Whitman's Wise Words

Journal Interpretation: Whitman's journal is very hard to interpret for me.  He writes notes with very simple phrases and his hand writing makes it very difficult at times to even read what he wrote and it is difficult to understand his meanings through the short phrases.  On the first page of his journal it looks like he recorded names and addresses of people that were influential or important for his writing so he would be able to access them when he needed to.  On many pages of the journal it looks like the page has a watermark or stamp of some kind, I can't tell exactly what the stamp says but it looks like two guns crossed at the bottom with wings around them.  One page that I was able to read well was the third page where it looks like he was brainstorming the idea for some kind of work which I think is a brochure and the two main characters he had in mind for the piece and the plot of it.  I also noticed that he recorded possible settings for pieces such as old England and then chose to not use certain settings and would cross them out.  He also recorded other preliminary ideas for pieces throughout his journal and some beginning ideas for these pieces.

Actual Meaning: Whitman actually did use his notebook to record the addresses of important people in his life, some of the addresses included in his notebook were those of his good friends and one was even of a tailor he used.  The idea that I had of page 3 in his journal of a potential piece of work was incorrect, Whitman was recording the time he saw President Lincoln get elected and when he saw the president travel from his cottage and how he seemed sad and emotionless.  My interpretation of Whitman using his journal to braintstorm and toy with ideas of works was correct, he used his journal to try and develop story lines and plots and to have for reference for works.  I was right that he did have stamps appear on many pages of his journal, the stamp was from the Library of Congress.  The journal was also useful in understanding some of Whitman's personal beliefs, one example was a small entry about religion and what it meant to him. Whitman's journal can be very useful in understanding him as a person and as a writer but is difficult to interpret due to his handwritting and his lack of expansion on some thoughts.