Song of Myself: Section 11- 28 Bathing Men and Inclusivity

11

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,

Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;

Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,

She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the

window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?

Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth

bather,

The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from

their long hair,

Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge

to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and

bending arch,

They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Twenty-eight, 28, 20-8; scholars and enthusiasts have had extensive discussion on what this number represents and the theories are as follows:

1. Perhaps Whitman was referring to the 28 states that made up the union at a time; and each young man a representative of each state. However at the time of the poems publishing there were 31 official states.
2. Critics have suggested that he was making reference to the lunar cycle which is popularly thought to have 28 days. The lunar cycle is also said to symbolize wisdom, intuition, birth, death, reincarnation, and a spiritual connection. All of which are themes that we find in this section and in Song of myself as a whole.

• Regarding birth, death and reincarnation I introduce a third theory for the number 28 and that is; the speaker probably referring to a woman’s menstrual cycle. This goes hand in hand with fertility, mating, birth- regeneration as a whole which coincides with Whitman’s view of a never-ceasing world. Echoing the sentiments from section 7; Even though death is a part of the process, regeneration or rather reincarnation is the next step. The spiritual aspect ropes in another theory that the number 28 is associated with Egyptian mythology, specifically the god Osiris who was killed in the twenty-eighth year of his reign, but that’s as far as it goes.

• We find much wisdom and intuition in the tone of the speaker and the way they participate in the scene from various points of view. The speaker illustrates 28 young men who bathe by a shore, all of whom are described as friendly. A woman aged 28 looks on to the boys from the view of her fine house which implies that she is wealthy. In spite of her material comfort, she is lonely and “hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.” The speaker asks, presumably to the reader:

Which of the young men does she like the best?

Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

So the most unassuming of the young men has caught her eye. There’s something quite special about the dynamic presented, the roles have been reversed in a way. It is the woman looking over the naked men, a peeping tom of sorts and I came across an analysis that compared the scene to David in the Bible who watched Bathsheba as she bathed. A verse from the book reads: One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing— a very beautiful woman. And in the same manner the woman watches the young men bathe from her “fine house by the rise of the bank,”

In the next line the speaker changes their point of view going from the third person to the second person (I hope I’m right)  

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Could Whitman be voicing a character in this scene? I imagine this speaker to be a narrator but not necessarily in the scene themselves. There’s a change in the point of view but not much of a change in interaction. The lines read as though the speaker is now talking to the lady “Where are you off to? For i see you/ You splash in the water there” However in this remark “ yet stay stock still in your room” it doesn’t sound like a direct comment to the lady but more of an observation for the reader. That this lady, though she may be lonely, has been seen splashing in the water, but yet she stays stock still in her room in this instance. Could it be out of fear, probably, could this room that she stays stock still in be alluding to something more abstract, perhaps this room is her inner self that she hesitates to let out. And while we end that line with suggestions of seclusion. The next line paints a different picture:

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth

bather,

Can you guess who the 29th bather is? If you guessed the lady you are correct. 

The lines continue; 

The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The speaker goes on to describe the bathers having a splash of a time. They describe the water as it trickles down the young men’s beards, passing all over their bodies. Then:

“An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.”

Guess whose hand that is, the young lady still unseen by the young men engages in their sensual bathing and play with mild touching, not to mention her hand trembling in fear and/or excitement as it felt their temples and ribs.   

The lines continue:

“The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge

to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and

bending arch,

They do not think whom they souse with spray.”

Here the section ends with the young men afloat on their backs as relaxed as can be. No once did it ever cross their minds that a woman was among them, They do not ask, they do not know and they do not think about this minor detail. This section definitely speaks to Whitman’s humanist stance and belief in non-discrimination*. Life and all that it constitutes, especially its goodness is meant for all of us to engage in. Even if we find ourselves to be like the woman, with hesitation and doubt within ourselves we ought to find it in ourselves to be the 29th bather for lack of a better expression, and while it may be daunting to do this we might find that all the distress was overblown. But of course easier said than done.