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On of the many things that has struck me about Leaves of Grass so far is that it's not consistant. As someone who has spent the last week in another class on Blake, for whom consistancy is practically if not entirely a vice, this troubles me rather little, but does give me another new insight into my continuing look into what does differ between science and literature.

First, though, to reference briefly the type of inconsistancy I'm talking about, which in themselves are discussing the relationship between literature and science. Whitman reiterates his belief in their productive coexistance, stating on page 38 that "facts are useful and real...they are not my dwelling...I enter by them to an area of dwelling...I am less the reminder of property or qualities and more the reminder of life." While this statement supports the way different ways of approaching meaning, different "dwellings" aid each other, he earlier (page 15) declares that "as soon as histories are properly told there is not more need of romances." After what we have looked at this year, the idea that history is every "properly told" seemed stifling and simply wrong, particularly in the context of one who embraces different approaches to understanding in other passages.