Whitman's Identity at War: Contexts and Reception of John Adams' The Wound-Dresser

"tHis is our American war-song, good not only for the battle-field, but for the labor-field-the present, still more than the past; for ours are not the 'piping times of peace;' our American life is on the march, filing through the passes of outgrown formalism, outflanking the hosts of slavery, gaining the mountain heights of an all-comprehending vi- sion," wrote an anonymous critic of Drum-Taps in 1865.1 He was al- ready willing to apply Walt Whitman's war-song to the present rather than the recent past, using it as inspiration for life on the metaphorical march rather than a literal war. Such is also the case in modern times with John Adams' famous song-setting of "The Wound-Dresser" from Drum-Taps. Since its premiere in 1989, The Wound-Dresser has evoked contradictory interpretations about its relevance that reveal how the debates over Whitman's identity continue to seethe in the public sphere.In "The Wound-Dresser," initially entitled "The Dresser," an old man addresses young listeners asking about a war long past. Whitman's narrator offers a reminiscence not of a righteous North, nor of heroic battles and death and glor y charges, but of a war in which one side was as brave as the other; the lingering memories are of his care of the desperately wounded. He describes the Civil War not in grand terms, with reference to famous figures, but in the suffering of anonymous individual soldiers. His care and compassion create a special bond between him and these young men, one perhaps impossible without the intimacy forced upon them by the exigencies of war. Or, as Adams put it to New York Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert, "It's Whitman . . . there's gotta be a little sex in here, not all suffering and dying."2 These poles of Whitman's identity might be easily brought together in Adams' dry aside, but less so in public discussion. As Betsy Erkkila writes, the "fairly standard divisions in Whitman studies-the aesthetic Whitman, the sexual W hitman, the historic Whitman, the political Whitman- . . . tend to mask the complexly interactive social, sexual, and historical engagements of Whitman's work." Rather than using the historic and political Whitman to legitimize the sexual Whitman, Erkkila calls for a new consideration of his "multiple and often contra- dictor y bequests to the future."3 As "The Wound-Dresser" became The Wound-Dresser and moved into the world of classical music, the discussion of Whitman's identities collided with Adams' authority and the delicate topic of modern warfare of various kinds. These issues all create a constantly shifting reception in which the traces of Whitman's disparate public identities can be seen more clearly, perhaps, than in scholarly Whitman studies.The dominance of debate about Whitman's original intentions and opinions shows how strongly his authorial authority endures, but it also reveals the uncertain nature of Whitman's multitudinous identity. If, as Lawrence Buell summarizes, we continue in the well-established scholarly theory that the "war enabled Whitman to redefine his persona from the brash unwashed omnisexual cosmic-anarchic force to the compassionate, maternal nurturer and patriotic chronicler of historic events,"4 then we must also recognize how strongly that patriotic per- sona overwhelms the perceptions of a general audience, who we may reasonably assume were first taught selected poems from Drum-Taps (such as "O Captain! My Captain!") and perhaps were later introduced to a separate sexual Whitman. Musicological studies of The Wound- Dresser do not bridge the gap, usually focusing, as the field demands, on Adams' intriguing musical structures. For this reason, I turn to the program notes and newspaper and magazine reviews of performances and recordings, as well as some noted performers, to narrativize the discussions that arise from a modern public understanding of Whitman and his discontents.Adams' composition was commissioned by Carillon Importers on behalf of Absolut Vodka and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. …