Memoranda During the War

In December of 1862, having read his brother's name in a casualty list,Walt Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the war front, where he found his brotherwounded but recovering. But Whitman also found there a "new world," a worlddense with horror and revelation.Memoranda During the War is Whitman's testament to the anguish, heroism,and terror of the Civil War. The book consists of journal entries extending fromWhitman's arrival on the front in 1862 through to the war's conclusion in 1865.Whitman details his encounters with soldiers and doctors, meditates onparticular battles and on the meanings of the war for the nation, and recountshis wordless though peculiarly intimate public exchanges with President Lincoln,a man Whitman saw often on the streets of Washington and by whom he was deeplyfascinated. The book offers an astounding amalgam of death portraits, anecdotesof battle, last words, messages to distant loved ones, and remarkably restrainedand muted descriptions of pain, dismemberment, and dying--all of it, howevergrim, suffused with Whitman's undiminished enthusiasm and affection for theseyoung soldiers. And throughout, we find Whitman laboring with heroicdetermination to sustain and nourish his once-ardent faith in America andAmerican life, even as the nation unleashed unprecedented violence upon itself.The book also includes Whitman's famous speech "The Death of Abraham Lincoln,"selected poems, and a letter to the parents of a deceased soldier.Edited and introduced by Peter Coviello, Memoranda During the War is apowerful portrait of a nation at war written by one of our greatestpoets.

Peter Coviello is Associate Professor of English at Bowdoin College and currently chair of the Program in Gay and Lesbian Studies. He is the author of Intimacy in America: Dreams of Affiliation in Antebellum Literature.