A particularly scathing 1882 Atlantic review of the second printing of Leaves of Grass catalogues Whitman’s literary abuses and concludes that “the book cannot attain to any very wide influence.” Despite this terribly wrongheaded prediction, the reviewer at least recognizes Whitman’s “generous aspiration,” a quality held in common by all of Whitman’s admirers, be they heroes, villains, or just average people responding to the poet’s raw self-assertion and capacious, grandiose, and particularly American, form of longing. Whitman’s steadfast commitment to his political and artistic vision brought him worldwide acclaim, as well as censure, in his lifetime. Early on, PBS’s American Experience tells us, Whitman staked out “radical positions… putting him in near constant opposition to society’s prevailing sentiments.” He never moderated his views or his voice, though faced with charges of blasphemy, obscenity, bad writing, and various other public vices at the time. What draws Welles, and restless personalities like him, to Whitman, and especially to Leaves of Grass? One answer lies in Whitman’s own life. As further evidence, we have this photograph of Welles reading Gay Wilson Allen’s The Solitary Singer, a critical biography of the poet. One of the lost episodes, from December 1, 1941, featured Welles reading from Leaves of Grass. Welles produced 19 episodes, though only 8 have survived. In the same year he completely re-invented American film with Citizen Kane, he also began broadcasting the Orson Welles Show on CBS Radio, on which he and his guests gave dramatic readings from drama, poetry, and fiction. While the BBC commissioned the recordings-and Welles no doubt needed the money-he already had an affinity for Whitman. His reading was apparently very well received by the UK press. The text of the poem was too long for a full treatment, and Welles, it seems, abridged and adapted some of the work himself. The Mickle Street Review, an online journal of Whitman studies, hosts a small part of Side 1 and, it appears, all of Side 2 of the record, below. At the top, hear Welles read section VI of the poem, and directly above, hear him read the heretical section XLVIII. Fortunately, however, much of this recording has been digitally preserved. During some difficult times in the fifties-in part due to Welles’ IRS trouble-the great actor/director/multi-media impresario found work on radio plays in England, including The Lives of Harry Lime (based on his character in The Third Man) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (as Moriarty). In 1953, the BBC contracted with Welles to record an hour of readings from “Song of Myself.” BBC 3 broadcast the session, and it later saw release as an LP, now sadly out of print.

Song of myself poem