My avatar.
August 3, 2009: “Change Avatar”, suggests the even-toned, congenial facilitator of “My Profile” right here on my very first blog. Avatar? This graceful and exotic word had recently caught my attention in “So Long!”, Whitman’s farewell poem to readers of Leaves of Grass. The poem first appeared (appropriately) as the last poem in the third edition of 1860; its final stanza supplies a startling moment of intimacy and attempts to break down, once and for all, the literary ‘fourth wall’: the page between writer and reader.
Dear friend, whoever you are, take this kiss,
I give it especially to you—Do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done his work—I progress on,
The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct, darts awakening rays about me—So Long!
Remember my words—I love you—I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
It’s a memorable goodbye, full of passion and demonstrations of genuine affection. And Whitman comes as close as he ever did, to manifesting his love—to touching us physically, to breaking down old, assumed boundaries of time and place. As we run our fingers over the lines of the third edition, the “kiss” of letter-pressed page 456 provides proof of the printer’s bodily contact (hey Walt, weren’t you overseeing the printing up there in Boston? Might you have pressed those letters into the page, to reach us on the ‘other side’?). And as we flip the last page, close the back cover, and take our hand off the book, Whitman comes as close as he ever will to being disembodied and dead to us.
These lines received only minor revisions through the next twenty years. But in the 1881-82 edition of the Leaves—the sixth edition—Whitman added a completely new fourth line:
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me
Like many of Whitman’s late poems and revisions, this line adds a new spiritual dimension to the raw bigness of his exaltations and exhortations. Though he might be changing the spelling (and gender?) of the original Hindu word, Whitman does seem to be thinking of avatar(a) as the incarnate, earthbound form of a deity. Death is the only thing that’ll get this kosmos off the streets! So then, Whitman’s avatar is holiness at street level, a manifestation of the divine that can be seen and touched by anybody.
Now (yikes), back to “Change Avatar.” And I’m sure experienced bloggers and gamers are rolling their eyes at my complication of a simple idea: a “graphic representation of a person or character in a computer-generated environment, esp. one which represents a user in an interactive game or setting, and which can move about in its surroundings and interact with other characters” (Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition). But for folks like me who actively love the poet right back, celebrate the revolution of his art and receive joy and satisfaction from teaching his message, choosing an avatar is a daunting task.
Too easy, I think, to put Whitman’s own beloved visage in the clipboard square. Instead, I recall a favorite line from the first poem of the first edition, later entitled “Song of Myself”:
In all people I see myself—none more, and not one a barleycorn less
So, patient reader, I give you… me.
