Confessions+of+an+Opium+Eater+(Stephani+doing+Dustin's+assignment)

[|drug rehab centers in ct] [|Dustin's assignment] invited me to consider the use of the opium eater in Whitman's poem and to do some research on opium in the period.

The opium eater is introduced during a moment of repose in the midst of Whitman's long catalogue of categories of persons, beginning with "the pure contralto" and "the carpenter"(21). As when "the gentlemen run for their partners"(22) or "the canal-boy trots on the towpath"(22), in several lines from this part of the poem the persons listed are in hurried movement. Often the persons listed are at work, each involved in some small part of the great industriousness of the nation, as "the deckhands make fast the steamboat"(22) and "the cleanhaired Yankee girl works with her sewing machine or in the factory mill"(22). But these examples of rushing and industry are juxtaposed with contrasting scenes of rest, as when "the youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain"(21) and "the one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child"(21). The opium eater marks a point, though, when the mood of rest, extends beyond just one example instead extending for a few lines longer.


 * The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,**
 * The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly,**
 * The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips.**

The timeless nature of the daguerrotype, both the seemingly endless experience of sitting still for the process, and the permanence of the image that will result from the sitting, seems to suggest the opium eater scene.


 * __Some Research__**

During the civil war, when Whitman toured hospitals, and "[|was known to be constantly scribbling in little notebooks made of pieced together scraps of paper]," opium was being used as a painkiller for wounded soldiers. According to [|wikipedia], during the civil war "2.8 million ounces of opium tincture and powder and about 500,000 opium pills" were used for the wounded. Whitman was much impressed by his experience in the hospitals, at one point writing, "[|I have been . . . a good deal to Campbell and Armory Square Hospitals, and occasionally to that at the Patent Office . . . Every one of these cots has its history--every case is a tragic poem, an epic, a romance, a pensive and absorbing book, if it were only written]."

With so much opium around, it seems likely that Whitman would have been exposed to the tragic, epic, and romantic stories of men being treated with what was then called, "[|God's Own Medicine]." In fact, I was actually struck by how much some of Whitman's musings sound like the kind of reflection which would be produced by using opium: "I have been sitting late tonight by the bedside of a wounded Captain, a friend of mine... in a large Ward partially vacant. The lights were out, all but a little candle, far from where I sat. I sat there by him. . . occupied with the musings that arose out of the scene, the long shadowy Ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight on the floor. . . . " Although, of course, writing this scene would certainly not have required any drug use, the lines do have a certain, Coleridge-like quality.

In 1840, New Englanders brought in [|24,000 pounds of opium into the United State, which spurred the U.S. Customs to place a duty fee on the drug]. Opium was also in use in the opium dens which had begun operating in New York City. In 1881, the doctor H.H. Kane wrote an article for Harper's Weekly entitled "[|American Opium Smokers]." Striving to be a more thorough exploration than had thus far been undertaken by those "newspaper men" who had "at various times attempted to investigate the matter, but in most cases wholly failed," Kane explained: In order to make my investigation of the matter thorough and truthful, I made myself acquainted with some fifty male and female American smokers in this city, became a daily visitor, staying for hours at the principal smoking-house or "joint," had habitués smoking at my own house, where I could more freely question and experiment upon them, smoked myself, in small quantities and to excess, and had two of my male nurses smoking at various times. Furthermore, I have had two smokers under treatment for the habit. In this way, and by means of letters addressed to physicians, chiefs of police, and public men in various parts of the country, I have been enabled to get at the whole truth in the matter."

Though, of course, Kane's report is a number of years later than Whitman's first use of the "opium eater," it would seem from the doctor's description of a thriving opium scene in "Mott, Pell, and Park streets", as well as his examples from "Chrystie Street . . . Twenty-third Street, and several in Fourth and Second avenues" that in 1881 opium smoking was well established in New York City. Kane's description of what these basement dens would look like and how they would operate is both precise and fascinating: "these places are, as a rule, in the basement, and consist of a small, low-ceilinged room, guiltless of all furniture save long wooden bunks, about four feet in width, made of board and covered with matting. In this place may be found, from 10 a.m. until 8 a.m. the following morning, from one to thirty American smokers."

But while Whitman may have been aware of dens like these, his user is an opium //eater// not an opium //smoker//. "Eating" opium did not need to take place in such shadowy places. [|Laudanum], "[|a mixture of alcohol and opium derivatives]," was a "[|common item included in the medicine kits of many 'proper' Victorian families]." Of course, laudanum was habit-forming and as a user was driven to consume more of the opiate, there was a very real danger of death by overdose. According to one article I found, Whitman himself "[|strongly believed that drugs were unsuccessful and even dangerous in the treatment of physical and mental infirmities]."


 * __A Look Back at the Poem__**

As the stillness of the daguerrotype sitting seems to lead to the mental stillness enjoyed in the opium eater's stupor, so the suggestion of one vice seems to lead to the idea of another as Whitman follows the opium eater reclining with an image of a streetwalker.


 * The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,**
 * The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,**
 * (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,)**

The tipsy, pimpled, cursing, miserable prostitute seems to reflect back upon the image of the opium eater, so that, though Whitman's one-line description of the opium eater sparely records only the non-gendered eater's position and expression--"rigid head and just opened lips"--the addition of the tragic prostitute adds a note of desperation and despair to the opium eating scene.

This is not, I would argue, a value free description of a drug user exploring the subversive possibilities of an exploratory experience rejected, perhaps prematurely, by the staid, Victorian bourgeoisie. The opium eater's correlation to, through juxtaposition with, the prostitute, suggests a darker story.

Yet, coming immediately after the daguerrotype scene, one of the points at which the speaker of the poem assumes the point of view of his subject, so that the "the minutehand of the clock moves slowly," this is also a point at which the speaker's connection with his subjects feels especially close. Having been invited to experience the slowness of the minute hand, I feel similarly invited to experience the subjectivity of the reclining opium eater. The spare details of the "rigid head and just-opened lips" hint at what it feels like to be within the opium eater's consciousness, as does the clock moving slowly--a sensation the opium eater would share with the lady sitting for her daguerrotype, as the addict might also share the desolation of the prostitute's "draggl[ing]" her shawl. That the prostitute is followed by the President, "surrounded by the great secretaries" in an echo of the prostitute surrounded by the crowd of laughing men, suggests that the speaker wants us to understand that he would not count the President necessarily greater than the prostitute.

The chain of scenes surrounding the opium eater, from daguerrotype to President, presents a moment of stillness followed by a descent into depravity itself rescued by an implied assertion of universal equality. Before the next line break, Whitman ends this section very Whitman-like: "And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am."

As I read it, Whitman's glance at the opium eater does absolutely advance Dustin's formulation of Whitman's thesis, "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." By connecting the opium eater to both the highly respectable bride sitting for her daguerrotype and to the deplored, ridiculed prostitute, who is in turn connected to the United States President, Whitman presents the reader with a visceral sense of the universality of human existence. The binary oppositions of bride/eater/prostitute/President are clear, yet dissolved within the logic of the poem.

__**Notes for Dustin**__

I loved this assignment because it was fun to research opium. Reading around on the internet about what was happening in the opium trade leading up to and during the nineteenth century was enjoyable--plus I learned things! That was definitely my favorite part of the assignment. As for the purpose of the assignment: well, I just looked up Dustin's wiki page on that topic. In one sentence, Dustin wanted students to consider: "what does Whitman accomplish in juxtaposing an opium eater, a prostitute, and the President, among others, into one contiguous thought?" Having just completed the assignment //without// looking up Dustin's goal, I am struck by how, by following Dustin's prompts, I came to write about the poem pretty much as if I had looked up what he was thinking about. (I'm glad I didn't, it would have made the assignment less interesting to me.) As for how to make the assignment more enjoyable or better--it would have been fun to hear what the short lecture Dustin proposes giving in his original assignment would have been like. Altogether, I was honestly surprised by how researching this one very particular topic and focusing in on one line of the poem made me think harder about how this section of the poem works.[|novi link][|novi link][|novi link]