Walt whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman (West Hills, New York, May 31, 1819-Camden, New Jersey, March 26, 1892) was a poet, volunteer nurse, essayist, journalist, and American humanist. His work is part of the transition between transcendentalism and philosophical realism, incorporating both movements into his work. He is considered among the most influential writers in the American canon and has been called the father of free verse. His work was highly controversial at the time, particularly for his book Leaves of Grass, described as bawdy by his open references to homosexuality.

Importance

Considered the father of modern American poetry, his influence has been widespread outside the United States as well. Among the writers who have been marked by his work are Rubén Darío, Wallace Stevens, León Felipe, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Fernando Pessoa, Pablo de Rokha, Federico García Lorca, Hart Crane, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg or John Ashbery, among others.

Born on Long Island, he worked as a journalist, teacher, government employee, and volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a novel, Franklin Evans (1842). His masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, was published in 1855, at his own expense. The book was an attempt to reach out to the common citizen with an American epic. The work was revised and expanded during the remainder of his life, the definitive edition being published in 1892. At the end of his life, and after suffering a stroke, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where health from him got worse. He died at the age of 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.

Whitman's sexuality has been as much discussed as his work. Although he has commonly been considered homosexual or bisexual, it is not clear that Whitman had any sexual relationship with another man, so biographers continue to debate.

The poet addressed political issues throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Clause and opposed the extension of slavery, although he was highly critical of the abolitionist movement.In 1865 he wrote the famous poem O Captain! My Captain! ( Oh, Captain! My Captain! ) in tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination.

Biography

Early Years

Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, a town in Huntington, Long Island. His parents, Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, were of Quaker beliefs, a non-denominational religious community that aims to revive early Christianity. He was the second of nine children and was immediately nicknamed "Walt" in order to distinguish him from his father.

Of his seven sons, Walter Whitman named three after American leaders Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The eldest was named Jesse and there was another one who died at six months without receiving a name. The couple's sixth child was named Edward.

At the age of four, Whitman moved his family from the West Hills to Brooklyn, moving from house to house with great precariousness, in part due to bad investments. Whitman would later recall that his childhood was a time of scarcity when not of unhappiness due to the family's financial difficulties. However, he lived happy moments such as when, during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4 (United States Independence Day) in 1825, he was lifted into the air and kissed by the Marquis de Lafayette.

At the age of eleven, Whitman finished his formal studies. He then began working to bring money to his family. He was an office clerk for two lawyers and later became an apprentice at the Long Island weekly The Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements. Whitman would learn printing and typography there and also there, for the first time, he would write sentimental compositions. Clements became embroiled in controversy when he and two other friends attempted to dig up the body of Elias Hicks in order to make a plastic cast of his head. Shortly thereafter, he would leave The Patriot, possibly as a result of this controversy.

The following year Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to the West Hills in the spring, but he stayed and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, publisher of the weekly The Long-Island Star. While working at the Star, Whitman became the patron of the local bookstore, joined social discussions about the city, began attending stage performances and anonymously published some of his early poems in the New York Mirror. At the age of sixteen, in May 1835, he left the Star and also Brooklyn He moved to New York City to work as a typesetter, although years later he could not remember where. He had trouble finding employment, partly because of a serious fire at the printing press, and partly because of a general collapse of the economy that led to the Panic of 1837. In May 1836 he reunited with his family, who lived in Hempstead, Long Island. He taught int Despite not being satisfied as a teacher, he admitted to various schools until the spring of 1838. Afterward, he returned to Huntington, New York, to found his own newspaper, The Long Islander . He worked simultaneously as an editor, journalist and distributor, even going as far as personally distributing the publication.

After ten months he sold the publication to O.E. Crowell, who took over from the July 12, 1839 issue. No copies of that publication survived while it was run by Whitman. During the summer of 1839 he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens, at the Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton. He left it shortly thereafter, and made another attempt as a teacher from the winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841. During this period he published a series of editorials called Sun-Down Papers- From the Desk of a Schoolmaster from the winter of 1840 to July 1841. For these essays he built a definite character, a technique he would use throughout his career. 1840, while in one of his schools, called Locust Grove School in Southold (New York), it is said that he was the victim of a mob after Pastor Ralph Smith of the Presbyterian Church accused him of committing sodomy with one of his students. The school later appeared on certain maps as the "School of Sodom". Whitman moved to New York in May, where he initially worked in a menial position in the New World, under the orders of by Park Benjamin and Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He later did assignments for various newspapers for short periods of time. In 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 of the Brooklyn Eagle. He also contributed to an independent publication of fiction and poetry during the 1840s. He lost his position in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848, when he aligned himself with the Barnburner Party, a wing of the Democratic Party that was demonstrating against the owner of the newspaper Isaac Van Anden, belonging to the conservative sector of the same party. Whitman He was a delegate to the founding convention of the Free Soil Party in 1848.

Leaves of Grass

Whitman claimed that after ten years of competing for "the usual prizes" – traditional recognitions – he decided to become a poet. Initially, he experimented with a variety of popular genres that appealed to the cultural tastes of the time. In the early 1850s, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry that he would continue to edit and revise until his death. He attempted to compose a uniquely American epic, using free verse with a cadence based on the Bible. About the end of June 1855, he surprised his brothers with the already printed first version. George, one of them, said: “I didn't expect it to be worth reading”.

He paid for the publication of his first edition himself, which he carried out at a local printer during break times from his commercial work. A total of 795 copies were printed. The edition was anonymous and yet, occupying the cover was a portrait of him by Samuel Hollyer. In the body of the text he called himself “Walt Whitman, American, one of the tough ones, a cosmos, messy, carnal and sensual, not sentimental, not above or apart from men or women, no more modest than immodest". The book received wide support from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five-page letter to Whitman and spoke excellently about the book to his friends.

The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and aroused significant interest, thanks in part to Emerson's support, but was also occasionally criticized for the obscene bias of the nature of its content. poetry. Geologist John Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book “profane and obscene trash” and the author “a pretentious gilt”. On July 11, In 1855, a few days after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of 65. In the months following the publication of the first edition of Leaves grass, critical responses began to focus on the “offensive” of the sexual themes rather than the poetry itself. Although the second edition was ready and printed, the publisher was reluctant to distribute it. This edition eventually came out with twenty additional poems in August 1856. It was revised and republished in 1860, then in 1867., and a remarkable number of times during Whitman's life. Several famous writers admired his work enough to visit him. They include Bronson Alcott and the theorist Henry David Thoreau.

During Leaves of Grass's early publications, Whitman ran into financial difficulties and was forced to work again as a journalist, specifically as an editor at Brooklyn's Daily Times, beginning in May 1857. He reviewed the contents of papers, contributed literary criticism, and wrote editorials. He left the job in 1859, it is unclear whether he was fired or decided to leave. Whitman, who normally kept a detailed list of his diary activities and annotations, he left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.

The Civil War

As the American Civil War began, Whitman published his poem Beat, Beat, Drums! as a patriotic appeal to the North. Whitman's brother, George, joined the Union Army and he began sending him letters about events on the front lines. On December 16, 1862, a list of soldiers killed and wounded published in The New York Tribune included the name "Lieutenant G.W. Whitmore", which Whitman mistaken for his brother George. He immediately headed south to find it, having his wallet stolen along the way. "Walking all day and all night, unable to mount, trying to get information, trying to gain access to important people” he wrote later. Deeply moved by the sight of wounded soldiers and the necrosis of their amputated limbs, he left for Washington in December 1862 with the intention of not never come back to New York.

In Washington D.C, his friend Charley Edridge helped him get a short-hours job in an Army office, leaving Whitman time to volunteer as a nurse at military hospitals. He would write about this experience in The Great Army of Disease, published in a New York newspaper in 1863 and twelve years later in a book entitled Memoirs of War. help in obtaining a government position. Another friend, John Trowbridge, delivered a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would guarantee Whitman a position in his department. Chase, however, did not want to hire the author of a book as disreputable as Leaves of Grass.

The year 1864 was a difficult one for the Whitman family. On September 30, 1863, Whitman's brother George was captured by the Virginia Confederates, and another brother, Andrew, died of tuberculosis caused by alcoholism in December. That month, Whitman sent his brother Jesse to the Kings County Psychiatric Hospital.

His luck changed when he finally landed a high-paying job as a low-ranking clerk in the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs thanks to his friend and poet William Douglas O'Connor, author of Daguerreotypes and editor of the Saturday Evening Post, had written to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, for Whitman's benefit. He started his new job in January 1865 at a salary of $1,200. A month later, his brother George was released from capture and got on leave due to poor health. In early May, Whitman received a promotion and published Drum Rolls.

On June 30, he was fired from his job because of the new Secretary of the Interior, formerly Iowa Senator James Harlan. Despite the fact that Harlan fired several employees who were rarely at his desk” , may have fired Whitman on moral grounds after finding an edition of Leaves of Grass dated 1860. O'Connor protested until Hubley Ashton transferred Whitman to a prosecutor's office in July. Even so, a still vexed O'Connor vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated historical study, The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866. This pamphlet, which sold for 50 cents and defending Whitman as a complete patriot, established the poet's notable nickname and increased his fame, also aided by the publication of Oh, Captain! My Captain!, a relatively conventional poem in memory of Abraham Lincoln. It was the only one to be collected in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.

One of his assignments at the Attorney General's Office was to interview former Confederate soldiers for the presidential roll. “There are impressive characters among them”, he would later write, “and you know I have a weakness for anything out of the ordinary”. In August 1866, he took the a month off in order to prepare a new edition of Leaves of Grass, which would not be published until 1867 as he had trouble finding a publisher. He intended this to be the last version of the book In February 1868 Walt Whitman's poems were published in England by William Rosseti, with minor changes that the poet would later reluctantly approve. The edition became popular in England, especially because of endorsements from the highly regarded Anne Gilchirst.

A new, expanded edition of Leaves of Grass came to light in 1871, the same year that Whitman's death in a railway accident was falsely reported. growing up, he remained in his position alongside the attorney general. He spent much of the year 1872 caring for his mother who was struggling with arthritis in her late eighties. He also traveled and was invited to Dartmouth College to give the speech inauguration of that year.

Last years

After suffering a stroke early in 1873, Whitman was encouraged to move from Washington to New Jersey with his brother George and their mother, who was already very ill and died that same year in May. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed. He stayed with his brothers until he could get a house of his own. Before he could, however, he had a brilliant period at his brother's residence in Camdem, where his other brother Edward, an invalid from birth, also lived. It was a highly productive time, publishing three more versions of Leaves of Grass, among other works. It was also then that he received a visit from Oscar Wilde and the painter Thomas Eakins.

In 1884, when his brother and daughter-in-law were forced to move on business, he bought his own house at 328 Mickle Street, and began dealings with Mary Oakes Davis, a neighboring widow of a captain navy. She moved in with Whitman in February 1885 to serve as a housekeeper as payment of the rent. She came home with a cat, a dog, two tortoises, a canary, and other pets.During this period Whitman produced several more editions of Leaves of Grass (1876, 1881, and 1889.)

As the year 1891 drew to a close, he prepared a final edition commonly called Deathbed. He wrote: “Leaves of grass at last complete, after thirty-three years of mutilations, in all times and moods of my life, in poor and complete climate, in all parts of the earth, in peace and in war, young and old". In preparation for his death he had a granite mausoleum in the shape of a house erected for about four thousand dollars and visited it several times during its construction. In his last week of life he was too weak to handle a knife or fork and wrote: “I suffer all the time. I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony - monotony - monotony in pain”.

Whitman died in March 1892. An autopsy revealed that his lungs had decreased to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity as a result of pulmonary bronchitis, and that an egg-sized abscess in his chest had blocked one of his ribs. The cause of death was officially & # 34; pleurisy on the left side, contusion on the right limb, general tuberculosis and parenchymal nephritis & # 34; A public viewing of the body of him was organized at his house in Camden. More than a thousand people visited her in three hours and according to chronicles of the event the oak coffin was practically impossible to see because of the flowers and garlands that were offered to her. Four days after her death she was buried in her tomb located at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden. A second public ceremony was then held with friends giving speeches, live music and drinks. A friend of Whitman's, the orator Robert Ingersoll, gave the death address, and the remains of Whitman's parents, siblings and their families were later moved to the mausoleum.

Writing

Whitman's work breaks the canons of poetic form and is generally close to prose. He used images and symbols unusual in poetry such as rotting leaves, straw twigs, and debris. He also wrote openly about death and sexuality, including prostitution. He is often labeled the father of free verse, despite not inventing it.

Poetic theory

Whitman wrote in the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass: "The test of a poet is that his country absorbs him sentimentally as he absorbed his country." He believed that there was a vital and symbiotic relationship between the poet and society. This connection is especially emphasized in Song of Myself through the use of a powerful first person narrative. As an example of the American epic, he deviated from the common use of the figure of the great hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people. Leaves of Grass also responds to the great impact that recent urbanization had had on the masses of the United States.

Lifestyle and beliefs

Alcohol

Whitman was a spokesman for the Temperance Movement and rarely drank alcohol in his youth. He once bragged that he had not tried "hard liquor" until he was thirty years old and occasionally argued in favor of prohibition. One of his early works of fiction, the novel Franklin Evans—published by for the first time in November 1842—advocates temperance. Whitman wrote it at the height of the Washingtonian movement's popularity despite the fact that the movement itself was riddled with contradictions, as was his character Franklin Evans. Years later he declared he was ashamed of the book and called it "damn putrefaction". Despite this, he also advocates temperance in other essays, including The Madman and a short story entitled Reuben's Last Wish. Later in life he was liberal with alcohol., enjoying local wines and champagne.

Religion

Whitman was highly influenced by Deism. He denied that any faith was more important than another and embraced all religions equally. In Song to Myself he cataloged the great religions and indicated that he respected and accepted all of them, a sentiment that he most He would later emphasize in his poem With Antecedents, stating: «I adopt every theory, every myth, every god and demigod. I see that the old myths, bibles and genealogies are true, without exception". In 1874, he was invited to write a poem about the spiritualist movement, to which he replied "it seems to me that it is more or less all a poor thing, cheap and plain hoax.” Whitman was a religious skeptic: although he accepted all churches, he believed in none. God, for Whitman, was immanent and transcendent. For him the human soul is immortal and is in a state of constant and progressive development.

Sexuality

Whitman is generally considered gay or bisexual. These views are controversial and are based on his poetry, which portrays love and sexuality in a mundane and individualistic sense common in American culture prior to the medicalization of sexuality in the late nineteenth century. Despite the fact that Leaves of Grass was frequently labeled as pornographic and obscene, only one review remarking on the author's sexual activity. In an 1855 essay, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested that Whitman was guilty of "that hideous sin which must not be mentioned among Christians". Whitman had intense friendships with many boys and working-class men over the years. throughout her life. Some biographers have stated that she may not have had sexual relations with men, while letters, portions of her diaries, and other sources are claimed as proof of the sexual nature of any of her relationships.

According to biographer Reynolds, Peter Doyle would be the strongest candidate for the love of Whitman's life. Doyle was a streetcar conductor whom he met in 1866 and they were inseparable for a decade. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: “We became friends immediately, I put my hand on his knee, we understood each other. At the end of the trip he did not get off; he actually made the way back with me.” In his notes, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials by using the code “16.4”.

A direct secondhand testimony comes from the illustrious Oscar Wilde. The Irish writer – famous for his love affair with Alfred Douglas, documented in his letter entitled De Profundis – met Whitman in the United States in 1882 and wrote to gay rights activist George Cecil Ives that he had not doubts about the sexual orientation of the great American poet. “I still have Walt Whitman's kiss on my lips," he boasted. The only explicit descriptions of Whitman's sexual orientation are secondhand, so it would be risky to make a final statement of Whitman's preferences. he. In 1924, Edward Carpenter, then elderly, described to Gavin Arthur—who in turn accurately documented it in his diary—an erotic encounter he had in his youth with Whitman. Late in his life, when Whitman questioned categorically about the possibility that his series of poems written after meeting a teenager named Fred Vaughan in the late 1850s and entitled Calamus was homosexual, he wisely declined to answer.

Another possible lover of Whitman's was Bill Duckett. Since at least 1880, Duckett and his grandmother, Lydia Watson, sublet their property at 334 Mickle Street. Given the proximity between the houses, it is obvious that Whitman knew Duckett as a neighbor. Their relationship was close, and the young man used Whitman's money when he had it. Whitman described their friendship as "bulky." Although some biographers describe Duckett as a lodger, others identify him as a lover. Their photograph together has the common features of portraits of husband and wife, and is part of a collection of photographs of the poet with his young friends.

In 1876 she met the 18-year-old Harry Stafford, with whom she had another relationship. Whitman stayed at his family's Timber Creek home and presented the young Stafford with a ring, which was later returned after years of a stormy relationship. Stafford wrote to Whitman about the ring, saying, "You know that when you put it on me there was only one thing that could drive me away, and that was death."

There is also some evidence of his sexual relationships with women. He was friends with a New York actress named Ellen Gray in the spring of 1862, but whether it was also sexual in nature is not known. When he moved to Camden he still had an old photo of Grey, and referred to her as “an old darling of mine”. During the latter part of his life, Whitman often recounted stories of his past girlfriends and mistresses and denied the New York Herald's claim that he “had never been in a romantic relationship”. As his biographer, Jerome Loving, wrote, “the discussion of Whitman's sexuality will continue, no matter what evidence emerges about it”.

Authorship by Shakespeare

Whitman held to the view that Shakespeare's works were falsely authored, refusing to believe in the traditional attribution of these writings to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Whitman comments in his November Branches (1888) about Shakespeare's historical plays:

Conceiving the great heat and pulse of European feudalism, personified without parangon in the medieval aristocracy, in its high spirit of the ruthless and in its gigantic caste, with its peculiar air and its arrogance (not simply affectation), only one of the so abundant “condes lobunos” in the works by its own right, or some born by a knowledgeable offspring, seem to be the truest of

Branches of November (1888). Walt Whitman

Slavery

Whitman was opposed to the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the Wilmot Clause, which sought to abolish slavery in newly conquered territories. He initially opposed abolitionism, believing the movement did more harm than good.. In 1846 he wrote that the abolitionists had retarded the advancement of his cause by their "radicalism and bureaucratic style". over those of the entire nation. In 1856, in his unpublished The Eighteenth Presidency, supporting the men of the South, he wrote "Either abolish slavery or it will abolish you". However, he supported the widely held view that African-Americans should not vote.

Legacy and influence

Whitman was called the first poet of American democracy, a title referring to his ability to write about the unique character of this nation. A British friend, Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: “You can't really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Blades of Grass... It faithfully expressed 'up-to-date' civilization'', as he would say, and no student of the history of philosophy could ignore it". The modernist poet Ezra Pound said of Whitman - not without certain fervor- “America's poetry... He is America”. Andrew Carnegie called him “America's greatest poet to date”. himself a "Messiah" of poetry. One of his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will celebrate the anniversary of Whitman's birth as they now celebrate the birth of the Redeemer, of Christ".

Literary critic Harold Bloom –author of The Western Canon, among other scholarly works- wrote in the introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of Leaves of Grass:“If you are American, then Walter Whitman is your imaginary father and mother, even if, like me, you never composed a line in verse. A small group of literary works can be named as candidates for the "Holy Scriptures" of the United States. They might include Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and Emerson's two series of essays entitled The Conduct of Life. None of them, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass".

Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was embraced by the beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac as well as anti-war poets Adrienne Rich and Gary Snyder. Lawrence Ferlinghetti counted himself among "the rebellious sons ” by Whitman, and the title of his 1961 collection Leaving San Francisco is a deliberate reference to Whitman's famous poem Leaving Paumanok.

He was named in the book Paper Towns along with his book Leaves of Grass. The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges greatly admired Whitman and more than once clarified that he was greatly influenced by his literature, if not obsessed. From his published work we know of two essays belonging to his book Discussion . The essays in question are A Note on Walter Whitman and The Other Whitman. In the prologue to his book El oro de los tigres, Borges however qualifies: “For a true poet, each moment of life, each fact, should be poetic, since it is deeply is. As far as I know, no one has reached that high vigilance to this day. Browning and Blake got closer than anyone else; Whitman proposed it to him, but his deliberate enumerations don't always go beyond callous catalogs ”. Borges would later write a poem dedicated to Whitman's memory, titled Camden, 1892 (in reference to the year and place of the American poet's death):

The smell of coffee and newspapers.

Sunday and his ted. Morning
and in the interview page that vana
publication of allegorical verses

of a happy colleague. The old man
He's prostrated and white in his decent
Poor room. Strangely
Look at his face in the tired mirror.

Think, no wonder, that face
It's him. The distracted hand plays
the turbid beard and the looted mouth.

The end is not far away. His voice declares:
I'm almost not, but my verses ritman

life and its splendor. I was Walt Whitman.

Camden, 1892. Jorge Luis Borges

In the Preface to his poem Altazor, the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro alludes to Whitman with the verses: "He who has seen everything, who knows all the secrets/ without being Walt Whitman, well never I have had a white beard / Like the beautiful nurses and the frozen streams."

Important Events in Whitman's Life

• 1819 — Born May 31 in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island.
• 1841 — Move to New York City.
• 1855 — His father, Walter, died. First edition Leaves of Grass.
• 1871 — Suffers a heart attack. His mother, Louisa, dies.
• 1882 — Meet Oscar Wilde. Publica Specimen Days and Collect.
• 1888 — Suffers a second heart attack. She's sick. Publication November Boughs.
• 1892 — Walt Whitman dies on March 26 in Camden, New Jersey.

Work

• Franklin Evans (1842)
• The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle (1852)
• Weed leaves (1855 and successive extended editions up to 1892)
• Manly Health and Training (1858)
• Drum-Taps (1865)
• Democratic views (1871)
• Memoranda during the war (1876)
• Days of samples (1882)
• Oh Captain, my captain!