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What things are described as "not the Me myself" in "Song of Myself"? What does "come to me days & nights" mean?
Quick answer:
In "Song of Myself," things described as "not the Me myself" include external influences like people, societal events, and personal experiences. These elements affect the speaker but do not define their core identity. When Whitman says, "come to me days & nights," he refers to the constant, inevitable passage of time and external events that impact life but do not alter the true self, which transcends these temporal matters.
Often described as the great American poem, "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman is a lengthy free-verse poem that seeks to explore and understand the idea of the self existing in a modern world. In section four of the poem, Whitman lists a series of entities and events that he claims are "not the Me of myself." These subjects include the following, pulled directly from the poem itself:
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward
and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors
old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I
love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or
loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful
news, the fitful events;
While this is a very broad list of things, they all share one similarity, which is the fact that they are all things that exist outside of the speaker. The trippers and the askers surround him, but they are not him, just as the people he meets, the prominent figures of the era, the dispositions of others all may affect him, but they do not represent who he is as a person. The speaker instead seems to consider himself as a fixed being, shifting from moment to moment and existing independently of the past, present, and future. Such trivial matters as the dinner and dress of his associates are of no matter to him. When the speaker says, "these come to me day and night," he is drawing attention to this inevitable and unstoppable passage of time that the all-powerful self has transcended.
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