Welcome back to The Deep Dive, where we take
a stack of sources, articles, biographies, and
historical research and build you a direct, fast,
and ultimately fascinating path to expertise.
Today, we are wrestling with a literary giant,
someone whose life and work are, well, as complex
and contradictory as the nation he attempted
to encapsulate. We're talking about Walter Whitman
Jr. That's right. Whitman, who lived from 1819
to 1892, is so much more than just a famous name.
He's a foundational American voice. He's often
called the father of free verse. And while that's
accurate, it barely scratches the surface of
how truly revolutionary and how utterly controversial
his impact was during his time. It really does.
The source material we've gathered for this is
a comprehensive, well, deep dive into his biography.
We're exploring the chaos of his early life,
the self -reliant publication of his magnum opus,
Leaves of Grass, his turbulent time as a Civil
War nurse in Washington. And crucially, the intense
complexity of his personal beliefs. from sexuality
to nationalism and, yes, race. Our mission today
is to unpack this material and give you a detailed
understanding of how this self -made, often despised
figure earned his place at the absolute top of
the literary pyramid. The praise is just staggering.
The Poetry Foundation doesn't hesitate, calling
him America's world poet, a latter -day successor
to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. I mean,
that's quite a list. It's the highest possible
praise. And then there's the modernist master,
Ezra Pound. You know, a poet who often detested
Victorian sentimentality. He offered this profound,
concise summary. America's poet. He is America.
He is America. So today we're going to explore
the restless, contradictory life that led to
that astonishing, sweeping assessment, starting
right from his turbulent roots. To understand
the poet, you first have to understand the rough,
as he called himself. Whitman was born in West
Hills, New York, in 1819. He was the second of
nine children. Nine, to Quaker parents of English
and Dutch descent. And one of the first details
we find is that he was immediately nicknamed
Walt to distinguish him from his father, Walter
Sr. This early life was marked by this incredible
financial insecurity, wasn't it? Absolutely.
His family lived in a constant series of homes
in Brooklyn. They were perpetually moving because
his father made these relentless and unfortunately
unsuccessful investments in real estate. So Whitman
himself looked back on his childhood as being
generally restless and deeply unhappy. Yes. And
it was all because of this perpetual financial
struggle. You can really see the foundation of
his empathy for the working man right there in
his own experience. And that economic pressure,
it meant that his formula. education ended incredibly
early. So early. The sources really emphasize
this. He walked away from traditional schooling
at age 11. Not by choice, though. Not at all.
Yeah. It was because he had to find employment
to help his struggling family survive. This necessity
really shaped his self -taught, self -made identity.
So what did that initial grind look like? I mean,
it sounds like a true 19th century apprenticeship.
It was. His very first jobs included serving
as an office boy for lawyers. And then he became
an apprentice, or printer's devil as they called
it, for a weekly newspaper called The Patriot.
The printer's devil. That experience, you know,
as the errand boy and often the lowest worker
in the shop, was perhaps the most consequential
part of his education. How so? Well, it's where
he learned about the inner workings of the printing
press, how to set type by hand, and how to physically
manifest words into permanent print. So these
weren't just jobs. No, these were the technical
skills he would later use to literally print
his own revolutionary book. It's an incredible
through line. It is a powerful connection. The
poet who would break all the rules was, at his
core, a craftsman of the printed word. But before
we get to all that chaos, there is one small,
almost perfect memory from his childhood that
really stands out. Yes, the legendary meeting
with the Marquis de Lafayette. Right. So July
4th, 1825, Lafayette was in Brooklyn for the
cornerstone setting of the Brooklyn Apprentice's
Library. And while they were celebrating, the
Revolutionary War hero apparently lifted six
-year -old Walt in the air and kissed him on
the cheek. Whitman recalled this moment later
as a genuinely happy memory. A moment of connection
to the spirit of American Revolution. Exactly.
And almost poetically, Whitman later came full
circle, actually working as a librarian at that
very institution, the Brooklyn Apprentices Library.
The boy embraced by revolutionary history at
an institution dedicated to learning. It's just
the perfect symbolic start for the self -proclaimed
poet of democracy. But the path to that destiny
was incredibly messy. He leaves Brooklyn at 16,
tries to make it as a compositor in New York
City. And he immediately hits these severe financial
roadblocks. Right. First, a devastating fire
sweeps through the printing district, which wipes
out a lot of the work. And then the economy collapses.
Exactly. The general economic collapse leading
up to the infamous Panic of 1837 hits him hard.
So this financial instability just keeps forcing
him back to Long Island. He taught intermittently
at various schools between 1836 and 1838, and
again later. Our sources are clear on this. He
found teaching deeply unsatisfying. Which led
him to his next hustle, media ownership. He literally
tried to be his own newspaper boss. He founded
his own paper in Huntington, New York, called
The Long Islander. And when you say he ran it,
you mean he ran it. I mean, he was everything.
The publisher, the editor, the press man, the
distribution manager, and the home delivery boy.
That level of personal, physical labor in the
service of written communication is extraordinary.
It is. But true to his restless nature, he sold
the paper after only 10 months. He simply couldn't
settle. He kept bouncing around, working for
the Long Island Democrat, and then he edited
the Aurora in 1842. But his most significant
and maybe most stable journalistic job was editing
the Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848. Yes. And
it's here, while working a standard journalism
job, that the seed of his poetic revolution was
truly planted. This is where it gets really interesting
because the connection is so counterintuitive.
What does a hard -nosed, working -class Brooklyn
editor have to do with the highly refined world
of Italian opera? Everything, apparently. While
reviewing performances for the Brooklyn Eagle,
Whitman became an absolute devotee of Italian
opera. The big dramatic works. Exactly. Bellini,
Donizetti, and Verdi. He was obsessed with the
dramatic range, the structure, and the emotional
resonance. And he later stated very explicitly,
but for the opera, I could never have written
Leaves of Grass. That's a phenomenal claim. It
is. So how did he translate the experience of
Italian opera into the creation of free verse
poetry? Well, think about the nature of opera.
It's grand. It's expansive. It tells a huge,
messy, universal story using these long, sweeping
melodies. lines that they disregard the rigid
structure of a traditional song. OK, I can see
that. Whitman's free verse did the same thing.
The cadences, the almost breathless list making,
the rhetorical amplitude, the sheer length of
his lines. It all mirrored the rhythmic and narrative
architecture of those grand Italian librettos.
He was creating a literary form designed for
the American continent, but he was echoing the
musical and emotional scale he found in the opera
house. He traded meter and rhyme for dramatic
rhythm. That's a fascinating insight. But his
time at the Brooklyn Eagle, which introduced
him to this world, it ended abruptly in 1848
because of politics. Specifically, The turbulent
debate over the expansion of slavery. Right.
So Whitman sided with the anti -slavery, free
-soil, barn -burner wing of the Democratic Party.
And to understand this, you need a little context.
Yeah. The free -soilers weren't abolitionists
in the purely moral sense. They opposed extending
slavery into new territories, primarily because
they saw it as a threat to free white labor.
Because slave labor would artificially depress
wages and hurt the livelihood of northern businessmen
and workers. Exactly. So when we call him a poet
of democracy, we have to acknowledge that his
foundation for anti -slavery sentiment was often
one of economic self -interest, not pure moral
conviction. It's a key distinction. It highlights
the constant tension in Whitman's life between
the sublime egalitarian ideal and the pragmatic,
often self -interested reality of American politics.
And the owner of the Eagle, Isaac Van Anden,
was on the other side. Completely. He was a conservative
hunker, a wing of the party that essentially
hunkered down to preserve the status quo. Whitman's
radical faction was willing to burn down the
barn, the Democratic Party itself, to prevent
slavery's expansion. This political rift cost
him his job. So before he fully committed to
poetry, there was one more strange professional
detour in 1858 that just feels almost hilariously
out of place. Yes, the pseudoscientific Health
Tract. He published Manly Health and Training
under the rather amusing pen name Mose Velsor.
Which was a nod to his mother's family name,
Van Velsor. That's the one. I have to admit,
reading this in the sources, the man who would
revolutionize American poetry was also penning
self -help advice that modern writers have called
quirky, so over the top, and just wacky. And
the advice was incredibly prescriptive and bizarrely
specific. He recommended growing a beard, which
he certainly did, taking daily cold water baths,
getting up early. And nude sunbathing. And nude
sunbathing. But perhaps the most enduringly strange
piece of advice was his radical diet. He advocated
eating meat almost exclusively, dismissing vegetables
as offering little to no real strength. It's
just astonishing that this mixture of democratic
manifesto, journalistic hustle, and wacky self
-help preceded his literary breakthrough. It
really shows the incredible chaotic energy he
channeled into everything he did. And that chaotic
energy finally found its singular focus. Which
brings us to section two, the revolutionary text
Leaves of Grass and the birth of the American
epic. After years of chasing what he called the
usual rewards in journalism and fiction, Whitman
decided to fully transform into the poet he believed
America needed. He consciously intended to write
a distinct American epic, something that broke
entirely from the European poetic tradition.
He chose free verse, but the surprising source
of his rhythm was, ironically, the King James
Bible. He used its long, parallel cadences to
ground his revolutionary lines. And the very
nature of the first edition in 1855 tells the
story of this self -made prophet. This was a
completely self -reliant venture. Entirely. Whitman
financed the publication himself. He had the
795 copies printed at a local print shop in Brooklyn.
Often using the downtime. Exactly. During employee
breaks from commercial jobs. This meant he didn't
just write the book. He was involved in the physical,
messy labor of producing it, which recalls his
days as a printer's devil. And the cover was
a deliberate statement. It completely lacked
an author's name on the title page. Instead,
there was this incredibly rugged, engraved portrait
of Whitman. hands casually tucked into his trousers,
wearing his hat indoors, a true image of one
of the roughs. His identity was deliberately
submerged into the text, only emerging some 500
lines into the dominant poem. And when he revealed
himself, it was a manifesto. Oh, absolutely.
He called himself Walt Whitman, an American.
One of the roughs, a cosmos, disorderly, fleshly,
and sensual. No sentimentalist, no stander above
men or women or apart from them. No more modest
than immodest. That declaration is a total rejection
of Victorian politeness and a full embrace of
the physical, messy, democratic American experience.
The inaugural volume contained this enormous
827 -line prose preface, basically a theoretical
treatise on American poetry and 12 untitled poems.
And it was dominated by the 336 lines that would
later be titled Song of Myself. Song of Myself
was and it remains a revolutionary text. It assumes
the identity of every single person in the United
States. the laborer, the prostitute, the rich,
the poor, the oppressed, the oppressor. He uses
that encompassing eye to literally sing America
into existence. The sheer scope was unprecedented.
It was. What's truly fascinating here is the
immediate validation he received from Ralph Waldo
Emerson, who was arguably the most influential
literary figure in America at the time. Emerson,
the great champion of American transcendentalism,
had been calling for years for the first truly
American poet to emerge, free of English constraint.
And when he read Leaves of... He was completely
captivated. He wrote Whitman a five -page flattering
letter calling the book the most extraordinary
piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet
contributed. For Emerson, Whitman had finally
fulfilled his call. And Whitman, the former editor,
the natural hustler, he saw this as the ultimate
marketing opportunity. This is where he pioneers
the modern cover blurb in a move that was both
audacious and completely unauthorized. It was
a masterstroke of self -promotion. Whitman took
one line from Emerson's private letter, I greet
you at the beginning of a great career, and embossed
it in glorious, attention -grabbing gold leaf
right onto the spine of the second edition. And
you have to put this in context. In 1856, this
kind of commercialized use of a private endorsement
was absolutely unheard of. It was crass, it was
journalistic, and it was brilliant. He leveraged
the prestige of the literary establishment to
advertise a book that much of that establishment
was about to label as filth. Because despite
Emerson's praise, the book stirred up significant
controversy. Oh, a huge amount. It was criticized
fiercely for its obscene nature and its overt,
unabashed sensuality. The language about the
body, about... sexuality about physical intimacy
it shocked polite society and the reactions were
vicious we have the account of a geologist peter
leslie writing to emerson basically begging him
not to praise the book he called it trashy profane
and obscene and labeled whitman himself a pretentious
ass The publisher was terrified. The second edition,
which included 20 additional poems, almost wasn't
released because of the uproar over the sexual
themes. But Whitman was relentless. Yeah. He
believed the body was sacred and that poetry
must speak truthfully about life in all its messy
totality. And this wasn't a static project for
him. He didn't just publish it once and move
on. Not at all. He spent the entire rest of his
life expanding and revising this one central
work. We see new editions rolling out in 1860,
1867, 1871, 1876, 1881. And finally, the capstone
deathbed edition in 1889, 1891. It truly was
an evolving, living document, reflecting his
changing perspective on America, his health,
and his poetic goals. Yet, despite the enormous
literary buzz and the controversy, none of this
translated into financial stability for him.
Not in the slightest. Whitman had constant financial
difficulties during this era, which forced him
back into the journalistic hack work he supposedly
left behind. He edited Brooklyn's Daily Times
from 1857 to 1859. It just shows that even the
self -proclaimed poet prophet of America couldn't
escape the daily grind. His career before the
Civil War was defined by this brutal tension
between artistic genius and the reality of poverty.
That precarious lifestyle and that internal artistic
struggle changed dramatically with the outbreak
of the American Civil War, which brings us to
Section 3, War, Washington, and the Decline of
the Body. The war didn't just change America.
It completely redefined Walt Whitman. At the
start of the conflict, he was actively involved.
He published his poem, Beat. Beat drums. Which
was a highly patriotic rally call for the union
cause, wasn't it? Urging citizens to abandon
their daily lives for the necessity of war. Yes.
But the catalyst for his move south and his transition
to a wartime volunteer was deeply personal. It
was driven by a fear that every family with a
soldier faced. His brother, George, had joined
the Union Army. Indeed. And in December 1862,
Whitman saw a listing of casualties in the New
York Tribune that he feared was his brother,
listed as First Lieutenant G .W. Whitmore. So
he immediately dropped everything and rushed
south. He had a rough journey. He even had his
wallet stolen along the way. But thankfully,
he found George alive. Just a superficial wound.
A superficial cheek wound, yes. But the journey
itself and what he saw at the hospitals and battle
sites fundamentally altered his trajectory. He
was profoundly affected by the massive scale
of human suffering. He wrote so vividly about
it, seeing the endless procession of wounded
men and perhaps most viscerally, witnessing the
heaps of their amputated limbs. The shock of
the war's physical reality was such that he never
returned to New York to live permanently. He
moves to Washington, D .C., and immediately begins
volunteering as a nurse in the Army hospitals.
And this wasn't a paid position. This was a humane,
deeply personal service. He ministered to somewhere
between 80 ,000 and 100 ,000 wounded or sick
soldiers during the war. Bringing them small
comforts, reading to them, writing letters home
for them. He detailed this work vividly, often
at his own expense, in his writing. His accounts,
like The Great Army of the Sick, published in
1863, and his later book, Memoranda During the
War. They provide some of the most moving, ground
-level accounts of the Civil War's impact on
the individual body. This experience really became
the crucible for his mature work. It did. But
as a volunteer, he still needed to eat. So his
friends helped him secure temporary employment?
Right. He got part -time work in the Army Paymaster's
office. And then in 1865, he secured a better
-paying, low -grade clerkship in the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. But that government stability
was short -lived. On June 30, 1865, he was fired
by the new Secretary of the Interior, a former
senator named James Harlan. And while Harlan
claimed it was because Whitman's attendance was
sporadic, the prevailing belief among historians
is that Harlan fired Whitman purely on moral
grounds. That's right. On moral grounds. Was
this related to his poetry? Yes. The suspicion
is that Harlan, a conservative moralist, found
a copy of the explicit 1860 edition of Leaves
of Grass in Whitman's desk. And for a government
clerk to be writing what Harlan viewed as obscene
poetry was, for him, grounds for dismissal. And
this political or moral persecution instantly
turned the poet into a cause celebre. His friend,
William Douglas O 'Connor, reacted instantly
and furiously. O 'Connor secured Whitman a transfer
to the Attorney General's office, so he kept
a job. But O 'Connor didn't let the moral argument
lie. No, he published an aggressive, though highly
biased, defense of Whitman in January 1866 called
The Good Gray Poet. And this pamphlet successfully
reframed Whitman's image. Completely. It moved
him away from the controversial rough and repositioned
him as this wholesome, patriotic, long -suffering
man of principle, The Good Gray Poet. And that
nickname stuck, increasing his popularity tremendously
and changing his public perception almost overnight.
The public was already primed to appreciate this
image, largely due to his work following the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman
deeply admired. His elegies for Lincoln really
cemented his role as America's national voice
in tragedy. He authored two iconic poems, O Captain,
My Captain, and When Lilac Slashed in the Dooryard
Bloomed. And it's an interesting detail that
O Captain. was highly conventional in its form.
It used meter and rhyme, a stark contrast to
his free verse. That conventionality made it
accessible and popular, and it became his only
poem to appear in anthologies during his lifetime,
which contributed significantly to his fame.
Meanwhile, his reputation was expanding globally.
Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England
in 1868 and became immensely popular. Largely
thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of the
respected English writer Anne Gilchrist, who
became a lifelong admirer and eventually even
traveled to America to meet him. But just as
his fame stabilized, his body began to fail.
In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke. That
forced him to move from Washington, D .C. to
Camden, New Jersey to live with his brother George.
And his mother died that same year, compounding
his physical and emotional distress. He was forced
into decline, but his drive remained. He eventually
managed to buy his own small home in Camden in
1884 at 328 Mickle Street. He was often bedridden,
relying on his housekeeper, Mary Oaks Davis,
who was the widow of a sea captain. She lived
with him in exchange for free rent. And the sources
paint this beautiful, eccentric picture of his
final years there, living with Davis and her
menagerie of pets, a cat, a dog, two turtle doves,
a canary. It's a quiet, domestic end for the
chaotic American prophet. And he used this time
for his final artistic dedication. He spent his
final years polishing and perfecting his great
work. The sources highlight the profound, almost
religious emotional significance of that final
collection, the deathbed edition. He considered
it at last complete after 33 years of hackling
at it all times and moods of my life, fair weather
and foul, all parts of the land, and peace and
war, young and old. He prepared for death with
the same attention he gave to his book, commissioning
this massive granite mausoleum shaped like a
house for $4 ,000, which he visited frequently
during its construction. When he died on March
26, 1892, at age 72, the autopsy revealed the
truth of his suffering. His lungs were operating
at only one -eighth capacity due to bronchial
pneumonia, and an egg -sized abscess had eroded
one of his ribs. His death was a major civic
event. The public viewing drew over 1 ,000 visitors
in three hours, with flowers covering his coffin.
His funeral at Harley Cemetery was a large public
ceremony. With the famous orator Robert Ingersoll
delivering the eulogy. But here is the truly
bizarre footnote to his end. His brain was donated
to the American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia
for study. But the sources report that it was
accidentally destroyed. Yes. The man who embodied
the American soul, whose life was one of artistic
chaos, had his final physical remnant destroyed
through, well, a bureaucratic mistake. The irony
is profound. The brain that birthed the American
epic was lost before it could be studied. It's
a final, powerful symbol of the chaotic genius
he represented. That biography sets an incredibly
complex stage for Section 4, unpacking the beliefs
controversy, contradictions, and the individual.
Whitman wasn't just a literary stylist. He was
a self -styled prophet, and his beliefs were
frequently at war with each other. His entire
poetic theory was fundamentally symbiotic. He
defined the goal of the American writer in the
preface to Leaves of Grass, saying, The proof
of a poet is that his country absorbs him as
affectionately as he has absorbed it. And his
approach involved an idiosyncratic treatment
of the body and the soul, creating an epic that
assumed the identity of the common person and
responded directly to the rapidly urbanizing,
expanding nation. Let's start with a seemingly
minor contradiction, alcohol. He was an incredibly
vocal proponent of temperance, even writing a
wildly successful sensationalist temperance novel
called Franklin Evans. Right, back in 1842. And
he often argued vehemently for prohibition. And
yet, years later, he completely flip -flopped.
He expressed deep embarrassment over Franklin
Evans, calling it damned rot and dismissing it
entirely. And the irony is, he claimed he wrote
the entire novel in three days just for the money.
And that he wrote it while under the influence
of alcohol himself. Later in life, he became
quite liberal. openly enjoying local wines and
champagne. That flip -flop suggests that his
public moralizing, especially early in his career,
was often disconnected from his private life
or was driven purely by the need to hustle for
cash. Exactly. He was writing to the market,
even if it contradicted his future beliefs. And
when we look at his relationship with religion,
we find a similar kind of tension. We do. He
was deeply influenced by deism, the belief in
a creator God who does not interfere, and he
embraced all religions equally. In Song Myself,
and with Antecedents, he states he respects and
accepts every faith. I adopt each theory, myth,
God, and demigod. I see that the old accounts,
Bibles, genealogies are true, without exception.
That sounds broadly spiritual, but was he, say,
a practicing Christian? No. And the crucial nuance
is that he was a religious skeptic. He accepted
all churches and believed in the inherent divinity
of humanity, but he believed in none of them
exclusively. His concept of God was pantheist
or pandeist, that God is both imminent, so within
the world, and transcendent beyond it. He completely
rejected the concept of God as separate from
creation. And he firmly believed the soul was
immortal and constantly developing, not fixed
by one creed. Right. Now let's move to the ultimate
ongoing debate, his sexuality. This is framed
by biographers as incredibly complex, acknowledging
the absence of definitive proof, but relying
heavily on the textual and anecdotal evidence
provided by the sources. And he is generally
described as homosexual or bisexual in his feelings
and attractions. His poetry treated love and
sexuality in an extremely earthy, individualized
way. And it's essential to understand this was
before the late 19th century process known as
the medicalization of sexuality. That's a key
point. Before that, intense same -sex friendship
was culturally accepted, if not always understood.
But once sexuality started being categorized
as a disease or deviance by the medical establishment,
the cultural stakes changed radically. And we
have compelling textual evidence for this. The
sources note that a manuscript of Once I Passed
Through a Populous City, written when he was
29, indicates it was originally about his intense
feeling for a man. Before he revised it to be
about a woman for publication. Which is significant.
The man was always present in the poetry, even
when he felt he had to hide it. And beyond the
text, our sources detail several intense, intimate
relationships with men that strongly suggest
sexual or deep emotional and romantic bonds.
Who are the key figures here? Well, the most
famous is likely Peter Doyle. A bus conductor
Whitman met around 1866 in Washington, D .C.
They were inseparable for years. And Doyle recalled
that their connection was instantaneous. He said,
The emotional depth is undeniable. Whitman even
coded Doyle's initials numerically in his private
notebooks as 16 .4. The sources mention others
as well. Yes. There is Bill Duckett. a young
man who lived with Whitman for a number of years
in Camden. A striking photograph of the two men
is described by biographers as being modeled
on the conventions of a marriage portrait. Suggesting
they intentionally encrypted their male -male
desire in a public image. And then there was
Harry Stafford, a youth Whitman, met in 1876.
They exchanged rings during their stormy relationship,
and Stafford wrote about that ring to Whitman,
saying, there was but one thing to part it from
me, and that was death. These details taken together,
they point to deeply intimate, emotional and
potentially physical partnerships. They do. Yet
the historical record is profoundly complicated
by Whitman's own denial late in life, particularly
when he was corresponding with English poet and
critic John Addington Simons. Simons, who was
himself keenly interested in classical male love,
directly asked whether Whitman's calamus poems
implied semisexual emotions and actions between
men. And Whitman issued an extremely explicit
and vehement denial. He called the suggestion
terrible and damnable. So why the sudden, fierce
rejection of something his poetry had celebrated
for decades? This is where that historical context
of the medicalization of sexuality is so vital.
By the 1880s, European doctors and thinkers were
beginning to categorize same -sex desire as a
definable pathological deviance. So for Whitman,
who was trying to cement his legacy as the good
gray poet, a public association with what was
fast becoming labeled as sexual pathology would
have been ruinous ruinous to his reputation and
his book's survival his denial was really a desperate
act of self -protection against newly forming
social stigma it's a tragic contradiction the
poet of radical acceptance publicly rejects the
very identity he lived and celebrated privately
and to fully seal that denial He insisted, without
any corroboration, that he had conceived six
illegitimate children. Scholars are almost universally
skeptical of that claim about the children, viewing
it as a clear attempt to provide a heterosexual
alibi. But the complexity doesn't end there,
as he did have known relationships with women.
He noted a romantic friendship with an actress,
Ellen Gray, whom he referred to as an old sweetheart
of mine. So as one biographer, Jerome Loving,
acknowledges, the discussion of Whitman's sexual
orientation will continue regardless of new evidence
because the contradictions were just embedded
in the man himself. And moving from sex to politics,
the contradictions become even more fraught when
discussing his views on race and nationalism.
He is celebrated as the champion of democracy.
Yet our sources reveal deeply flawed, even racist
views. He certainly opposed the extension of
slavery. We saw that with the barn burners. But
again, he did so largely because it threatened
free white labor and northern economics. And
initially, he vehemently opposed abolitionism,
calling their methods altruism and officiousness.
His core argument was that abolitionists were
destabilizing the nation and disrupting democratic
order. And the sources indicate his prejudice
was far more direct than just political strategy.
It was explicit. David Reynolds notes that Whitman
openly subscribed to the prevailing white prejudice
that free African -Americans should not vote.
He even wrote in prejudiced terms about black
legislators, shockingly referring to them as
blacks with about as much intellect and caliber
as so many baboons. It's hard to read. So given
these deep seated prejudices, how can scholars
consistently champion him as the poet of equality?
This is the central puzzle. It truly is. The
critic Nathaniel O 'Reilly argues that Whitman's
imagined America is arrogant, expansionist, hierarchical,
racist and exclusive. He failed to consistently
reconcile the ingrained racist character of the
United States with the transcendent egalitarian
ideals he espoused in his poetry. He was a product
of his time with all its inherent flaws. But,
and this is the key that unlocks his legacy,
despite the author's personal prejudices, the
radically democratic and egalitarian nature embedded
in the poetry itself served as a universal transcendent
model. So the song of myself encompasses everyone,
regardless of skin color or class. And that structure,
that expansive vision, was taken up by democratic
poets of all backgrounds. The art achieved an
idealism that the flawed author himself never
consistently embodied. We do see glimpses of
more progressive thought, however. He did exhibit
some complexity in external policy. In 1864,
he wrote that Mexico was the only country to
whom we have ever really done wrong. Acknowledging
American expansionist guilt, and he argued that
the indigenous and Spanish Indian elements would
supply leading traits in the future composite
American identity. So it shows he was constantly
wrestling, constantly negotiating the ugly reality
of 19th century America with the sublime, utopian
vision of democracy he was creating on the page.
His life was a microcosm of the very contradictions
and tensions that defined the American experiment.
That complexity leads us into our final section,
Section 5, the enduring Echoes Whitman's massive
global legacy. Despite, or perhaps because of,
his contradictions, he is cemented as America's
national poet. Reflecting the civilization up
to date, as he might say, the praise continues
to this day. The literary critic Harold Bloom
called him the imaginative father and mother
of Americans. and the poet prophet of the American
religion. Some early hyperbolic admirers even
speculated that people would one day celebrate
the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the
birth of Christ. To put it mildly. And his poetic
DNA flows directly through the last century and
a half of American literature. Even the modernists
who were trying to break with everything that
came before had to deal with him. Ezra Pound
is the best example. Pound initially detested
Whitman's expansive formless style, but in his
famous 1913 poem, A Pact, Pound acknowledges
his debt. He writes, I make truce with you, Walt
Whitman. I have detested you long enough. I come
to you as a grown child who has had a pig -headed
father. I am old enough now to make friends.
It's a formal recognition that you cannot write
American poetry without first reckoning with
Whitman. And his vagabond lifestyle and revolutionary
spirit directly influenced the 20th century.
He was a literary hero to Langston Hughes, whose
own poem I Too Sing America is a direct response
and extension of Whitman's vision. His embrace
of the rough and the bohemian influenced the
entire beat movement. Figures like Allen Ginsberg
and Jack Kerouac, who saw Whitman as the great
American outsider poet. Anti -war poets like
Adrian Rich also credited his spirit. And crucially,
June Jordan praised him specifically for creating
a democratic poetic vessel whose very structure
speaks to ethnic minorities from all backgrounds.
And his reach is truly global, extending far
beyond the Anglosphere. In Latin America, his
influence began with the Cuban nationalist José
Martí in 1887 and spread to giants like César
Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, and the Argentine master
Jorge Luis Borges. In Europe, figures like Oscar
Wilde and the English socialist Edward Carpenter
saw him as a prophet not only of a utopian democratic
future, but specifically of same -sex desire.
The deep passion of comrades. They aligned his
work with their own emerging visions of societal
change. And then there's the incredible, almost
bizarre anecdote about Bram Stoker, the author
of Dracula. Yes. Stoker was an admirer of Whitman
and corresponded with him. He actually used the
poet as one of the models for the character of
Dracula, seeing him as representing a certain
kind of primal, quintessential, expansive male
energy. Whitman's work permeates the arts beyond
the page. His poetry has been set to music by
over 500 composers, which rivals the attention
given to Emily Dickinson among American poets.
This includes major figures like Leonard Bernstein,
Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams,
who based his colossal A Sea Symphony on Whitman's
texts. And modern adaptations continue to explore
his legacy. There's the 2015 Opera Crossing,
which was directly inspired by his Civil War
diaries. And in 2014, a German publisher released
a bilingual audiobook of The Children of Adam's
Cycle, featuring a complete reading by Iggy Pop.
The voice of punk rock reading the father of
American verse, that's a potent cultural connection.
He is inescapable in popular culture as well.
We see his influence in film and TV. He is referenced
in the classic film Dead Poets Society. Where
Robin Williams' teacher character uses Whitman's
democratic spirit to inspire his students to
Carpatium. And Ray Bradbury's short story, I
Sing the Body Electric, based on Whitman's 1855
poem, was adapted for The Twilight Zone and,
perhaps most famously, used for the showcase
finale in the 1980 movie Fame. Finally, his name
is everywhere. from a crater on Mercury to countless
schools and roads. But the recognition isn't
always smooth. The most prominent namesake is
the Walt Whitman Bridge. The one connecting Philadelphia
and New Jersey. And the naming of that bridge
faced significant opposition from local citizens.
Our sources indicate that opponents specifically
criticized his work for sympathizing with communist
ideals and, ironically, criticized him for his
egalitarian view of humanity. A view that was,
for some mid -century Americans, simply too inclusive?
Yet, despite those lingering controversies, his
place in modern cultural history is cemented.
His induction into the legacy walk in Chicago
in 2013 celebrated LGBT history. Which firmly
affirms a crucial part of his legacy, the celebration
of love and comradeship, that he himself felt
compelled to deny during his own lifetime. So
what does this all mean for you as you carry
this knowledge forward? We've traced the incredible
trajectory of Walt Whitman from the struggling
printer's devil who quit school at 11 to the
chaotic journalist, the controversial Civil War
nurse, and finally, the poet who redefined verse
with his self -published, intensely personal
American epic. We've highlighted the profound
contradictions that define him. the champion
of equality who struggled with deep -seated racial
prejudice and economic self -interest, the intensely
sensual poet who vehemently denied any semi -sexual
emotions in his relationships with men, and the
democratic idealist whose work was labeled obscene
but inspired freedom across the globe. He was
a man who absorbed America completely, its beauty,
its chaos, its hypocrisy, and its profound promise.
The revolutionary structure he gifted to the
world of literature provided a vessel for every
future voice, regardless of the flaws of the
man who created it. This leaves us with one final
provocative thought for you to carry forward
from this deep dive. The discussion about Whitman's
deeply contradictory views on race and nationalism,
paired with his immense influence on democratic
poets of all backgrounds, including those he
personally harbored prejudice against, raises
this crucial question. How can a work of art,
once separated from the flawed biography of its
creator, achieve a purity of democratic idealism
that the author himself never consistently embodied?