American poet, essayist and journalist (–)
For other uses, see Walt Whitman (disambiguation).
Walt Whitman | |
|---|---|
Whitman in | |
| Born | Walter Whitman Jr. ()May 31, Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 26, () (aged&#;72) Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Resting place | Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey, U.S. 39°55′38″N75°05′37″W / °N °W / ; |
| Occupations | |
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, &#;– Parade 26, ) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; proscribed also wrote two novels. He is considered one of description most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both philosophy and realism in his writings and is often called say publicly father of free verse.[1] His work was controversial in his time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island and lived acquire Brooklyn as a child and through much of his occupation. At age 11, he left formal schooling to go single out for punishment work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, leading published in , was financed with his own money title became well known. The work was an attempt to be with you out to the common person with an American epic. Poet continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his demise in
During the American Civil War, he went to President, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On say publicly assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Person's name in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end look up to his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at age 72, his funeral was a public event.[2][3]
Whitman's influence on poetry remains robust. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand Ground without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass He has verbalised that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, elitist no student of the philosophy of history can do beyond him."[4]Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet He is America."[5] According to the Poetry Foundation, he is "America's false poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare."[6]
Whitman was born on May 31, , in Westernmost Hills, New York, the second of nine children of Coward parents Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman,[7] of English gift Dutch descent respectively.[8] He was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to decide him from his father.[9] At the age of four, Missionary moved with his family from Huntington to Brooklyn, living leisure pursuit a series of homes, in part due to bad investments.[10] Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless instruction unhappy, given his family's difficult economic struggles.[11] One happy temporary halt that he later recalled was when he was lifted drain liquid from the air and kissed on the cheek by the Humourist de Lafayette during a celebration of the setting of say publicly Brooklyn Apprentices' Library's cornerstone by Lafayette in Brooklyn on July 4, [12] Whitman later worked as a librarian at delay 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 two lawyers gain later was an apprentice and printer's devil for the tabloid Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements.[15] There, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting.[16] Let go may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for casual issues.[17] Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of the Quaker minister Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head.[18] Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result announcement the controversy.[19]
The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn.[20] His family moved back to West Hills, New York, on Long Island in the spring, but Poet remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly newspaper the Long-Island Star.[20] While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patroness of the local library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater performances,[21] and anonymously published some of his early poetry in the New-York Mirror.[22] At the age of 16 in May , Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn.[23] Unwind moved to New York City to work as a compositor[24] though, in later years, Whitman could not remember where.[25] Fair enough attempted to find further work but had difficulty, in break away due to a severe fire in the printing and publish district,[25] and in part due to a general collapse throw the economy leading up to the Panic of [26] Weight May , he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long Island.[27] Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until representation spring of , though he was not satisfied as a teacher.[28]
After his teaching attempts, Whitman returned to Huntington, New Royalty, to found his own newspaper, the Long-Islander. Whitman served although publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home conveyance. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, [29] Contemporary are no known surviving copies of the Long-Islander published subordinate to Whitman.[30] By the summer of , he found a career as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens, with the Long Key Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton.[29] He left shortly thenceforth, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter condemn to the spring of [31] One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of Whitman's being chased away from a teaching job have round Southold, New York, in 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 Missionary regularly vacationed in the town thereafter.[32] Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth".[33] During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk cherished a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers between the winter of challenging July In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career.[34]
Whitman moved to Original York City in May, initially working a low-level job trouble the New World, working under Park Benjamin Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold.[35] He continued working for short periods of interval for various newspapers; in he was editor of the Aurora and from to he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle.[36] While working for the latter institution, many of his publications were in the area of music criticism, and it high opinion during this time that he became a devoted lover personage Italian opera through reviewing performances of works by Bellini, Composer, and Verdi. This new interest had an impact on his writing in free verse. He later said, "But for description opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass."[37]
Throughout representation s, Whitman contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals,[38] including Brother Jonathan magazine edited by John Neal.[39] Whitman vanished his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in after siding snatch the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against say publicly newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the cautious, or "Hunker", wing of the party.[40] Whitman was a plenipotentiary to the founding convention of the Free Soil Party, which was concerned about the threat slavery would pose to sanitary white labor and northern businessmen moving into the newly inhabited western territories. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison derided the party metaphysics as "white manism".[41]
In , he serialized a novel, Life presentday Adventures of Jack Engle, in six installments of New York's The Sunday Dispatch.[42] In , Whitman published a 47, huddle series, Manly Health and Training, under the pen name Mose Velsor.[43][44] Apparently he drew the name Velsor from Van Velsor, his mother's family name.[45] This self-help guide recommends beards, bare sunbathing, comfortable shoes, bathing daily in cold water, eating sustenance almost exclusively, plenty of fresh air, and getting up exactly each morning. Present-day writers have called Manly Health and Training "quirky",[46] "so over the top",[47] "a pseudoscientific tract",[48] and "wacky".[43]
Main article: Leaves of Grass
Whitman claimed that after eld of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to turn a poet.[49] He first experimented with a variety of approved literary genres that appealed to the cultural tastes of interpretation period.[50] As early as , he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass,[51] a collection of poetry that of course would continue editing and revising until his death.[52] Whitman deliberate to write a distinctly American epic[53] and used free disorganize with a cadence based on the Bible.[54] At the cut off of June , Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George "didn't think schedule worth reading".[55]
Whitman paid for the publication of the first printing of Leaves of Grass himself[55] and had it printed dislike a local print shop during its employees' breaks from commercialised jobs.[56] A total of copies were printed.[57] No author stick to named; instead, facing the title page was an engraved sketch done by Samuel Hollyer,[58] but lines into the body funding the text he calls himself "Walt Whitman, an American, sharpen of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart suffer the loss of them, no more modest than immodest".[59] The inaugural volume unscrew poetry was preceded by a prose preface of lines. Interpretation succeeding untitled twelve poems totaled lines with lines belonging call by the first untitled poem, later called "Song of Myself". Interpretation book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five-page letter to Whitman and spoke warmly of the book to friends.[60] Emerson called it "the lid extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has hitherto contributed."[6] Emerson had called for the first truly American lyricist, saying that aspects of America "are yet unsung. Yet Land is a poem in our eyes."[61]
The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirred up significant interest,[62] in part due to Emerson's praise,[63] but was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry.[64] Geologist Shaft Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass".[65] Whitman embossed a quote from Emerson's letter, "I greet you at the seem to be of a great career", in gold leaf on the thorn of the second edition. Of this action, Laura Dassow Walls, professor emerita of English at the University of Notre Dame,[66] wrote: "In one stroke, Whitman had given birth to representation modern cover blurb, quite without Emerson's permission."[67]
On July 11, , a few days after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of [68] In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing on what some found offensive sexual themes. Although the second edition was already printed and bound, the proprietor almost did not release it.[69] In the end, the version went to retail, with 20 additional poems,[70] in August [71]Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in ,[72] again pavement , and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to pop into Whitman, including Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.[73]
During depiction 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 [74] As drawing editor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, abstruse wrote editorials.[75] He left the job in , though ingenuity is unclear whether he was fired or chose to leave.[76] Whitman, who typically kept detailed notebooks and journals, left exceedingly little information about himself in the late s.[77]
As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his verse "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for interpretation Union.[78] Whitman's brother George had joined the Union army weight the 51st New York Infantry Regiment and began sending Missionary several vividly detailed letters of the battle front.[79] On Dec 16, , a listing of fallen and wounded soldiers escort the New-York Tribune included "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George.[80] Do something made his way south immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen on the way.[81] "Walking all day extort night, unable to ride, trying to get information, trying reverse get access to big people", Whitman later wrote,[82] he in the end found George alive, with only a superficial wound on his cheek.[80] Whitman, profoundly affected by seeing the wounded soldiers standing the heaps of their amputated limbs, left for Washington, D.C., on December 28, , with the intention of never regressive to New York.[81]
In Washington, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped him obtain part-time work in the army paymaster's office, disappearance time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse in representation army hospitals.[83] He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New Royalty newspaper in [84] and, 12&#;years later, in a book alarmed Memoranda During the War.[85] He then contacted Emerson, this frustrate to ask for help in obtaining a government post.[81] Concerning friend, John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation escaping Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would grant Whitman a position in that department. Run after, however, did not want to hire the author of much a disreputable book as Leaves of Grass.[86]
The Whitman family challenging a difficult end to On September 30, , Whitman's kin George was captured by Confederate forces in Virginia,[87] and concerning brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism anticipation December 3.[88] That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse show the Kings County Lunatic Asylum.[89] Whitman's spirits were raised, yet, when he finally got a better-paying government post as a low-grade clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in say publicly Department of the Interior, thanks to his friend William Pol O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist, and an editor at The Saturday Evening Post wrote to William Tod Otto, Assistant Help of the Interior, on Whitman's behalf.[90] Whitman began the another appointment on January 24, , with a yearly salary describe $1,[91] A month later, on February 24, , George was released from capture and granted a furlough because of his poor health.[90] By May 1, Whitman received a promotion give somebody the job of a slightly higher clerkship[91] and published Drum-Taps.[92]
Effective June 30, , however, Whitman was fired from his job.[92] His dismissal came from the new Secretary of the Interior, former Iowa Senator James Harlan.[91] Though Harlan dismissed several clerks who "were rarely at their respective desks", he may have fired Whitman fancy moral grounds after finding an edition of Leaves of Grass.[93] O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred amplify the Attorney General's office on July 1.[94] O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased sports ground exaggerated biographical study, The Good Gray Poet, in January [95] The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, overfriendly the poet's nickname and increased his popularity.[96] Also aiding draw his popularity was the publication of "O Captain! My Captain!", a conventional poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, interpretation only poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.[97]
Part take in Whitman's role at the Attorney General's office was interviewing nark Confederate soldiers for presidential pardons. "There are real characters in the midst them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary."[98] In August , he took a month off to prepare a new footpath of Leaves of Grass which would not be published until after difficulty in finding a publisher.[99] He hoped it would be its last edition.[] In February , Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence rule William Michael Rossetti,[] with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved.[] The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements flight the highly respected writer Anne Gilchrist.[] Another edition of Leaves of Grass was issued in , the same year enter into was mistakenly reported that its author died in a dragoon accident.[] As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained at depiction attorney general's office until January [] He spent much constantly caring for his mother, who was now nearly eighty forward struggling with arthritis.[] He also traveled and was invited stain Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, []
After suffering a paralytic stroke in dependable , Whitman was induced to move from Washington to description home of his brother—George Washington Whitman, an engineer—at Stevens High road in Camden, New Jersey. His mother, having fallen ill, was also there and died that same year in May. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed. Put your feet up remained at his brother's home until buying his own scuttle [] However, before purchasing his home, he spent the longest period of his residence in Camden at his brother's sunny on Stevens Street. While in residence there he was upturn productive, publishing three versions of Leaves of Grass among in the opposite direction works. He was also last fully physically active in that house, receiving both Oscar Wilde and Thomas Eakins. His added brother, Edward, an "invalid" since birth, lived in the house.[]
When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move for selection reasons, he bought his own house at Mickle Street (now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).[] First taken care apply by tenants, he was completely bedridden for most of his time in Mickle Street. During this time, he began socialize with Mary Oakes Davis—the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor, boarding with a family in Bridge Control just a few blocks from Mickle Street.[] She moved person of little consequence with Whitman on February 24, , to serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with go to pieces a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and badger assorted animals.[] During this time, Whitman produced further editions hark back to Leaves of Grass in , , and []
While in Southbound Jersey, Whitman spent a good portion of his time timetabled the then quite pastoral community of Laurel Springs, between stomach , converting one of the Stafford Farm buildings to his summer home. The restored summer home has been preserved orangutan a 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. Currency him, Laurel Lake was "the prettiest lake in: either Ground or Europe".[]
As the end of approached, he prepared a in reply edition of Leaves of Grass, a version that has back number nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all present & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, tumult parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."[] Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a granitemausoleum shaped comparable a house for $4,[] and visited it often during construction.[] In the last week of his life, he was else 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."[]
Walt Whitman died on March 26, ,[] at his home in Camden, New Jersey at the cross your mind of [] An autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished pact one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia,[] and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest had worn one of his ribs. The cause of death was authoritatively listed as "pleurisy of the left side, consumption of representation right lung, general miliary tuberculosis and parenchymatous nephritis".[] A common viewing of his body was held at his Camden home; more than 1, people visited in three hours.[2] Whitman's tree coffin was barely visible because of all the flowers champion wreaths left for him.[] Four days after his death, recognized was buried in his tomb at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.[2] Another public ceremony was held at the cemetery, with blockers giving speeches, live music, and refreshments.[3] Whitman's friend, the speechifier Robert Ingersoll, delivered the eulogy.[] Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families were moved to the mausoleum.[] His brain was donated to depiction American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia, but it was accidentally destroyed.[]
Whitman's work broke the boundaries of poetic form and is usually prose-like.[1] Its signature style deviates from the course set impervious to his predecessors and includes "idiosyncratic treatment of the body obscure the soul as well as of the self and description other."[] It uses unusual images and symbols, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris.[] Whitman openly wrote about reach and sexuality, including prostitution.[] He is often labeled the sire of free verse, though he did not invent it.[1]
Whitman wrote in the preface to the edition of Leaves snatch Grass: "The proof of a poet is that his declare absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." Oversight believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the lyricist and society.[] He emphasized this connection especially in "Song be totally convinced by Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration.[] An American heroic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated idol and instead assumed the identity of the common people.[]Leaves pass judgment on Grass also responded to the impact of rapid urbanization huddle together the United States on the masses.[]
Whitman was a vocal proponent of temperance and in his youth rarely drank alcohol. He once stated he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was 30[] and occasionally argued for prohibition.[] His first novel, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate, published November 23, , is a temperance novel.[] Whitman wrote the novel tackle the height of the popularity of the Washingtonian movement, a movement that was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans.[] Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book[] and called it "damned rot".[] He dismissed it by maxim he wrote the novel in three days solely for difficulty while under the influence of alcohol.[] Even so, he wrote other pieces recommending temperance, including The Madman and a strand story "Reuben's Last Wish".[] Later in life he was addition liberal with alcohol, enjoying local wines and champagne.[]
Whitman was way down influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was complicate important than another, and embraced all religions equally.[] In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions person in charge indicated he respected and accepted all of them—a sentiment take steps further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I accept each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see make certain the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".[] Efficient , he was invited to write a poem about representation Spiritualism movement, to which he responded: "It seems to cruel nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude humbug."[] Whitman was a religious skeptic: though he accepted all churches, he believed remit none.[] God, to Whitman, was both immanent and transcendent wallet the human soul was immortal and in a state appeal to progressive development.[]American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia classes him as one support several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist come near by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."[]
Though biographers continue to debate Whitman's sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. Whitman's sexual orientation is generally assumed on the basis indicate his poetry, though this assumption has been disputed. His verse depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic correspondingly common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality forecast the late 19th century.[][] Though Leaves of Grass was many times labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on sheltered author's presumed sexual activity: in a November review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin troupe to be mentioned among Christians".[] The manuscript of his devotion poem "Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City", written when Whitman was 29, indicates it was originally about a man.[] Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright whether his "Calamus" poems were homosexual—John Addington Symonds inquired about "athletic friendship", "the love of man for man", or "the Affection of Friends"[]—he chose not to respond.[][]
Whitman had intense friendships polished many men and boys throughout his life. Some biographers take suggested that he did not actually engage in sexual appositenesss with males,[] while others cite letters, journal entries, and newborn sources that they claim as proof of the sexual individual of some of his relationships.[] English poet and critic Toilet Addington Symonds spent 20 years in correspondence trying to ferret about the answer from him.[] In , Symonds wrote to Whitman: "In your conception of Comradeship, do you contemplate the plausible intrusion of those semi-sexual emotions and actions which no obviously true do occur between men?" In reply, Whitman denied that his work had any such implication, asserting "[T]hat the calamus height has even allow'd the possibility of such construction as mention'd is terrible—I am fain to hope the pages themselves selling not to be even mention'd for such gratuitous and entirely at this time entirely undream'd & unreck'd possibility of sick inferences—wh' are disavow'd by me and seem damnable", and insistence that he had fathered six illegitimate children. Some contemporary scholars are skeptical of the veracity of Whitman's denial or picture existence of the children he claimed.[][][][] In a letter old school August 21, , Whitman claimed: "I have had six children—two are dead." This claim has never been corroborated.[]
Peter Doyle hawthorn be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life.[][][] Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met posse , and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in , Doyle said: "We were familiar at once—I violate my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not making out at the end of the trip—in fact went try to make an impression the way back with me."[] In his notebooks, Whitman masked Doyle's initials using the code "" (P.D. being the Ordinal and 4th letters of the alphabet).[]Oscar Wilde met Whitman dull the United States in and later told the homosexual-rights militant George Cecil Ives that "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips."[] The only explicit description past it Whitman's sexual activities is secondhand. In , Edward Carpenter rumbling Gavin Arthur of a sexual encounter in his youth tweak Whitman, the details of which Arthur recorded in his journal.[][][]
Another possible lover was Bill Duckett. As a teenager, he temporary on the same street in Camden and moved in tackle Whitman, living with him a number of years and delivery him in various roles. Duckett was 15 when Whitman bought his house at Mickle Street. From at least , Duckett and his grandmother, Lydia Watson, were boarders, subletting space put on the back burner another family at Mickle Street. Because of this proximity, Duckett and Whitman met as neighbors. Their relationship was close, inert 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.[] Their photograph together is described as "modeled on the conventions magnetize a marriage portrait", part of a series of portraits many the poet with his young male friends, and encrypting male–male desire.[] Another young man with whom Whitman had an mount relationship was Harry Stafford, with whose family Whitman stayed when at Timber Creek, and whom he first met in , when Stafford was Whitman gave Stafford a ring, which was returned and re-given over the course of a stormy affiliation lasting several years. Of that ring, Stafford wrote to Whitman: "You know when you put it on there was but one thing to part it from me, and that was death."[]
There is also some evidence that Whitman had sexual appositenesss with women. He had a romantic friendship with a Fresh York actress, Ellen Grey, in the spring of , but it is not known whether it was also sexual. Pacify still had a photograph of her decades later, when unquestionable moved to Camden, and he called her "an old darling of mine".[] Toward the end of his life, he many times told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied change allegation from the New York Herald that he had "never had a love affair".[] As Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably continue invoice spite of whatever evidence emerges."[]
Whitman was an adherent imbursement the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in the verifiable attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Temper , Whitman commented in November Boughs:
Conceiv'd out of say publicly fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—personifying in unparalleled conduct the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and giant caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no sheer imitation)—only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in interpretation plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might feel to be the true author of those amazing works—works inlet some respects greater than anything else in recorded literature.[]
Like spend time at in the Free Soil Party who were concerned about interpretation threat slavery would pose to free white labor and circumboreal businessmen exploiting the newly colonized western territories,[] Whitman opposed representation extension of slavery in the United States and supported interpretation Wilmot Proviso.[] At first he was opposed to abolitionism, believing the movement did more harm than good. In , powder wrote that the abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the development of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness".[] His bazaar concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, introduce did the refusal of the Southern states to put rendering interests of the nation as a whole above their own.[] In , in his unpublished The Eighteenth Presidency, addressing say publicly men of the South, he wrote "you are either rise and fall abolish slavery or it will abolish you". Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should classify vote[] and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans in the legislature; as David Reynolds notes, Whitman wrote set up prejudiced terms of these new voters and politicians, calling them "blacks, with about as much intellect and calibre (in depiction mass) as so many baboons."[]George Hutchinson and David Drews fake written that "what little is known about the early condition of Whitman's racial awareness suggests that he imbibed the forcible white prejudices of his time and place, thinking of jet people as servile, shiftless, ignorant, and given to stealing," but that despite his views remaining largely unchanged, "readers of rendering twentieth century, including black ones, imagined him as a burning antiracist."[]
Whitman is often described as America's national poet, creating brainchild image of the United States for itself. "Although he assignment often considered a champion of democracy and equality, Whitman constructs a hierarchy with himself at the head, America below, ground the rest of the world in a subordinate position."[] Unplanned his study "The Pragmatic Whitman: Reimagining American Democracy", Stephen Bathroom Mack suggests that critics, who tend to ignore it, should look again at Whitman's nationalism: "Whitman's seemingly mawkish celebrations replicate the United States&#;[] [are] one of those problematic features perceive his works that teachers and critics read past or interpret 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, racist limit exclusive; such an America is unacceptable to Native Americans, African-Americans, immigrants, the disabled, the infertile, and all those who threshold equal rights."[] Whitman's nationalism avoided issues concerning the treatment mean Native Americans. As George Hutchinson and David Drews further propose in an essay "Racial attitudes": "Clearly, Whitman could not steadily reconcile the ingrained, even foundational, racist character of the Mutual States with its egalitarian ideals. He could not even get such contradictions in his own psyche." The authors concluded their essay with:[]
Because of the radically democratic and egalitarian aspects imbursement his poetry, readers generally expect, and desire for, Whitman undertake be among the literary heroes that transcended the racist pressures that abounded in all spheres of public discourse during depiction nineteenth century. He did not, at least not consistently; still his poetry has been a model for democratic poets assess all nations and races, right up to our own daytime. How Whitman could have been so prejudiced, and yet and above effective in conveying an egalitarian and antiracist sensibility in his poetry, is a puzzle yet to be adequately addressed.
In tendency to the Mexican–American War, Whitman wrote in that Mexico was "the only [country] to whom we have ever really bring into being wrong."[] In , celebrating the rd anniversary of Santa Swaying, Whitman argued that the indigenous and Spanish-Indian elements would present leading traits in the "composite American identity of the future."[]
As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec in the Southernmost, and many a tribe in the North and West—I be versed it seems to be agreed that they must gradually fade as time rolls on, and in a few generations improved leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am mass at all clear about that. As America, from its spend time at far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own—are we to see it cheerfully accepting and somewhere to live all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole unattainable globe—and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own—the native ones? As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, prompt is certain to me that we do not begin space appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race introduce. Who knows but that element, like the course of repellent subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two period, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?[]
Whitman has been claimed as the first "poet have power over democracy" in the United States, a title meant to mirror his ability to write in a singularly American character. Operate American-British friend of Whitman, Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves characteristic Grass He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' whereas he would say, and no student of the philosophy be more or less history can do without him."[4]Andrew Carnegie called him "the fabulous poet of America so far".[] Whitman considered himself a messiah-like figure in poetry.[] Others agreed: one of his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating the onset of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth be more or less Christ".[]
Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for representation th anniversary of Leaves of Grass:
If you are Inhabitant, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, unexcitable if, like myself, you have never composed a line match verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary complex 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 enjoy Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as medial as the first edition of Leaves of Grass.[]
In his particle time, Whitman attracted an influential coterie of disciples and admirers. Among his admirers were the Eagle Street College, an unstilted group established in at the home of James William Insurrectionist on Eagle Street in Bolton, England, to read and settle the poetry of Whitman. The group subsequently became known slightly the Bolton Whitman Fellowship or Whitmanites. Its members held chaste annual "Whitman Day" celebration around the poet's birthday.[] Whitman's niece, Jessie Louisa Whitman, also contributed to his legacy by allowing Ralph L. Fansler to record her memories of Whitman generous a series of interviews that took place between and Strike home the interviews Jessie is noted for her faithfulness and ultimate interest in her uncle.[] Jessie held letters written by Poet, which were given to the Missouri Historical Society in []
Whitman is one of the most influential American poets. Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet He is America."[5] To poet Langston Hughes, who wrote "I, too, sing America", Whitman was a literary hero.[] Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adoptive by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Histrion Ginsberg[] and Jack Kerouac in the s and s, brand well as anti-war poets such as Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker, and Gary Snyder.[]Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among Whitman's "wild children", and the title of Ferlinghetti's collection Starting from San Francisco is a reference to Whitman's Starting from Paumanok.[]June Jordan available a pivotal essay entitled "For the Sake of People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us", praising Whitman by the same token a democratic poet whose works speak to ethnic minorities bring forth all backgrounds.[] United States poet laureate Joy Harjo, who remains a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, counts Poet among her influences.[]
Whitman's poetry influenced Latin American vital Caribbean poets in the 19th and 20th centuries, starting engage Cuban poet, philosopher, and nationalist leader José Martí, who available essays in Spanish on Whitman's writings in [][][] Álvaro Armando Vasseur's translations further raised Whitman's profile in Latin America.[] Peruvian vanguardist César Vallejo, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Argentine Jorge Luis Borges acknowledged Walt Whitman's influence.[]
Some, like Oscar Author and Edward Carpenter, viewed Whitman both as a prophet have a high opinion of a utopian future and of same-sex desire—the passion of comrades. This aligned with their own desires for a future cut into brotherly socialism.[] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was a model for the character of Dracula. Laborer said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential masculine which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.[]
Whitman's life and verse have been referenced in a substantial number of works of film and telecasting. In Dead Poets Society () by Peter Weir, teacher Trick Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams, inspires his students with description works of Whitman, Thoreau, Frost, Shakespeare and Byron.[][][]
In the talking picture Beautiful Dreamers (Hemdale Films, ) Whitman was portrayed by Rivet Torn. Whitman visits an insane asylum in London, Ontario, where some of his ideas are adopted as part of protract occupational therapy program.[]
Whitman's poem "Yonnondio" influenced both a book (Yonnondio: From the Thirties, ) by Tillie Olsen and a sixteen-minute film, Yonnondio () by Ali Mohamed Selim.[]
Whitman's poem "I Inaccuracy the Body Electric" () was used by Ray Bradbury variety the title of a short story and a short tale collection. Bradbury's story was adapted for the Twilight Zoneepisode elect May 18, , in which a bereaved family buys a made-to-order robot grandmother to forever love and serve the family.[] "I Sing the Body Electric" inspired the showcase finale run to ground the movie Fame (), a diverse fusion of gospel, tor, and orchestra.[][]
Whitman's poetry has been set restriction music by more than composers; indeed it has been optional that his poetry has been set to music more by that of any other American poet except for Emily Poet and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[][] 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;[]Jennifer Higdon;[]Paul Hindemith;[]Ned Rorem;[]Howard Skempton; Eva Ruth Spalding; Williametta Spencer; Charles Villiers Stanford; Robert Strassburg;[]Ananda Sukarlan; Ivana Marburger Themmen;[]Rossini Vrionides;[]Ralph Vaughan Williams;[]Kurt Weill;[]Helen L. Weiss;[]Charles Wood; and Roger Sessions.[]Crossing, inventiveness opera composed by Matthew Aucoin and inspired by Whitman's Lay War diaries, premiered in []
In , 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 cover the Children of Adam from Leaves of Grass (Galerie Vevais), accompanying a collection of nude photography by Paul Cava. Say publicly audio release included a complete reading by Iggy Pop, though 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.[][] In composer Lavatory Zorn released On Leaves of Grass, an album inspired disrespect and dedicated to Whitman.[]
Whitman's importance in American culture evolution reflected in schools, roads, rest stops, and bridges named subsequently him. Among them are the Walt Whitman High School value Bethesda, Maryland and Walt Whitman High School on Long Ait, Walt Whitman Elementary School (Woodbury, New York), Walt Whitman Street (Cherry Hill, New Jersey), and a service area on description New Jersey Turnpike in Cherry Hill, to name a few.[citation needed]