Of all the references on our port that abound in the literature, art, music, philosophy, science and world-both known and unknown-perhaps fleeting appearance of our city in the poem, "Salut au Monde" by Walt Whitman, could be considered among the most frivolous.
This does not underestimate the importance of the New Yorker poet. It is no coincidence that our laureate of Cerro Bellavista, having obtained a photo of the author "Leaves of Grass" with 4 inches by 6 at an antiques fair, he had to enlarge the same until he was six feet tall. He placed it beside his desk, I assume, that the two could talk every day.
say "frivolous" because "Salut au Monde" is a poem about Valparaiso, but a much more ambitious poem. Its approximately 305 verses are organized in 33 verses and 13 sections. In fact, the exact number of lines is a mystery, as part of the charm of reading Whitman is precisely the fact that not always known exactly, when a line ends and another party.
Whitman invented such a flamboyant style inspired by the trials of his hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). According to Emerson, 60 years after the Declaration of Independence of the United States, the country still was not free, then, were imitating poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. For Emerson, America was not yet her voice, her destiny. "It's not the metric that makes the poem" wrote RWE, "but the passion of the poet who inspired a metric itself, at the height of that passion."
Illuminated, Whitman invented a line of poetry that made fun of the harsh restrictions imposed metrics that their European counterparts. "Why do I have to limit myself to a predetermined amount of iambic foot?" He wondered. According to him, U.S. was a rich country, without limits. If I wanted to put 20, 30, or 40 feet in a single line, I would, who are you to say no?
Back in "Salut au Monde": Same as "Song of myself" is an ode to transcendentalism. This philosophy preaches that if you want a glimpse of the divine architecture of the universe, you do not die and go to heaven, but enough to embrace with open eyes the world as it is. Both Whitman and Emerson rejected the cosmology of duality. They said there was no part of creation that was of God and a devil. Was one, beautiful, unique, perfect. The same ran for humans:
"Each of us is inevitable / Each of us limitless ... Everyone else as divine as"
Meanwhile, our city is present in Section 4:
"I contemplate the sailors in the world ...
In his time, in its darkness ...
"Watch the ships sail and steam ...
"wait in Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin
Marseille, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg, Bremen
wait in Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama;
wait in the docks of Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore ,
in Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco .
