Tweet-A-Week: Barnum's American Museum

Barnum's American Museum was a five-story attraction that held a wide-ranging amount of spectacles from different backgrounds and aspects of the world. It was a mesh of reality and fantasy, attractions for the imagination and that which is stranger than fiction. Whitman lived and worked on the same street as this museum that was open six days a week and fifteen hours a day. Due to its humongous popularity for those from every walk of life, Whitman, from a singular spot on the globe, was exposed to a large variety of people and ideas. Barnum's American museum was "the premier attraction of New York City". Whitman was recorded of having visited the museum at least twice and actually interviewed Barnum. However, what seemed to have interested Whitman was not so much what was inside the museum as much as it was the people who came and went.

It is not surprising in the least that Whitman much preferred watching people over the attractions in the museum. After reading "Song of Myself", it is evident that Whitman is much more interested in human kind in his or her natural form rather than the artificially created exhibits where the living things within are kept behind cages to be gawked at rather than observed in their natural habitat. When reading "Song of Myself", I noticed that there were many stanzas which simply listed various scenarios and people, which ties in nicely with Whitman's interest in "people-watching". However, even though Whitman does not explicitly talk about any of the attractions at the museum, it hardly means he was not influenced by them.

There are many instances in "Song of Myself" where Whitman travels back and forth in time and across countries. When visiting the 3-D tour of the museum, in the first room there are countless paintings hung on the wall, many featuring scenes from nature which could have contributed to Whitman's poetry. Whitman's varied vocabulary as well as his at-times obscure references could have possibly be influenced by the museum.