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Starting with its very title, "Song of Myself" is indeed a poetic embodiment of the transcendentalist philosophy. Whitman (or the speaker who calls himself Whitman) doesn't sing and praise some outside ideals or occurrences, but himself. This is the transcendentalist ideal of self-reliance, explained in Emerson's eponymous essay. It says that the greatest strength of every individual is his/her own self, independent, free from authority and restraints, liberated and self-sufficient. Both Emerson and Whitman, each in his own right, have written a giant ode to individualism.
Another transcendentalist ideal embodied in Whitman's famous poem is relationship with nature. In his view, nature is the source of genuine beauty and wisdom, uncorrupted by the touch of social and political institutions. Whitman says "<span>I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked", which means that nature is the only realm of sincerity, and people can only be true to themselves if they are independent of humanity but close to nature.
Just like Transcendentalism has been a unique, authentic American take on Romanticism, Whitman has been the pillar of American national and cultural identity in poetry. He has taken the very American notion of individualism (defined and praised by transcendentalists) and put it in his poetry, most notably in "Song of Myself" as the most self-obsessed, yet not egotistical account of modern American poetry.</span>
