Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Upon the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson, already revered as the staid sage of Boston, sent young Walt Whitman a note of encouragement, saying, “I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career” (“Letter to Walt Whitman.” The Walt Whitman Archive). Ever the self-promoter, Whitman used Emerson’s endorsement as a blurb for subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass, without bothering to secure Emerson’s approval. But the connection between the two poets goes further than just encouragement.

There is a philosophical connection between Whitman and Emerson that focuses on Transcendentalism. This connection appears in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” From Emerson’s copious essays and occasional poetry, Whitman absorbed the concept of what Emerson came to call the over-soul, a radiant New Age perception of the Christian God, how everything in the natural world, from rocks to stars, were struck from the same grand solution, thus creating a cosmic unity, a grand transcendental energy field rendering space and time ironic. This passage, from Emerson’s 1841 essay “The Over-Soul,” resonates with Whitman’s optimism in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”: