Walt Whitman
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| Walt Whitman | |
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Walt Whitman, 1887
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| Born | May 31, 1819 West Hills, Huntington, Long Island, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 26, 1892 (aged 72) Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
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Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and—in addition to publishing his poetry—was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.[2][3]
Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual sexual experiences with men.[4]
Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, though his attitude in life reflected many of the racial prejudices common to nineteenth-century America and his opposition to slavery was not necessarily based on belief in the equality of races per se.[5] At one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.[6]
Contents
Life and work
Early life
Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, to parents with interests in Quaker thought, Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. The second of nine children,[7] he was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father.[8] Walter Whitman, Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age of six months. The couple's sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward.[8] At age four, Whitman moved with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments.[9] Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult economic status.[10] One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.[11]At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling.[12] He then sought employment for further income for his family; he was an office boy for two lawyers and later was an apprentice and printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements.[13] There, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting.[14] He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues.[15] Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head.[16] Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy.[17]
Early career
After his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York to found his own newspaper, the Long Islander. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839.[27] No copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman survive.[28] By the summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens with the Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton.[27] He left shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841.[29] One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of Whitman's being chased away from a teaching job in Southold, New York in 1840. After a local preacher called him a "Sodomite", Whitman was allegedly tarred and feathered. Biographer Justin Kaplan notes that the story is likely untrue, because Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter.[30] Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth".[31] During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career.[32]
Whitman moved to New York City in May, initially working a low-level job at the New World, working under Park Benjamin, Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold.[33] He continued working for short periods of time for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle.[34] He also contributed freelance fiction and poetry throughout the 1840s.[35] Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding with the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "Hunker", wing of the party.[36] Whitman was a delegate to the 1848 founding convention of the Free Soil Party.
Leaves of Grass
Main article: Leaves of Grass
Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a poet.[37] He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period.[38] As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass,[39] a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death.[40] Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic[41] and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible.[42] At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George "didn't think it worth reading".[43]
In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing more on the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it.[54] In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems,[55] in August 1856.[56] Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860[57] again in 1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.[58]
During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced to work as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857.[59] As an editor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials.[60] He left the job in 1859, though it is unclear if he was fired or chose to leave.[61] Whitman, who typically kept detailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.[62]
Civil War years
In Washington, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped him obtain part-time work in the army paymaster's office, leaving time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse in the army hospitals.[68] He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863[69] and, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War.[70] He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for help in obtaining a government post.[66] Another friend, John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would grant Whitman a position in that department. Chase, however, did not want to hire the author of such a disreputable book as Leaves of Grass.[71]
The Whitman family had a difficult end to 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by Confederates in Virginia,[72] and another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism on December 3.[73] That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum.[74] Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he finally got a better-paying government post as a low-grade clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, thanks to his friend William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist and an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, had written to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, on Whitman's behalf.[75] Whitman began the new appointment on January 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of $1,200.[76] A month later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a furlough because of his poor health.[75] By May 1, Whitman received a promotion to a slightly higher clerkship[76] and published Drum-Taps.[77]
Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his job.[77] His dismissal came from the new Secretary of the Interior, former Iowa Senator James Harlan.[76] Though Harlan dismissed several clerks who "were seldom at their respective desks", he may have fired Whitman on moral grounds after finding an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.[78] O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred to the Attorney General's office on July 1.[79] O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated biographical study, The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866. The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname and increased his popularity.[80] Also aiding in his popularity was the publication of "O Captain! My Captain!", a relatively conventional poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, the only poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.[81]
Part of Whitman's role at the Attorney General's office was interviewing former Confederate soldiers for Presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary."[82] In August 1866, he took a month off in order to prepare a new edition of Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 after difficulty in finding a publisher.[83] He hoped it would be its last edition.[84] In February 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti,[85] with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved.[86] The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from the highly respected writer Anne Gilchrist.[87] Another edition of Leaves of Grass was issued in 1871, the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident.[88] As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained at the attorney general's office until January 1872.[89] He spent much of 1872 caring for his mother who was now nearly eighty and struggling with arthritis.[90] He also traveled and was invited to Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.[91]
Health decline and death
When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move for business reasons, he bought his own house at 328 Mickle Street (now 330 Mickle Street).[93] First taken care of by tenants, he was completely bedridden for most of his time in Mickle Street. During this time, he began socializing with Mary Oakes Davis—the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor, boarding with a family in Bridge Avenue just a few blocks from Mickle Street.[94] She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885, to serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with her a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and other assorted animals.[95] During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.
While in Southern New Jersey Whitman spent a good portion of his time in the then quite pastoral community of Laurel Springs between 1876 and 1884, converting one of the Stafford Farm buildings to his summer home. The restored summer home has been preserved as museum by the local historical society. Part of his Leaves of Grass was written here, and in his Specimen Days he wrote of the spring, creek and lake. To him, Laurel Lake was "the prettiest lake in: either America or Europe."[96]
As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, a version that has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition." He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."[97] Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a granite mausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000[98] and visited it often during construction.[99] In the last week of his life, he was too weak to lift a knife or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony—monotony—monotony—in pain."[100]
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An 1890 recording thought to be Walt Whitman reading the opening four lines of his poem "America".
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Writing
Poetic theory
Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society.[106] This connection was emphasized especially in "Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration.[107] As an American epic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people.[108] Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States had on the masses.[109]Lifestyle and beliefs
Alcohol
Whitman was a vocal proponent of temperance and in his youth rarely drank alcohol. He once claimed he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was thirty[110] and occasionally argued for prohibition.[111] One of his earliest long fiction works, the novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, first published November 23, 1842, is a temperance novel.[112] Whitman wrote the novel at the height of popularity of the Washingtonian movement though the movement itself was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans.[113] Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book[114] and called it a "damned rot".[115] He dismissed it by saying he wrote the novel in three days solely for money while he was under the influence of alcohol himself.[116] Even so, he wrote other pieces recommending temperance, including The Madman and a short story "Reuben's Last Wish".[117] Later in life he was more liberal with alcohol, enjoying local wines and champagne.[118]Religion
Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was more important than another, and embraced all religions equally.[119] In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected and accepted all of them—a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".[119] In 1874, he was invited to write a poem about the Spiritualism movement, to which he responded, "It seems to me nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude humbug."[120] Whitman was a religious skeptic: though he accepted all churches, he believed in none.[119] God, to Whitman, was both immanent and transcendent and the human soul was immortal and in a state of progressive development.[121]Sexuality
Peter Doyle may be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life. [125] [126][127] Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met around 1866, and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip—in fact went all the way back with me."[128] In his notebooks, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials using the code "16.4" (P.D. being the 16th and 4th letters of the alphabet).[129] A more direct second-hand account comes from Oscar Wilde. Wilde met Whitman in America in 1882 and wrote to the homosexual rights activist George Cecil Ives that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation—"I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips", he boasted.[130] The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is secondhand. In 1924 Edward Carpenter, then an old man, described an erotic encounter he had had in his youth with Whitman to Gavin Arthur, who recorded it in detail in his journal.[131][132] Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright if his "Calamus" poems were homosexual, he chose not to respond.[133]
There is also some evidence that Whitman may have had sexual relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship with a New York actress named Ellen Grey in the spring of 1862, but it is not known if it was also sexual. He still had a photo of her decades later when he moved to Camden and referred to her as "an old sweetheart of mine".[137] In a letter dated August 21, 1890 he claimed, "I have had six children—two are dead". This claim has never been corroborated.[138] Toward the end of his life, he often told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied an allegation from the New York Herald that he had "never had a love affair".[139] As Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably continue in spite of whatever evidence emerges."[4]
Shakespeare authorship
Whitman was an adherent of the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in the historic attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Whitman comments in his November Boughs (1888) regarding Shakespeare's historical plays:Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—personifying in unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation)—only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works—works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded literature.[140]
Slavery
Whitman opposed the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the Wilmot Proviso.[141] At first he was opposed to abolitionism, believing the movement did more harm than good. In 1846, he wrote that the abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the advancement of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness".[142] His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, as did the refusal of the Southern states to put the interests of the nation as a whole above their own.[141] In 1856, in his unpublished The Eighteenth Presidency, addressing the men of the South, he wrote "you are either to abolish slavery or it will abolish you". Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote[143] and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans in the legislature.[144]Legacy and influence
The literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass:
If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary works as candidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays and The Conduct of Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass.[150]Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich and Gary Snyder.[151] Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among Whitman's "wild children", and the title of his 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco is a deliberate reference to Whitman's Starting from Paumanok.[152] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was the model for the character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.[153] Other admirers included the Eagle Street College, an informal group established in 1885 at the home of James William Wallace in Eagle Street, Bolton, to read and discuss the poetry of Whitman. The group subsequently became known as the Bolton Whitman Fellowship or Whitmanites. Its members held an annual 'Whitman Day' celebration around the poet's birthday.[154]
Whitman's poetry has been set to music by a large number of composers; indeed it has been suggested his poetry has been set to music more than any other American poet except for Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[155] Those who have set his poems to music have included Kurt Weill, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, Paul Hindemith, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Ronald Corp, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Roger Sessions, and John Adams.
Whitman is a 2009 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[156] The Walt Whitman Bridge crosses the Delaware River near his home in Camden.
Works
- Franklin Evans (1842)
- Leaves of Grass (1855)
- Drum-Taps (1865)
- Memoranda During the War
- Specimen Days
- Democratic Vistas (1871)
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