Title: Poem among the Siamese
Creators: Walt Whitman, Unknown
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00050
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the marginalia and annotations, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note(s): At one point, this manuscript likely formed part of Whitman's cultural geography scrapbook.
Contributors to digital file: Ashlyn Stewart and Kevin McMullen
Paste-on | | Whitman's Notes on Paste-on | | Whitman's Highlighting on Paste-on | | Erasure | | Overwrite |
Poem among the Siamese
From "A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries, by John Crawford, F. R. S.," a book very full of knowledge both useful and entertaining, we extract some queer exemplifications of the workings of the Siamese mind. Proverbs are everywhere alike in kind; in those well translated from barbarous languages there is a certain refreshing quaintness which we do not perceive in our own; a new flavor.
Then follows a long and denunciatory Siamese poem, describing the future punishment of the wicked; a painstaking enumeration of iron ruffs and fetters, a red-hot iron beds, and such like inflictions. It ends with a horrid threat against people
who don't respect the Siamese Constitution. "He has despised the laws of his forefathers; and on this account, dogs of the size of an elephant, and crows and vultures shall devour his flesh."
The cast of the southern Asiatic mind, literature, poetry.—Caste—suppleness,—so much that the Teutonic descendant cannot sympathise with.—
Zerdusht
"the Chaldeaus or ancient Persians, with their Zerdusht
Carlyle ? Zoroaster
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Cossacks, fierce, ruthless, sitting round a table drinking brandy, after a battle, singing a song in praise of blood the gallows, the knout, torture, &c.
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