inscribed by Whitman with a Leaves of Grass poem

A rare portrait with a Leaves of Grass quotation in Whitman’s hand. The photogenic and self-promoting poet sat for (and gave away) many photographs, but very rarely did he inscribe them with his verse. Here he writes lines from his poem “Salut au Monde!”—his “calling card to the world, as well as one of his most successful compositions.”

Whitman writes beneath this portrait the very lines that Folsom and Allen call a “prophetic exclamation” of Whitman’s desire for an international audience (Walt Whitman & the World, p. 1):

My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth,

I have look’d for equals & lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;

I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

“‘Salut au Monde!’ is Whitman’s calling card to the world, as well as one of his most successful compositions. With its closeups and panoramic visions of the earth, the poem extends and internationalizes the outward progression of the first person seer in ‘Song of Myself.’ It begins the journey motif in what James E. Miller has classified as the ‘Song Section’ (‘Song of the Open Road,’ ‘Song of the Rolling Earth,’ etc.) of Leaves of Grass. … From American brotherhood to a universal unity, Whitman’s ongoing poetic aspiration is toward an ‘internationality of poems and poets, binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy’” (Zapata-Whelan, Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia).

The poem was first published in the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856) under the title “Poem of Salutation.” The poet amended the work slightly and retitled it “Salut au Monde!” for the third edition of Leaves of Grass (1860).

A splendid Whitman portrait with a rare and deeply personal Leaves of Grass inscription. This is the only Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem that we have been able to locate.

Folsom, “Notes on Photographs,” 1880s, no. 8.

$75,000