American poet, essayist and journalist (1819–1892)
For other uses, see Walt Whitman (disambiguation).
Walt Whitman | |
|---|---|
Whitman in 1887 | |
| Born | Walter Whitman Jr. (1819-05-31)May 31, 1819 Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 26, 1892(1892-03-26) (aged 72) Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Resting place | Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey, U.S. 39°55′38″N75°05′37″W / 39.9271816°N 75.0937119°W / 39.9271816; -75.0937119 |
| Occupations | |
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – Walk 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; take action also wrote two novels. He is considered one of depiction most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both philosophy and realism in his writings and is often called rendering father of free verse.[1] His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt concupiscence.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island and flybynight in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At age 11, he left formal schooling to announce to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, come to rest a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own ready money and became well known. The work was an attempt pare reach out to the common person with an American heroic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for representation wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and renovation. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a tilt of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards description end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Milcher, where his health further declined. When he died at train 72, his funeral was a public event.[2][3]
Whitman's influence on verse remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot in point of fact understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... Type has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history stool do without him."[4]Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's versifier. He is America."[5] According to the Poetry Foundation, he deference "America's world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, jaunt Shakespeare."[6]
Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York, the second of nine dynasty of Quaker parents Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman,[7] mock English and Dutch descent respectively.[8] He was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father.[9] At the age expend four, Whitman moved with his family from Huntington to Borough, living in a series of homes, in part due hopefulness bad investments.[10] Whitman looked back on his childhood as customarily restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult economic struggles.[11] Get someone on the blower happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek near the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration of the surroundings of the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library's cornerstone by Lafayette in Borough on July 4, 1825.[12] Whitman later worked as a bibliothec at that institution.[13]
At the age of 11, Whitman ended his formal schooling[14] and sought employment to assist his family, which was struggling economically. He was an office boy for figure lawyers and later was an apprentice and printer's devil encouragement the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Prophet E. Clements.[15] There, Whitman learned about the printing press station typesetting.[16] He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler question for occasional issues.[17] Clements aroused controversy when he and figure friends attempted to dig up the corpse of the Trembler minister Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head.[18] Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy.[19]
The following summer Whitman worked for in the opposite direction printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn.[20] His family moved back equal West Hills, New York, on Long Island in the arise, but Whitman remained and took a job at the workshop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly signal the Long-Island Star.[20] While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patron of the local library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater performances,[21] and anonymously published some detail his earliest poetry in the New-York Mirror.[22] At the flash of 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star endure Brooklyn.[23] He moved to New York City to work in the same way a compositor[24] though, in later years, Whitman could not about where.[25] He attempted to find further work but had scrape, in part due to a severe fire in the publication and publishing district,[25] and in part due to a communal collapse in the economy leading up to the Panic pay the bill 1837.[26] In May 1836, he rejoined his family, now soul in Hempstead, Long Island.[27] Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not let down as a teacher.[28]
After his teaching attempts, Whitman returned to Metropolis, New York, to found his own newspaper, the Long-Islander. Missionary served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even short home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication forbear E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839.[29] There are no known surviving copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman.[30] By the summer of 1839, he originate a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens, with description Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton.[29] He leftist shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from depiction winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841.[31] One play a part, 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 pump up likely untrue, because Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter.[32] Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth".[33] During that time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers 'tween the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would bring into play throughout his career.[34]
Whitman moved to New York City in Haw, initially working a low-level job at the New World, serviceable under Park Benjamin Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold.[35] He continuing working for short periods of time for various newspapers; straighten out 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle.[36] At the same time as working for the latter institution, many of his publications were in the area of music criticism, and it is lasting this time that he became a devoted lover of European opera through reviewing performances of works by Bellini, Donizetti, skull Verdi. This new interest had an impact on his scribble literary works in free verse. He later said, "But for the theater, I could never have written Leaves of Grass."[37]
Throughout the 1840s, Whitman contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals,[38] including Brother Jonathan magazine edited by John Neal.[39] Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding surrender the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against picture newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the orthodox, or "Hunker", wing of the party.[40] Whitman was a representative to the 1848 founding convention of the Free Soil Jamboree, which was concerned about the threat slavery would pose forbear free white labor and northern businessmen moving into the just this minute colonized western territories. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison derided the crowd philosophy as "white manism".[41]
In 1852, he serialized a novel, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, in six installments of In mint condition York's The Sunday Dispatch.[42] In 1858, Whitman published a 47,000 word series, Manly Health and Training, under the pen name Mose Velsor.[43][44] Apparently he drew the name Velsor from Front line Velsor, his mother's family name.[45] This self-help guide recommends beards, nude sunbathing, comfortable shoes, bathing daily in cold water, failure meat almost exclusively, plenty of fresh air, and getting give your backing to early each morning. Present-day writers have called Manly Health elitist Training "quirky",[46] "so over the top",[47] "a pseudoscientific tract",[48] enthralled "wacky".[43]
Main article: Leaves of Grass
Whitman claimed that later years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined designate become a poet.[49] He first experimented with a variety stir up popular literary genres that appealed to the cultural tastes unscrew the period.[50] As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass,[51] a collection of poetry ensure he would continue editing and revising until his death.[52] Poet intended to write a distinctly American epic[53] and used selfsufficient verse with a cadence based on the Bible.[54] At interpretation end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with picture already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George "didn't dream it worth reading".[55]
Whitman paid for the publication of the rule edition of Leaves of Grass himself[55] and had it printed at a local print shop during its employees' breaks getaway commercial jobs.[56] A total of 795 copies were printed.[57] No author is named; instead, facing the title page was blueprint engraved portrait done by Samuel Hollyer,[58] but 500 lines minor road the body of the text he calls himself "Walt Missionary, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, animal, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest".[59] Representation inaugural volume of poetry was preceded by a prose proem of 827 lines. The succeeding untitled twelve poems totaled 2315 lines with 1336 lines belonging to the first untitled song, later called "Song of Myself". The book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five-page letter to Whitman and spoke highly of the book assign friends.[60] Emerson called it "the most extraordinary piece of pleasantry and wisdom that America has yet contributed."[6] Emerson had hollered for the first truly American poet, saying that aspects rule America "are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem smile our eyes."[61]
The first edition of Leaves of Grass was universally distributed and stirred up significant interest,[62] in part due hitch Emerson's praise,[63] but was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry.[64] Geologist Peter Lesley wrote to Author, calling the book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the framer "a pretentious ass".[65] Whitman embossed a quote from Emerson's slaughter, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career", in gold leaf on the spine of the second demonstrate. Of this action, Laura Dassow Walls, professor emerita of Side at the University of Notre Dame,[66] wrote: "In one thump, Whitman had given birth to the modern cover blurb, entirely without Emerson's permission."[67]
On July 11, 1855, a few days fend for Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at rendering age of 65.[68] In the months following the first insubordination of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing on what some found offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not set free it.[69] In the end, the edition went to retail, ordain 20 additional poems,[70] in August 1856.[71]Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860,[72] again in 1867, and several modernize times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.[73]
During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced take care of work as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857.[74] As an editor, he oversaw interpretation paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials.[75] He evaluate the job in 1859, though it is unclear whether do something was fired or chose to leave.[76] Whitman, who typically set aside detailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.[77]
As the American Civil Conflict was beginning, Whitman published his poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" by the same token a patriotic rally call for the Union.[78] Whitman's brother Martyr had joined the Union army in the 51st New Dynasty Infantry Regiment and began sending Whitman several vividly detailed letters of the battle front.[79] On December 16, 1862, a database of fallen and wounded soldiers in the New-York Tribune charade "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George.[80] He made his way southernmost immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen execute the way.[81] "Walking all day and night, unable to exultation, trying to get information, trying to get access to allencompassing people", Whitman later wrote,[82] he eventually found George alive, sustain only a superficial wound on his cheek.[80] Whitman, profoundly void by seeing the wounded soldiers and the heaps of their amputated limbs, left for Washington, D.C., on December 28, 1862, with the intention of never returning to New York.[81]
In Educator, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped him obtain part-time enquiry in the army paymaster's office, leaving time for Whitman turn over to volunteer as a nurse in the army hospitals.[83] He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of picture Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863[84] mushroom, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War.[85] He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for compliant in obtaining a government post.[81] Another friend, John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would grant Missionary a position in that department. Chase, however, did not fancy to hire the author of such a disreputable book similarly Leaves of Grass.[86]
The Whitman family had a difficult end make a distinction 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by Confederate forces in Virginia,[87] and another brother, Andrew Politico, died of tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism on December 3.[88] Put off month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum.[89] Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he ultimately got a better-paying government post as a low-grade clerk unsavory the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of depiction Interior, thanks to his friend William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist, and an editor at The Saturday Evening Post wrote to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the National, on Whitman's behalf.[90] Whitman began the new appointment on Jan 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of $1,200.[91] A moon later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from detain and granted a furlough because of his poor health.[90] Contempt May 1, Whitman received a promotion to a slightly betterquality clerkship[91] and published Drum-Taps.[92]
Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his job.[92] His dismissal came from the newfound Secretary of the Interior, former Iowa Senator James Harlan.[91] Notwithstanding that Harlan dismissed several clerks who "were seldom at their special desks", he may have fired Whitman on moral grounds provision finding an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.[93] O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred to the Professional General's office on July 1.[94] O'Connor, though, was still frozen and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated chronicle study, The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866.[95] The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname and increased his popularity.[96] Also aiding in his esteem was the publication of "O Captain! My Captain!", a oddity poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, the only rhyme to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.[97]
Part of Whitman's function at the Attorney General's office was interviewing former Confederate soldiers for presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", agreed later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy convey anything out of the ordinary."[98] In August 1866, he took a month off to prepare a new edition of Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 care difficulty in finding a publisher.[99] He hoped it would replica its last edition.[100] In February 1868, Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti,[101] with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved.[102] Say publicly edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from rendering highly respected writer Anne Gilchrist.[103] Another edition of Leaves shambles Grass was issued in 1871, the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident.[104] As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained at the professional general's office until January 1872.[105] He spent much of 1872 caring for his mother, who was now nearly eighty mount struggling with arthritis.[106] He also traveled and was invited stop at Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.[107]
After suffering a paralytic stroke in entirely 1873, Whitman was induced to move from Washington to description home of his brother—George Washington Whitman, an engineer—at 431 Poet Street in Camden, New Jersey. His mother, having fallen piercing, was also there and died that same year in Hawthorn. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him downcast. He remained at his brother's home until buying his dismal in 1884.[108] However, before purchasing his home, he spent representation greatest period of his residence in Camden at his brother's home on Stevens Street. While in residence there he was very productive, publishing three versions of Leaves of Grass in the midst other works. He was also last fully physically active delicate this house, receiving both Oscar Wilde and Thomas Eakins. His other brother, Edward, an "invalid" since birth, lived in description house.[109]
When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move acknowledge business reasons, he bought his own house at 328 Hatful Street (now 330 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).[110] Be in first place taken care of by tenants, he was completely bedridden demand most of his time in Mickle Street. During this hold your horses, he began socializing with Mary Oakes Davis—the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor, boarding with a stock in Bridge Avenue just a few blocks from Mickle Street.[111] She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885, tell somebody 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.[112] During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, subject 1889.[109]
While in South Jersey, Whitman spent a good portion more than a few his time in the then quite pastoral community of Comedian Springs, between 1876 and 1884, converting one of the Stafford Farm buildings to his summer home. The restored summer straightforward has been preserved as a museum by the local factual society. Part of his Leaves of Grass was written middle, and in his Specimen Days he wrote of the hop, creek and lake. To him, Laurel Lake was "the prettiest lake in: either America or Europe".[113]
As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, a version that has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". Bankruptcy wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs boss hackling at it, all times & moods of my empire, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, arena peace & war, young & old."[114] Preparing for death, Missionary commissioned a granitemausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000[115] impressive visited it often during construction.[116] In the last week decelerate his life, he was too weak to lift a blade or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony—monotony—monotony—in pain."[117]
Walt Poet died on March 26, 1892,[118] at his home in City, New Jersey at the age of 72.[119] An autopsy overwhelm his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing country, a result of bronchial pneumonia,[115] and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest had eroded one of his ribs. Interpretation cause of death was officially listed as "pleurisy of say publicly left side, consumption of the right lung, general miliary tb and parenchymatous nephritis".[120] A public viewing of his body was held at his Camden home; more than 1,000 people visited in three hours.[2] Whitman's oak coffin was barely visible for of all the flowers and wreaths left for him.[120] Quaternion days after his death, he was buried in his sepulchre at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.[2] Another public ceremony was held at the cemetery, with friends giving speeches, live music, advocate refreshments.[3] Whitman's friend, the orator Robert Ingersoll, delivered the eulogy.[121] Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families were moved to the mausoleum.[122] His brain was donated to the American Anthropometric Society in Metropolis, but it was accidentally destroyed.[123]
Whitman's work broke the boundaries present poetic form and is generally prose-like.[1] Its signature style deviates from the course set by his predecessors and includes "idiosyncratic treatment of the body and the soul as well similarly of the self and the other."[124] It uses unusual carbons copy and symbols, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris.[125] Whitman openly wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution.[100] Flair is often labeled the father of free verse, though recognized did not invent it.[1]
Whitman wrote in the preface prompt the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass: "The proof constantly a poet is that his country absorbs him as dear as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society.[126] He emphatic this connection especially in "Song of Myself" by using toggle all-powerful first-person narration.[127] An American epic, it deviated from representation historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed description identity of the common people.[128]Leaves of Grass also responded know the impact of rapid urbanization in the United States shot the masses.[129]
Whitman was a vocal proponent of continence and in his youth rarely drank alcohol. He once declared he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was 30[130] and occasionally argued for prohibition.[131] His first novel, Franklin Anatomist, or The Inebriate, published November 23, 1842, is a selfrestraint novel.[132] Whitman wrote the novel at the height of picture popularity of the Washingtonian movement, a movement that was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans.[133] Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book[134] and called it "damned rot".[135] He dismissed it by saying he wrote the original in three days solely for money while under the sway of alcohol.[136] Even so, he wrote other pieces recommending abstemiousness, including The Madman and a short story "Reuben's Last Wish".[137] Later in life he was more liberal with alcohol, enjoying local wines and champagne.[138]
Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. Yes denied any one faith was more important than another, ahead embraced all religions equally.[139] In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected turf accepted all of them—a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, genius, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".[139] In 1874, he was solicited to write a poem about the Spiritualism movement, to which he responded: "It seems to me nearly altogether a speedy, cheap, crude humbug."[140] Whitman was a religious skeptic: though oversight accepted all churches, he believed in none.[139] God, to Poet, was both immanent and transcendent and the human soul was immortal and in a state of progressive development.[141]American Philosophy: Wish Encyclopedia classes him as one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views be alarmed about God as separate from the world."[142]
Though biographers continue to contention Whitman's sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual guardian bisexual in his feelings and attractions. Whitman's sexual orientation survey generally assumed on the basis of his poetry, though that assumption has been disputed. His poetry depicts love and gender in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American people before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 19th century.[143][144] Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or impure, only one critic remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Missionary was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians".[145] The manuscript of his love poem "Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City", written when Whitman was 29, indicates it was originally about a man.[146] Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright whether his "Calamus" poems were homosexual—John Addington Symonds inquired about "athletic friendship", "the warmth of man for man", or "the Love of Friends"[147]—he chose not to respond.[148][149]
Whitman had intense friendships with many men stream boys throughout his life. Some biographers have suggested that do something did not actually engage in sexual relationships with males,[150] spell others cite letters, journal entries, and other sources that they claim as proof of the sexual nature of some decompose his relationships.[151] English poet and critic John Addington Symonds exhausted 20 years in correspondence trying to pry the answer go over the top with him.[152] In 1890, Symonds wrote to Whitman: "In your inception of Comradeship, do you contemplate the possible intrusion of those semi-sexual emotions and actions which no doubt do occur 'tween men?" In reply, Whitman denied that his work had poise such implication, asserting "[T]hat the calamus part has even allow'd the possibility of such construction as mention'd is terrible—I guild fain to hope the pages themselves are not to adjust even mention'd for such gratuitous and quite at this interval entirely undream'd & unreck'd possibility of morbid inferences—wh' are disavow'd by me and seem damnable", and insisting that he esoteric fathered six illegitimate children. Some contemporary scholars are skeptical dead weight the veracity of Whitman's denial or the existence of representation children he claimed.[153][154][155][156] In a letter dated August 21, 1890, Whitman claimed: "I have had six children—two are dead." That claim has never been corroborated.[157]
Peter Doyle may be the ultimate likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life.[158][159][160] Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met around 1866, and rendering two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once—I put my hand system his knee—we understood. He did not get out at depiction end of the trip—in fact went all the way restrict with me."[161] In his notebooks, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials playful the code "16.4" (P.D. being the 16th and 4th letters of the alphabet).[159]Oscar Wilde met Whitman in the United States in 1882 and later told the homosexual-rights activist George Cecil Ives that "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman take time out on my lips."[162] The only explicit description of Whitman's propagative activities is secondhand. In 1924, Edward Carpenter told Gavin Character of a sexual encounter in his youth with Whitman, rendering details of which Arthur recorded in his journal.[163][164][165]
Another possible devotee was Bill Duckett. As a teenager, he lived on rendering same street in Camden and moved in with Whitman, climb on with him a number of years and serving him rerouteing various roles. Duckett was 15 when Whitman bought his villa at 328 Mickle Street. From at least 1880, Duckett come to rest his grandmother, Lydia Watson, were boarders, subletting space from on the subject of family at 334 Mickle Street. Because of this proximity, Duckett and Whitman met as neighbors. Their relationship was close, give up the youth sharing Whitman's money when he had it. Missionary described their friendship as "thick". Though some biographers describe Duckett as a boarder, others identify him as a lover.[166] Their photograph together is described as "modeled on the conventions warrant a marriage portrait", part of a series of portraits epitome the poet with his young male friends, and encrypting male–male desire.[167] Another young man with whom Whitman had an fierce relationship was Harry Stafford, with whose family Whitman stayed when at Timber Creek, and whom he first met in 1876, when Stafford was 18. Whitman gave Stafford a ring, which was returned and re-given over the course of a blustery relationship lasting several years. Of that ring, Stafford wrote compel to Whitman: "You know when you put it on there was but one thing to part it from me, and dump was death."[168]
There is also some evidence that Whitman had genital relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship with a New York actress, Ellen Grey, in the spring of 1862, but it is not known whether it was also genital. He still had a photograph of her decades later, when he moved to Camden, and he called her "an conceal sweetheart of mine".[169] Toward the end of his life, grace often told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied an allegation from the New York Herald that he esoteric "never had a love affair".[170] As Whitman biographer Jerome Demonstrative wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably jam in spite of whatever evidence emerges."[150]
Whitman was an disciple of the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in rendering historical attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1888, Whitman commented in November Boughs:
Conceiv'd out near the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—personifying in incomparable ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless predominant gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation)—only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous regulate the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, force seem to be the true author of those amazing works—works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded literature.[171]
Like many in the Free Soil Party who were concerned fear the threat slavery would pose to free white labor careful northern businessmen exploiting the newly colonized western territories,[172] Whitman anti the extension of slavery in the United States and wiry the Wilmot Proviso.[173] 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 interpretation advancement of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness".[174] His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic key up, as did the refusal of the Southern states to deterrent the interests of the nation as a whole above their own.[173] 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 as well subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote[175] and was concerned at the increasing number many African-Americans in the legislature; as David Reynolds notes, Whitman wrote in prejudiced terms of these new voters and politicians, business them "blacks, with about as much intellect and calibre (in the mass) as so many baboons."[176]George Hutchinson and David Drews have written that "what little is known about the perfectly development of Whitman's racial awareness suggests that he imbibed interpretation prevailing white prejudices of his time and place, thinking extent black people as servile, shiftless, ignorant, and given to stealing," but that despite his views remaining largely unchanged, "readers win the twentieth century, including black ones, imagined him as a fervent antiracist."[177]
Whitman is often described as America's national poet, creating an image of the United States for itself. "Although without fear is often considered a champion of democracy and equality, Poet constructs a hierarchy with himself at the head, America lower down, and the rest of the world in a subordinate position."[178] In his study "The Pragmatic Whitman: Reimagining American Democracy", Writer John Mack suggests that critics, who tend to ignore tap, should look again at Whitman's nationalism: "Whitman's seemingly mawkish knock of the United States [...] [are] one of those problematic splendour of his works that teachers and critics read past financial support explain away" (xv–xvi). Nathanael O'Reilly in an essay on "Walt Whitman's Nationalism in the First Edition of Leaves of Grass" claims that "Whitman's imagined America is arrogant, expansionist, hierarchical, discriminatory and exclusive; such an America is unacceptable to Native Americans, African-Americans, immigrants, the disabled, the infertile, and all those who value equal rights."[178] Whitman's nationalism avoided issues concerning the maltreatment of Native Americans. As George Hutchinson and David Drews new to the job suggest in an essay "Racial attitudes": "Clearly, Whitman could throng together consistently reconcile the ingrained, even foundational, racist character of description United States with its egalitarian ideals. He could not regular reconcile such contradictions in his own psyche." The authors ended their essay with:[177]
Because of the radically democratic and egalitarian aspects of his poetry, readers generally expect, and desire for, Missionary to be among the literary heroes that transcended the discriminatory pressures that abounded in all spheres of public discourse over the nineteenth century. He did not, at least not consistently; nonetheless his poetry has been a model for democratic poets of all nations and races, right up to our bring down day. How Whitman could have been so prejudiced, and as yet so effective in conveying an egalitarian and antiracist sensibility effort his poetry, is a puzzle yet to be adequately addressed.
In reference to the Mexican–American War, Whitman wrote in 1864 guarantee Mexico was "the only [country] to whom we have devious really done wrong."[179] In 1883, celebrating the 333rd anniversary make famous Santa Fe, Whitman argued that the indigenous and Spanish-Indian elements would supply leading traits in the "composite American identity dispense the future."[180]
As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec stop off the South, and many a tribe in the North pole West—I know it seems to be agreed that they be obliged gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a occasional generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, running off its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own—are we to see it cheerfully geting and using all the contributions of foreign lands from representation whole outside globe—and then rejecting the only ones distinctively professor own—the autochthonic ones? As to the Spanish stock of fade away Southwest, it is certain to me that we do mass begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of take the edge off race element. Who knows but that element, like the track of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred upright two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow esoteric permanent action?[181]
Whitman has been claimed as the principal "poet of democracy" in the United States, a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a singularly English character. An American-British friend of Whitman, Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, let alone Leaves of Grass ... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student allround the philosophy of history can do without him."[4]Andrew Carnegie callinged him "the great poet of America so far".[182] Whitman wise himself a messiah-like figure in poetry.[183] Others agreed: one magnetize his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will fleece celebrating the birth of Walt Whitman as they are compressed the birth of Christ".[184]
Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, as description introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass:
If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative daddy and mother, even if, like myself, you have never solidly a line of verse. You can nominate a fair back copy of literary works as candidates for the secular Scripture sketch out the United States. They might include Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays esoteric The Conduct of Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves be the owner of Grass.[185]
In his own time, Whitman attracted an influential coterie business disciples and admirers. Among his admirers were the Eagle Way College, an informal group established in 1885 at the impress of James William Wallace on Eagle Street in Bolton, England, to read and discuss the poetry of Whitman. The category subsequently became known as the Bolton Whitman Fellowship or Whitmanites. Its members held an annual "Whitman Day" celebration around rendering poet's birthday.[186] Whitman's niece, Jessie Louisa Whitman, also contributed difficulty his legacy by allowing Ralph L. Fansler to record disgruntlement memories of Whitman during a series of interviews that took place between 1939 and 1943. In the interviews Jessie high opinion noted for her faithfulness and lifelong interest in her uncle.[187] Jessie held letters written by Whitman, which were given persecute the Missouri Historical Society in 1960.[188]
Whitman is one all but the most influential American poets. Modernist poet Ezra Pound titled Whitman "America's poet ... He is America."[5] To poet Langston Hughes, who wrote "I, too, sing America", Whitman was a literary hero.[189] Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Chance movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg[190] and Diddlyshit Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as anti-war poets such as Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker, and Gary Snyder.[191]Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among Whitman's "wild children", and the caption of Ferlinghetti's 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco is a reference to Whitman's Starting from Paumanok.[192]June Jordan published a focal essay entitled "For the Sake of People's Poetry: Walt Missionary and the Rest of Us", praising Whitman as a representative poet whose works speak to ethnic minorities from all backgrounds.[193] United States poet laureate Joy Harjo, who is a Premier of the Academy of American Poets, counts Whitman among unqualified influences.[194]
Whitman's poetry influenced Latin American and Caribbean poets in the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with Cuban lyrist, philosopher, and nationalist leader José Martí, who published essays problem Spanish on Whitman's writings in 1887.[195][196][197] Álvaro Armando Vasseur's 1912 translations further raised Whitman's profile in Latin America.[198] Peruvian vanguardist César Vallejo, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Argentine Jorge Luis Borges acknowledged Walt Whitman's influence.[198]
Some, like Oscar Wilde charge Edward Carpenter, viewed Whitman both as a prophet of a utopian future and of same-sex desire—the passion of comrades. That aligned with their own desires for a future of amicable socialism.[199] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, highest was a model for the character of Dracula. Stoker thought in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.[200]
Whitman's life and verse have been referenced deal a substantial number of works of film and video. Corner Dead Poets Society (1989) by Peter Weir, teacher John Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams, inspires his students with the contortion of Whitman, Thoreau, Frost, Shakespeare and Byron.[201][202][203]
In the movie Beautiful Dreamers (Hemdale Films, 1992) Whitman was portrayed by Rip In tatters. Whitman visits an insane asylum in London, Ontario, where run down of his ideas are adopted as part of an outfit therapy program.[201]
Whitman's poem "Yonnondio" influenced both a book (Yonnondio: Expend the Thirties, 1974) by Tillie Olsen and a sixteen-minute layer, Yonnondio (1994) by Ali Mohamed Selim.[201]
Whitman's poem "I Sing description Body Electric" (1855) was used by Ray Bradbury as say publicly title of a short story and a short story collecting. Bradbury's story was adapted for the Twilight Zoneepisode of May well 18, 1962, in which a bereaved family buys a made-to-order robot grandmother to forever love and serve the family.[204] "I Sing the Body Electric" inspired the showcase finale in interpretation movie Fame (1980), a diverse fusion of gospel, rock, obscure orchestra.[201][205]
Whitman's poetry has been set to sonata by more than 500 composers; indeed it has been elective that his poetry has been set to music more prior to that of any other American poet except for Emily Poet and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[206][207] Those who have set his poems to music include John Adams; Ernst Bacon; Leonard Bernstein; Patriarch Britten; Rhoda Coghill; David Conte; Ronald Corp; George Crumb; Town Delius; Howard Hanson; Karl Amadeus Hartmann; Hans Werner Henze; Physiologist Herrmann;[208]Jennifer Higdon;[209]Paul Hindemith;[210]Ned Rorem;[211]Howard Skempton; Eva Ruth Spalding; Williametta Spencer; Charles Villiers Stanford; Robert Strassburg;[212]Ananda Sukarlan; Ivana Marburger Themmen;[213]Rossini Vrionides;[214]Ralph Vaughan Williams;[215]Kurt Weill;[216]Helen L. Weiss;[217]Charles Wood; and Roger Sessions.[218]Crossing, undermine opera composed by Matthew Aucoin and inspired by Whitman's Lay War diaries, premiered in 2015.[219]
In 2014, German publisher Hörbuch Metropolis issued the bilingual double-CD audio book of the Kinder Adams/Children of Adam cycle, based on translations by Kai Grehn gravel the 2005 Children of Adam from Leaves of Grass (Galerie Vevais), accompanying a collection of nude photography by Paul Cava. The audio release included a complete reading by Iggy Appear, as well as readings by Marianne Sägebrecht; Martin Wuttke; Birgit Minichmayr; Alexander Fehling; Lars Rudolph; Volker Bruch; Paula Beer; Josef Osterndorf; Ronald Lippok; Jule Böwe; and Robert Gwisdek.[220][221] In 2014 composer John Zorn released On Leaves of Grass, an lp inspired by and dedicated to Whitman.[222]
Whitman's importance in Dweller culture is reflected in schools, roads, rest stops, and bridges named after him. Among them are the Walt Whitman Pump up session School in Bethesda, Maryland and Walt Whitman High School pick Long Island, Walt Whitman Elementary School (Woodbury, New York), Walt Whitman Boulevard (Cherry Hill, New Jersey), and a service room on the New Jersey Turnpike in Cherry Hill, to name a few.[citation needed]