. Epstein argues that verses such as these inspired Lincoln to write more dramatic oratory, such as his incendiary INCENDIARY, crim. law. One who maliciously and willfully sets another person's house on fire; one guilty of the crime of arson. 2. This offence is punished by the statute laws of the different states according to their several provisions. "House Divided" speech--quoting St. Mark, Lincoln proclaimed: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." This was the first of Lincoln's speeches to be widely regarded as a work of literature. Lincoln also influenced Whitman. Though initially dubious about the Illinois Republican, Whitman became a supporter when Lincoln stopped in New York on the way to his first inauguration. During the war years, after Whitman moved to Washington to care for wounded soldiers, the poet's attachment increased. "Lincoln is particularly my man, and by the same token, I am Lincoln's man." Lincoln and Whitman is a compelling, well-researched, original work about two great men and the era they fashioned through common beliefs about the unfairness of slavery and the dignity of man. ALL REVIEWS BY MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D. |
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