I have to say that I hadn’t realized what a fruitful source of lyrics for choral music Walt Whitman has been until I started writing this article. My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area, has sung a couple of other pieces besides this one with lyrics by Whitman over the years that I’ve been involved with the group. (You can read about them here and here–you’ll have to scroll down to read about the Whitman poem in that second article.) His poetry is so open, fresh and enthusiastic that music seems like a logical next step in presenting his work. About five hundred composers have written about twelve hundred works rooted, in some way, in Whitman, and the use of his poetry has only grown over the years.
The British composer Ralph Vaughn Williams wrote several settings of Whitman poems, with “Toward the Unknown Region” being the one that brought him to public attention in 1907 when it was performed at the Leeds Festival when VW was 35. While we can never know for sure what the origins were of any creative endeavor (or indeed of any endeavor at all), it seems clear that Vaughn Williams very possibly got interested in Whitman because his teacher Charles V. Stanton, was a Whitman fan. (But why was that? Don’t know.) Be that as it may, we do have a little nugget about the writing of this particular piece:
Ursula Vaughan Williams [VW’s second wife] tells us that from 1902 or 1903 Leaves of Grass in various editions was “his constant companion.” . . . Vaughan Williams remembered that when he and his friend Gustav Holst had both considered themselves “stuck,” they decided they should both set the same Whitman text from “Whispers of Heavenly Death” and jointly select the winner. They duly awarded the palm to Vaughan Williams for this work. (liner notes from a Naxos recording of several Vaughn Wiliams works)
Isn’t that interesting? Vaughn Williams would end up three years later finishing his monumental Sea Symphony (also called Symphony #1), but he was working on it at the same time as “Toward,” with this larger work also using text by Whitman. He seems to have ground to a halt on the symphony but managed to get himself going on the smaller one because of the competition with Holst. Not that the shorter work is all that short: it’s 12-15 minutes and includes full orchestration. (The symphony is well over an hour.)
Let’s take a look at the Whitman text, which was published as a stand-alone poem before being included in Leaves of Grass. (Or, if you’d prefer, Blades of Grass.) When I first read the poem I didn’t know that it had been included in the “Whispers of Heavenly Death” section and wondered if I was being too morbid/obvious/sentimental in thinking that Whitman was referring to death. Not so! I love the imagery of the last stanza: “Then we burst forth—we float.” There’s a physical impetus in those words.
1
DAREST thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
2
No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
3
I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
4
Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
5
Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.
I find myself very intrigued with the question of whom Whitman is addressing here. Is it his own soul or someone else’s? It seems to be his own, and therefore he’s issuing a “dare” to himself: “Can you face death and eternity by walking out to meet it, without fear?” One source mentions “the poet and his soul. . . . As they enter that celestial realm, what awaits them is sheer fulfillment.” (The Walt Whitman Archive) This duality is evident in the poem as a whole. Were I to give Mr. Whitman some advice on his wording I’d say that adding the word “my” between “O” and “Soul” would be a good idea, but perhaps I’m being a little arrogant here. We’ve all given ourselves little pep talks, haven’t we? So I guess that’s going on here.
Here’s a wonderful performance by a youth choir and orchestra, led by a very dynamic young conductor (and with practically-indecipherable words)–
And here, because I’m incurably trivial-minded, is the scene where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jump off the cliff, which I was reminded of as I wrote this post. Toward the unknown region? I guess so:
