Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist born on Long Island, New York. His most famous work is the collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass. Today, Whitman is widely regarded as one of the greatest American poets.

Whitman and homosexuality

Another topic intertwined with Whitman's life and poetry is that of homosexuality and homoeroticism, ranging from his admiration for 19th-century ideals of male friendship to outright masturbatory descriptions of the male body ("Song Of Myself"). This is in sharp contradiction to the outrage Whitman displayed when confronted about these messages in public, praising chastity and denouncing onanism. However, the modern scholarly opinion tends to be that these poems reflected Whitman's true feelings towards his sex and that he merely tried to cover up his feelings in a homophobic culture. For example, in "Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City" he changed the sex of the beloved from male to female prior to publication. He even went so far as to invent six illegitimate children to correct his public image.

Related Topics:
Homosexuality - Homoeroticism - 19th-century - Male friendship - Chastity - Onanism

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During the American Civil War, the intense comradeship (which often turned sexual) at the front lines in Virginia, which were visited by Whitman in his capacity as a nurse, fueled his ideas about the convergence of homosexuality and democracy. In "Democratic Vistas", he begins to discriminate between amative (i.e., heterosexual) and adhesive (i.e., homosexual) love, taking cues from the pseudoscience of phrenology. Adhesive love is portrayed as a possible backbone of a better form of democracy, as a "counter-balance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy and for the spiritualization thereof".

Related Topics:
American Civil War - Virginia - Nurse - Pseudoscience - Phrenology

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In the 1970s, the gay liberation movement made Whitman one of their poster children, citing the homosexual content and comparing him to Jean Genet for his love of young working-class men ("We Two Boys Together Clinging"). In particular the "Calamus" poems, written after a failed and very likely homosexual relationship, contain passages that were interpreted to represent the coming out of a gay man. The name of the poems alone would have sufficed to convey homosexual connotations to the ones in the know at the time, since the calamus plant is associated with Kalamos, a god in antique mythology who was transformed with grief by the death of his lover, the male youth Karpos. In addition, the calamus plant's central characteristic is a prominent central vein that is phallic in appearance.

Related Topics:
1970s - Gay liberation - Jean Genet - Calamus - Coming out - Gay - Calamus plant - Kalamos - Mythology - Karpos

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Despite evidence, for example, given by fellow poets George Sylvester Viereck and Edward Carpenter, that Whitman not only had homosexual attractions but also had romantic sexual relationships with other men, this part of his personality is often omitted when his works are presented in the classroom.

Related Topics:
George Sylvester Viereck - Edward Carpenter

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