https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heV8tjuRa7ydg
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
The “honest rendition starts around 2:00 but she tries out many different voices to best portray Whitman.
The stanza that I really enjoyed reading was stanze 38. In this stanza, Whitman realizes how much he was moping around. He is usually super optimistic but the thoughts of imprisonment was threatening to take that away from him. When he says “unusual mistake,” which seems to be him sitting around and complaining about his problems. He then tries to forget the people who mocked him, as well has the people who were mocked and tortured beside him. Trying to brush off what just happened, he compares himself to Jesus Christ with “my own crucifixion and bloody crowning,” and when “fastenings roll from me” when he rises again. Rejuvenated, he continues his journey over the land and salutes the students of the world. Eleves means student in French.
In this video, Curtia Torbet acts out the first two – four lines of the poem with the voice dumbfounded, pressed, anger, whispered, emotional, and honest. She is able to act out the verse beautifully, and even got so emotional that she cried. What is interesting about actors and actresses is that when they put themselves in someone else’s shoes, their actual persona dissipates and what is seen on stage or on screen is someone else altogether. Audiences never really realize how difficult the job is. The vulnerability of portraying an entirely different person and their emotions to the point of reality is quite terrifying.