Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 143
that out; you don’t even need
to spend a few days round
a campfire under the stars
with friends and whisky
– although you should,
obviously. It nourishes a
feeling, a worldview (my own,
in case you haven’t guessed),
where if something benefits
me then it benefits you, and
vice versa. As Whitman puts
it, right at the start of the
poem: “Every atom belonging
to me as good belongs to you.”
This view of life is not worthy
or ascetic, it is abundant and
rich. He is also, you might
say, a sexy bastard – as he
puts it in Song Of Myself,
“Walt Whitman, an American,
one of the roughs, a kosmos
/ Disorderly flesh and
sensual, eating drinking and
breeding” – and that is part
of this fleshly wonderfulness
too. Read any chunk of Song
Of Myself and you will feel
the pleasure of life, the delight
of stuff, the desire of the
world.
143
