WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

Here's a 1953 recording of Welles performing the epic Walt Whitman poem. It's not the complete text, which isn't to say it's incomplete, but rather an adaption. I don't know who's adaption Welles would be reading other than his own, so let's assume he did it.

Beyond a few excerpts from encouraging British reviews, I've got almost no info on this one. Apart from a few moments of ham, it's one helluva performance (or several performances - the poem seems to have been recorded in separate chunks and then edited together - so this is a product of a recording studio, rather than something that "went out live." [Actually, none of Welles' work in English radio seems to have been broadcast live.])

Part 1 http://www.box.net/shared/bkysudy832
Part 2 http://www.box.net/shared/8cvz47mv03

ORSON WELLES

performs

SONG OF MYSELF by WALT WHITMAN


This was broadcast in April, 1953 on the BBC "Third Programme" channel. That this masterful Welles reading has been so little heard in the United States, really borders on the criminal, as it may be one of Welles greatest poetic readings I've yet to hear. The British critics seemed to think so:

Proably no other known voice could have so satisfyingly brought out the vigour, weight and seep of Whitman's lines.

--The Times Educational Supplement, April 24, 1953

Though I scarcely count myself among Whitman's most rabid addicts, I listened with awe-struck attention to Mr. Welles as he wove his path among the formidable verse with astonishing variatins of pace, tone, and inflection.

--The Scotsman, April 13, 1953

A virtuoso performance which added up to perfect radio... it is not easy to believe that any listener even mildly susceptible to fine acting could fail to feel a communicated surge of life and hope and optimism while Mr. WElles was speaking.

--Morris Wiggin, The Sunday Times, April 12, 1953


Since Whitman's epic poem consists of 48 chapters, it's obvious that the entire work couldn't be read in the allotted time frame, but Welles ends part one, (verse 21) with a tour de force performance that can only be called a triumph of vocal prowess. Sometime in the sixties, ABC records issued this performance as a LP record which seems to be quite rare.



1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.


2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.


3

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night,
and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?




21

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and
still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom'd night--press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds--night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love--therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love.

BBC Radio 3, the successor to the old Third Programme, broadcast a reworking of this recording this month. I haven't had the opportunity to hear it yet myself, but thought I should mention it here so others have the chance to do so before it disappears. Should remain available through mid-May 2016:

Orson Welles read Whitman's trailblazing poem for the BBC Third Programme in 1953. In a new landmark reading of the poem, Welles' voice is interwoven with readings from a small cast of acclaimed actors - Michael Sheen, Clarke Peters, Julianna Jennings, Kyle Soller and Eleanor Bron. With an introduction from poet, Mark Doty.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0770h0v

A little more information about the 1953 broadcast is to be found at the BBC's Project Genome, a website which compiles programme descriptions from the listings magazine Radio Times:
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/740f232e8231 ... bdd0f21502
This link is from an early repeat broadcast, the original airing on April 6th of that year has no data in the programme description. It appears that an edited version of the already abridged text used for the recording was issued commercially on BBC Records and rebroadcast in the 1960s and 70s.

The old links were extinct long ago, so here are some current ones. Side 1 is improperly linked on the Rutgers page (making it a 'hidden file' like that fascinating assortment on the Lilly site,) but some sleuthing determined where it actually was online:

http://msr-archives.rutgers.edu/Sound/w ... de%201.mp3
http://msr-archives.rutgers.edu/Sound/w ... de%202.mp3

As a bonus, here's the Aaron Copland piece (though not the same recording) used by the BBC for the broadcast (I guess at the halfway point):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEuqY00d-s

Another good find, Terry. I have to confess that I don't have a huge appreciation for poetry, but when Welles is reading it, that helps pique my interest a lot. SONG OF MYSELF is also considered by many to be the great American poem, kind of like the way CITIZEN KANE is considered the great American movie, so Welles was a pretty apt choice to read it.

E Pluribus Unum
https://c19uslit.wordpress.com/2014/04/ ... ibus-unum/

Despite what would appear grammatically to be an immense obsession with (Whitman's) own self, it soon becomes clear that the “I, me, my, mine” of the poem in fact has a transcendental significance, pointing at the multiple, collective individualities of the nation. These are as disperse and differentiated as the content of the poem, but they relentlessly reinforce the underlying message of unity from diversity. That is, they are a poetic expression of E Pluribus Unum (“From the Many, One”), a phrase on the Seal of the United States and often used as the unofficial motto of the nation.