WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.879 Welcome back to The Deep Dive, where we take 00:00:01.879 --> 00:00:04.299 a stack of sources, articles, biographies, and 00:00:04.299 --> 00:00:07.120 historical research and build you a direct, fast, 00:00:07.299 --> 00:00:09.619 and ultimately fascinating path to expertise. 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:13.160 Today, we are wrestling with a literary giant, 00:00:13.359 --> 00:00:17.100 someone whose life and work are, well, as complex 00:00:17.100 --> 00:00:19.100 and contradictory as the nation he attempted 00:00:19.100 --> 00:00:21.399 to encapsulate. We're talking about Walter Whitman 00:00:21.399 --> 00:00:24.000 Jr. That's right. Whitman, who lived from 1819 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:26.920 to 1892, is so much more than just a famous name. 00:00:27.059 --> 00:00:30.010 He's a foundational American voice. He's often 00:00:30.010 --> 00:00:32.270 called the father of free verse. And while that's 00:00:32.270 --> 00:00:35.469 accurate, it barely scratches the surface of 00:00:35.469 --> 00:00:38.189 how truly revolutionary and how utterly controversial 00:00:38.189 --> 00:00:40.670 his impact was during his time. It really does. 00:00:40.770 --> 00:00:42.329 The source material we've gathered for this is 00:00:42.329 --> 00:00:44.990 a comprehensive, well, deep dive into his biography. 00:00:45.229 --> 00:00:47.369 We're exploring the chaos of his early life, 00:00:47.490 --> 00:00:50.310 the self -reliant publication of his magnum opus, 00:00:50.310 --> 00:00:53.329 Leaves of Grass, his turbulent time as a Civil 00:00:53.329 --> 00:00:55.810 War nurse in Washington. And crucially, the intense 00:00:55.810 --> 00:00:59.060 complexity of his personal beliefs. from sexuality 00:00:59.060 --> 00:01:02.640 to nationalism and, yes, race. Our mission today 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.939 is to unpack this material and give you a detailed 00:01:05.939 --> 00:01:09.519 understanding of how this self -made, often despised 00:01:09.519 --> 00:01:12.700 figure earned his place at the absolute top of 00:01:12.700 --> 00:01:15.599 the literary pyramid. The praise is just staggering. 00:01:15.859 --> 00:01:18.420 The Poetry Foundation doesn't hesitate, calling 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:21.920 him America's world poet, a latter -day successor 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:25.769 to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. I mean, 00:01:25.790 --> 00:01:28.049 that's quite a list. It's the highest possible 00:01:28.049 --> 00:01:30.150 praise. And then there's the modernist master, 00:01:30.489 --> 00:01:33.549 Ezra Pound. You know, a poet who often detested 00:01:33.549 --> 00:01:36.530 Victorian sentimentality. He offered this profound, 00:01:36.670 --> 00:01:39.569 concise summary. America's poet. He is America. 00:01:39.849 --> 00:01:42.450 He is America. So today we're going to explore 00:01:42.450 --> 00:01:44.510 the restless, contradictory life that led to 00:01:44.510 --> 00:01:47.030 that astonishing, sweeping assessment, starting 00:01:47.030 --> 00:01:49.269 right from his turbulent roots. To understand 00:01:49.269 --> 00:01:51.250 the poet, you first have to understand the rough, 00:01:51.409 --> 00:01:53.790 as he called himself. Whitman was born in West 00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:56.230 Hills, New York, in 1819. He was the second of 00:01:56.230 --> 00:01:59.090 nine children. Nine, to Quaker parents of English 00:01:59.090 --> 00:02:01.349 and Dutch descent. And one of the first details 00:02:01.349 --> 00:02:03.209 we find is that he was immediately nicknamed 00:02:03.209 --> 00:02:05.909 Walt to distinguish him from his father, Walter 00:02:05.909 --> 00:02:08.789 Sr. This early life was marked by this incredible 00:02:08.789 --> 00:02:11.110 financial insecurity, wasn't it? Absolutely. 00:02:11.389 --> 00:02:13.669 His family lived in a constant series of homes 00:02:13.669 --> 00:02:16.710 in Brooklyn. They were perpetually moving because 00:02:16.710 --> 00:02:21.090 his father made these relentless and unfortunately 00:02:21.090 --> 00:02:23.949 unsuccessful investments in real estate. So Whitman 00:02:23.949 --> 00:02:26.050 himself looked back on his childhood as being 00:02:26.050 --> 00:02:29.189 generally restless and deeply unhappy. Yes. And 00:02:29.189 --> 00:02:30.909 it was all because of this perpetual financial 00:02:30.909 --> 00:02:34.150 struggle. You can really see the foundation of 00:02:34.150 --> 00:02:36.310 his empathy for the working man right there in 00:02:36.310 --> 00:02:38.590 his own experience. And that economic pressure, 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:41.520 it meant that his formula. education ended incredibly 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:44.120 early. So early. The sources really emphasize 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:46.560 this. He walked away from traditional schooling 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:49.280 at age 11. Not by choice, though. Not at all. 00:02:49.379 --> 00:02:51.300 Yeah. It was because he had to find employment 00:02:51.300 --> 00:02:55.000 to help his struggling family survive. This necessity 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.500 really shaped his self -taught, self -made identity. 00:02:58.719 --> 00:03:00.900 So what did that initial grind look like? I mean, 00:03:00.919 --> 00:03:02.840 it sounds like a true 19th century apprenticeship. 00:03:03.300 --> 00:03:06.719 It was. His very first jobs included serving 00:03:06.719 --> 00:03:09.849 as an office boy for lawyers. And then he became 00:03:09.849 --> 00:03:12.090 an apprentice, or printer's devil as they called 00:03:12.090 --> 00:03:15.030 it, for a weekly newspaper called The Patriot. 00:03:15.069 --> 00:03:18.810 The printer's devil. That experience, you know, 00:03:18.810 --> 00:03:21.030 as the errand boy and often the lowest worker 00:03:21.030 --> 00:03:23.509 in the shop, was perhaps the most consequential 00:03:23.509 --> 00:03:26.250 part of his education. How so? Well, it's where 00:03:26.250 --> 00:03:28.009 he learned about the inner workings of the printing 00:03:28.009 --> 00:03:31.330 press, how to set type by hand, and how to physically 00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:34.400 manifest words into permanent print. So these 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:36.800 weren't just jobs. No, these were the technical 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:38.919 skills he would later use to literally print 00:03:38.919 --> 00:03:41.879 his own revolutionary book. It's an incredible 00:03:41.879 --> 00:03:44.639 through line. It is a powerful connection. The 00:03:44.639 --> 00:03:46.719 poet who would break all the rules was, at his 00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:50.080 core, a craftsman of the printed word. But before 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:52.599 we get to all that chaos, there is one small, 00:03:52.819 --> 00:03:55.219 almost perfect memory from his childhood that 00:03:55.219 --> 00:03:57.800 really stands out. Yes, the legendary meeting 00:03:57.800 --> 00:03:59.840 with the Marquis de Lafayette. Right. So July 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:02.919 4th, 1825, Lafayette was in Brooklyn for the 00:04:02.919 --> 00:04:04.879 cornerstone setting of the Brooklyn Apprentice's 00:04:04.879 --> 00:04:07.979 Library. And while they were celebrating, the 00:04:07.979 --> 00:04:10.580 Revolutionary War hero apparently lifted six 00:04:10.580 --> 00:04:12.960 -year -old Walt in the air and kissed him on 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:15.530 the cheek. Whitman recalled this moment later 00:04:15.530 --> 00:04:18.290 as a genuinely happy memory. A moment of connection 00:04:18.290 --> 00:04:20.709 to the spirit of American Revolution. Exactly. 00:04:20.750 --> 00:04:24.389 And almost poetically, Whitman later came full 00:04:24.389 --> 00:04:26.970 circle, actually working as a librarian at that 00:04:26.970 --> 00:04:29.529 very institution, the Brooklyn Apprentices Library. 00:04:29.949 --> 00:04:32.870 The boy embraced by revolutionary history at 00:04:32.870 --> 00:04:35.649 an institution dedicated to learning. It's just 00:04:35.649 --> 00:04:38.689 the perfect symbolic start for the self -proclaimed 00:04:38.689 --> 00:04:41.509 poet of democracy. But the path to that destiny 00:04:41.509 --> 00:04:44.430 was incredibly messy. He leaves Brooklyn at 16, 00:04:44.709 --> 00:04:46.730 tries to make it as a compositor in New York 00:04:46.730 --> 00:04:49.550 City. And he immediately hits these severe financial 00:04:49.550 --> 00:04:51.990 roadblocks. Right. First, a devastating fire 00:04:51.990 --> 00:04:53.990 sweeps through the printing district, which wipes 00:04:53.990 --> 00:04:56.350 out a lot of the work. And then the economy collapses. 00:04:56.689 --> 00:04:58.850 Exactly. The general economic collapse leading 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:02.550 up to the infamous Panic of 1837 hits him hard. 00:05:02.709 --> 00:05:04.769 So this financial instability just keeps forcing 00:05:04.769 --> 00:05:07.350 him back to Long Island. He taught intermittently 00:05:07.350 --> 00:05:10.490 at various schools between 1836 and 1838, and 00:05:10.490 --> 00:05:13.970 again later. Our sources are clear on this. He 00:05:13.970 --> 00:05:17.310 found teaching deeply unsatisfying. Which led 00:05:17.310 --> 00:05:20.569 him to his next hustle, media ownership. He literally 00:05:20.569 --> 00:05:23.930 tried to be his own newspaper boss. He founded 00:05:23.930 --> 00:05:25.810 his own paper in Huntington, New York, called 00:05:25.810 --> 00:05:27.790 The Long Islander. And when you say he ran it, 00:05:27.850 --> 00:05:29.490 you mean he ran it. I mean, he was everything. 00:05:30.050 --> 00:05:32.649 The publisher, the editor, the press man, the 00:05:32.649 --> 00:05:35.110 distribution manager, and the home delivery boy. 00:05:35.550 --> 00:05:38.610 That level of personal, physical labor in the 00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:40.829 service of written communication is extraordinary. 00:05:41.050 --> 00:05:45.370 It is. But true to his restless nature, he sold 00:05:45.370 --> 00:05:48.290 the paper after only 10 months. He simply couldn't 00:05:48.290 --> 00:05:50.149 settle. He kept bouncing around, working for 00:05:50.149 --> 00:05:51.990 the Long Island Democrat, and then he edited 00:05:51.990 --> 00:05:55.040 the Aurora in 1842. But his most significant 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.000 and maybe most stable journalistic job was editing 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:01.720 the Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848. Yes. And 00:06:01.720 --> 00:06:04.079 it's here, while working a standard journalism 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:07.100 job, that the seed of his poetic revolution was 00:06:07.100 --> 00:06:09.519 truly planted. This is where it gets really interesting 00:06:09.519 --> 00:06:11.680 because the connection is so counterintuitive. 00:06:11.959 --> 00:06:14.459 What does a hard -nosed, working -class Brooklyn 00:06:14.459 --> 00:06:17.779 editor have to do with the highly refined world 00:06:17.779 --> 00:06:21.110 of Italian opera? Everything, apparently. While 00:06:21.110 --> 00:06:22.829 reviewing performances for the Brooklyn Eagle, 00:06:22.970 --> 00:06:25.930 Whitman became an absolute devotee of Italian 00:06:25.930 --> 00:06:29.000 opera. The big dramatic works. Exactly. Bellini, 00:06:29.180 --> 00:06:31.980 Donizetti, and Verdi. He was obsessed with the 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:34.939 dramatic range, the structure, and the emotional 00:06:34.939 --> 00:06:37.740 resonance. And he later stated very explicitly, 00:06:38.040 --> 00:06:40.139 but for the opera, I could never have written 00:06:40.139 --> 00:06:42.879 Leaves of Grass. That's a phenomenal claim. It 00:06:42.879 --> 00:06:45.220 is. So how did he translate the experience of 00:06:45.220 --> 00:06:47.720 Italian opera into the creation of free verse 00:06:47.720 --> 00:06:49.899 poetry? Well, think about the nature of opera. 00:06:49.980 --> 00:06:53.740 It's grand. It's expansive. It tells a huge, 00:06:53.759 --> 00:06:57.500 messy, universal story using these long, sweeping 00:06:57.500 --> 00:07:01.519 melodies. lines that they disregard the rigid 00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:04.360 structure of a traditional song. OK, I can see 00:07:04.360 --> 00:07:06.319 that. Whitman's free verse did the same thing. 00:07:06.399 --> 00:07:09.399 The cadences, the almost breathless list making, 00:07:09.540 --> 00:07:11.720 the rhetorical amplitude, the sheer length of 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:14.540 his lines. It all mirrored the rhythmic and narrative 00:07:14.540 --> 00:07:17.040 architecture of those grand Italian librettos. 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:19.639 He was creating a literary form designed for 00:07:19.639 --> 00:07:21.939 the American continent, but he was echoing the 00:07:21.939 --> 00:07:24.279 musical and emotional scale he found in the opera 00:07:24.279 --> 00:07:27.480 house. He traded meter and rhyme for dramatic 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:30.899 rhythm. That's a fascinating insight. But his 00:07:30.899 --> 00:07:32.540 time at the Brooklyn Eagle, which introduced 00:07:32.540 --> 00:07:35.720 him to this world, it ended abruptly in 1848 00:07:35.720 --> 00:07:39.269 because of politics. Specifically, The turbulent 00:07:39.269 --> 00:07:41.750 debate over the expansion of slavery. Right. 00:07:41.889 --> 00:07:45.209 So Whitman sided with the anti -slavery, free 00:07:45.209 --> 00:07:47.910 -soil, barn -burner wing of the Democratic Party. 00:07:48.209 --> 00:07:50.209 And to understand this, you need a little context. 00:07:50.589 --> 00:07:52.970 Yeah. The free -soilers weren't abolitionists 00:07:52.970 --> 00:07:56.829 in the purely moral sense. They opposed extending 00:07:56.829 --> 00:07:59.829 slavery into new territories, primarily because 00:07:59.829 --> 00:08:01.790 they saw it as a threat to free white labor. 00:08:02.139 --> 00:08:04.199 Because slave labor would artificially depress 00:08:04.199 --> 00:08:07.220 wages and hurt the livelihood of northern businessmen 00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:10.000 and workers. Exactly. So when we call him a poet 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:12.079 of democracy, we have to acknowledge that his 00:08:12.079 --> 00:08:14.680 foundation for anti -slavery sentiment was often 00:08:14.680 --> 00:08:17.300 one of economic self -interest, not pure moral 00:08:17.300 --> 00:08:19.819 conviction. It's a key distinction. It highlights 00:08:19.819 --> 00:08:22.259 the constant tension in Whitman's life between 00:08:22.259 --> 00:08:25.740 the sublime egalitarian ideal and the pragmatic, 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.379 often self -interested reality of American politics. 00:08:28.699 --> 00:08:30.839 And the owner of the Eagle, Isaac Van Anden, 00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:33.659 was on the other side. Completely. He was a conservative 00:08:33.659 --> 00:08:36.360 hunker, a wing of the party that essentially 00:08:36.360 --> 00:08:40.059 hunkered down to preserve the status quo. Whitman's 00:08:40.059 --> 00:08:42.500 radical faction was willing to burn down the 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:45.320 barn, the Democratic Party itself, to prevent 00:08:45.320 --> 00:08:48.379 slavery's expansion. This political rift cost 00:08:48.379 --> 00:08:51.659 him his job. So before he fully committed to 00:08:51.659 --> 00:08:54.159 poetry, there was one more strange professional 00:08:54.159 --> 00:08:58.080 detour in 1858 that just feels almost hilariously 00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:00.820 out of place. Yes, the pseudoscientific Health 00:09:00.820 --> 00:09:03.100 Tract. He published Manly Health and Training 00:09:03.100 --> 00:09:06.259 under the rather amusing pen name Mose Velsor. 00:09:06.590 --> 00:09:08.570 Which was a nod to his mother's family name, 00:09:08.730 --> 00:09:10.889 Van Velsor. That's the one. I have to admit, 00:09:10.990 --> 00:09:12.870 reading this in the sources, the man who would 00:09:12.870 --> 00:09:15.470 revolutionize American poetry was also penning 00:09:15.470 --> 00:09:17.509 self -help advice that modern writers have called 00:09:17.509 --> 00:09:20.409 quirky, so over the top, and just wacky. And 00:09:20.409 --> 00:09:23.309 the advice was incredibly prescriptive and bizarrely 00:09:23.309 --> 00:09:26.049 specific. He recommended growing a beard, which 00:09:26.049 --> 00:09:28.350 he certainly did, taking daily cold water baths, 00:09:28.350 --> 00:09:31.549 getting up early. And nude sunbathing. And nude 00:09:31.549 --> 00:09:34.909 sunbathing. But perhaps the most enduringly strange 00:09:34.909 --> 00:09:38.649 piece of advice was his radical diet. He advocated 00:09:38.649 --> 00:09:41.610 eating meat almost exclusively, dismissing vegetables 00:09:41.610 --> 00:09:44.710 as offering little to no real strength. It's 00:09:44.710 --> 00:09:47.149 just astonishing that this mixture of democratic 00:09:47.149 --> 00:09:51.190 manifesto, journalistic hustle, and wacky self 00:09:51.190 --> 00:09:53.590 -help preceded his literary breakthrough. It 00:09:53.590 --> 00:09:56.110 really shows the incredible chaotic energy he 00:09:56.110 --> 00:09:58.169 channeled into everything he did. And that chaotic 00:09:58.169 --> 00:10:01.480 energy finally found its singular focus. Which 00:10:01.480 --> 00:10:03.980 brings us to section two, the revolutionary text 00:10:03.980 --> 00:10:05.940 Leaves of Grass and the birth of the American 00:10:05.940 --> 00:10:08.320 epic. After years of chasing what he called the 00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:11.399 usual rewards in journalism and fiction, Whitman 00:10:11.399 --> 00:10:14.159 decided to fully transform into the poet he believed 00:10:14.159 --> 00:10:16.840 America needed. He consciously intended to write 00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:19.120 a distinct American epic, something that broke 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:21.279 entirely from the European poetic tradition. 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:23.980 He chose free verse, but the surprising source 00:10:23.980 --> 00:10:26.080 of his rhythm was, ironically, the King James 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:29.440 Bible. He used its long, parallel cadences to 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:31.799 ground his revolutionary lines. And the very 00:10:31.799 --> 00:10:34.639 nature of the first edition in 1855 tells the 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:36.940 story of this self -made prophet. This was a 00:10:36.940 --> 00:10:40.440 completely self -reliant venture. Entirely. Whitman 00:10:40.440 --> 00:10:42.919 financed the publication himself. He had the 00:10:42.919 --> 00:10:46.500 795 copies printed at a local print shop in Brooklyn. 00:10:46.679 --> 00:10:49.320 Often using the downtime. Exactly. During employee 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:51.940 breaks from commercial jobs. This meant he didn't 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:54.659 just write the book. He was involved in the physical, 00:10:54.779 --> 00:10:58.120 messy labor of producing it, which recalls his 00:10:58.120 --> 00:11:00.259 days as a printer's devil. And the cover was 00:11:00.259 --> 00:11:02.799 a deliberate statement. It completely lacked 00:11:02.799 --> 00:11:05.019 an author's name on the title page. Instead, 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:08.039 there was this incredibly rugged, engraved portrait 00:11:08.039 --> 00:11:10.980 of Whitman. hands casually tucked into his trousers, 00:11:11.179 --> 00:11:14.460 wearing his hat indoors, a true image of one 00:11:14.460 --> 00:11:17.059 of the roughs. His identity was deliberately 00:11:17.059 --> 00:11:20.019 submerged into the text, only emerging some 500 00:11:20.019 --> 00:11:22.879 lines into the dominant poem. And when he revealed 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:25.200 himself, it was a manifesto. Oh, absolutely. 00:11:25.480 --> 00:11:27.980 He called himself Walt Whitman, an American. 00:11:28.409 --> 00:11:31.090 One of the roughs, a cosmos, disorderly, fleshly, 00:11:31.110 --> 00:11:33.570 and sensual. No sentimentalist, no stander above 00:11:33.570 --> 00:11:36.169 men or women or apart from them. No more modest 00:11:36.169 --> 00:11:38.730 than immodest. That declaration is a total rejection 00:11:38.730 --> 00:11:41.230 of Victorian politeness and a full embrace of 00:11:41.230 --> 00:11:43.629 the physical, messy, democratic American experience. 00:11:44.070 --> 00:11:46.110 The inaugural volume contained this enormous 00:11:46.110 --> 00:11:49.830 827 -line prose preface, basically a theoretical 00:11:49.830 --> 00:11:53.169 treatise on American poetry and 12 untitled poems. 00:11:53.629 --> 00:11:57.110 And it was dominated by the 336 lines that would 00:11:57.110 --> 00:12:00.070 later be titled Song of Myself. Song of Myself 00:12:00.070 --> 00:12:03.669 was and it remains a revolutionary text. It assumes 00:12:03.669 --> 00:12:05.629 the identity of every single person in the United 00:12:05.629 --> 00:12:08.769 States. the laborer, the prostitute, the rich, 00:12:08.809 --> 00:12:10.710 the poor, the oppressed, the oppressor. He uses 00:12:10.710 --> 00:12:14.190 that encompassing eye to literally sing America 00:12:14.190 --> 00:12:17.009 into existence. The sheer scope was unprecedented. 00:12:17.309 --> 00:12:19.789 It was. What's truly fascinating here is the 00:12:19.789 --> 00:12:22.309 immediate validation he received from Ralph Waldo 00:12:22.309 --> 00:12:24.250 Emerson, who was arguably the most influential 00:12:24.250 --> 00:12:26.669 literary figure in America at the time. Emerson, 00:12:26.870 --> 00:12:29.110 the great champion of American transcendentalism, 00:12:29.149 --> 00:12:31.610 had been calling for years for the first truly 00:12:31.610 --> 00:12:34.909 American poet to emerge, free of English constraint. 00:12:35.129 --> 00:12:37.139 And when he read Leaves of... He was completely 00:12:37.139 --> 00:12:39.919 captivated. He wrote Whitman a five -page flattering 00:12:39.919 --> 00:12:42.340 letter calling the book the most extraordinary 00:12:42.340 --> 00:12:44.580 piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:47.580 contributed. For Emerson, Whitman had finally 00:12:47.580 --> 00:12:50.320 fulfilled his call. And Whitman, the former editor, 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:53.480 the natural hustler, he saw this as the ultimate 00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:56.600 marketing opportunity. This is where he pioneers 00:12:56.600 --> 00:12:59.259 the modern cover blurb in a move that was both 00:12:59.259 --> 00:13:02.539 audacious and completely unauthorized. It was 00:13:02.539 --> 00:13:05.330 a masterstroke of self -promotion. Whitman took 00:13:05.330 --> 00:13:08.389 one line from Emerson's private letter, I greet 00:13:08.389 --> 00:13:11.929 you at the beginning of a great career, and embossed 00:13:11.929 --> 00:13:14.610 it in glorious, attention -grabbing gold leaf 00:13:14.610 --> 00:13:17.600 right onto the spine of the second edition. And 00:13:17.600 --> 00:13:20.539 you have to put this in context. In 1856, this 00:13:20.539 --> 00:13:23.759 kind of commercialized use of a private endorsement 00:13:23.759 --> 00:13:26.519 was absolutely unheard of. It was crass, it was 00:13:26.519 --> 00:13:29.279 journalistic, and it was brilliant. He leveraged 00:13:29.279 --> 00:13:31.580 the prestige of the literary establishment to 00:13:31.580 --> 00:13:33.980 advertise a book that much of that establishment 00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:36.059 was about to label as filth. Because despite 00:13:36.059 --> 00:13:38.120 Emerson's praise, the book stirred up significant 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:40.639 controversy. Oh, a huge amount. It was criticized 00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:43.279 fiercely for its obscene nature and its overt, 00:13:43.399 --> 00:13:46.159 unabashed sensuality. The language about the 00:13:46.159 --> 00:13:48.379 body, about... sexuality about physical intimacy 00:13:48.379 --> 00:13:51.580 it shocked polite society and the reactions were 00:13:51.580 --> 00:13:53.840 vicious we have the account of a geologist peter 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:56.600 leslie writing to emerson basically begging him 00:13:56.600 --> 00:13:59.740 not to praise the book he called it trashy profane 00:13:59.740 --> 00:14:03.480 and obscene and labeled whitman himself a pretentious 00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:06.919 ass The publisher was terrified. The second edition, 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:09.879 which included 20 additional poems, almost wasn't 00:14:09.879 --> 00:14:11.899 released because of the uproar over the sexual 00:14:11.899 --> 00:14:14.539 themes. But Whitman was relentless. Yeah. He 00:14:14.539 --> 00:14:16.620 believed the body was sacred and that poetry 00:14:16.620 --> 00:14:19.340 must speak truthfully about life in all its messy 00:14:19.340 --> 00:14:21.799 totality. And this wasn't a static project for 00:14:21.799 --> 00:14:23.500 him. He didn't just publish it once and move 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:25.899 on. Not at all. He spent the entire rest of his 00:14:25.899 --> 00:14:28.279 life expanding and revising this one central 00:14:28.279 --> 00:14:31.200 work. We see new editions rolling out in 1860, 00:14:31.340 --> 00:14:35.740 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881. And finally, the capstone 00:14:35.740 --> 00:14:39.580 deathbed edition in 1889, 1891. It truly was 00:14:39.580 --> 00:14:42.179 an evolving, living document, reflecting his 00:14:42.179 --> 00:14:44.419 changing perspective on America, his health, 00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:47.019 and his poetic goals. Yet, despite the enormous 00:14:47.019 --> 00:14:49.720 literary buzz and the controversy, none of this 00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:51.679 translated into financial stability for him. 00:14:51.759 --> 00:14:54.259 Not in the slightest. Whitman had constant financial 00:14:54.259 --> 00:14:56.419 difficulties during this era, which forced him 00:14:56.419 --> 00:14:58.519 back into the journalistic hack work he supposedly 00:14:58.519 --> 00:15:01.519 left behind. He edited Brooklyn's Daily Times 00:15:01.519 --> 00:15:05.100 from 1857 to 1859. It just shows that even the 00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:07.840 self -proclaimed poet prophet of America couldn't 00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:10.840 escape the daily grind. His career before the 00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:13.340 Civil War was defined by this brutal tension 00:15:13.340 --> 00:15:16.779 between artistic genius and the reality of poverty. 00:15:17.549 --> 00:15:20.269 That precarious lifestyle and that internal artistic 00:15:20.269 --> 00:15:22.649 struggle changed dramatically with the outbreak 00:15:22.649 --> 00:15:25.190 of the American Civil War, which brings us to 00:15:25.190 --> 00:15:28.490 Section 3, War, Washington, and the Decline of 00:15:28.490 --> 00:15:31.389 the Body. The war didn't just change America. 00:15:31.529 --> 00:15:34.809 It completely redefined Walt Whitman. At the 00:15:34.809 --> 00:15:36.649 start of the conflict, he was actively involved. 00:15:36.789 --> 00:15:40.159 He published his poem, Beat. Beat drums. Which 00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:42.419 was a highly patriotic rally call for the union 00:15:42.419 --> 00:15:44.440 cause, wasn't it? Urging citizens to abandon 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:46.960 their daily lives for the necessity of war. Yes. 00:15:47.580 --> 00:15:50.100 But the catalyst for his move south and his transition 00:15:50.100 --> 00:15:53.179 to a wartime volunteer was deeply personal. It 00:15:53.179 --> 00:15:55.159 was driven by a fear that every family with a 00:15:55.159 --> 00:15:57.600 soldier faced. His brother, George, had joined 00:15:57.600 --> 00:16:00.740 the Union Army. Indeed. And in December 1862, 00:16:01.059 --> 00:16:03.379 Whitman saw a listing of casualties in the New 00:16:03.379 --> 00:16:05.100 York Tribune that he feared was his brother, 00:16:05.240 --> 00:16:08.019 listed as First Lieutenant G .W. Whitmore. So 00:16:08.019 --> 00:16:10.019 he immediately dropped everything and rushed 00:16:10.019 --> 00:16:12.639 south. He had a rough journey. He even had his 00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:15.110 wallet stolen along the way. But thankfully, 00:16:15.269 --> 00:16:18.049 he found George alive. Just a superficial wound. 00:16:18.210 --> 00:16:21.230 A superficial cheek wound, yes. But the journey 00:16:21.230 --> 00:16:23.710 itself and what he saw at the hospitals and battle 00:16:23.710 --> 00:16:26.789 sites fundamentally altered his trajectory. He 00:16:26.789 --> 00:16:29.330 was profoundly affected by the massive scale 00:16:29.330 --> 00:16:32.009 of human suffering. He wrote so vividly about 00:16:32.009 --> 00:16:34.250 it, seeing the endless procession of wounded 00:16:34.250 --> 00:16:37.269 men and perhaps most viscerally, witnessing the 00:16:37.269 --> 00:16:40.549 heaps of their amputated limbs. The shock of 00:16:40.549 --> 00:16:43.090 the war's physical reality was such that he never 00:16:43.090 --> 00:16:45.490 returned to New York to live permanently. He 00:16:45.490 --> 00:16:47.669 moves to Washington, D .C., and immediately begins 00:16:47.669 --> 00:16:49.850 volunteering as a nurse in the Army hospitals. 00:16:50.169 --> 00:16:53.629 And this wasn't a paid position. This was a humane, 00:16:53.629 --> 00:16:56.710 deeply personal service. He ministered to somewhere 00:16:56.710 --> 00:16:59.750 between 80 ,000 and 100 ,000 wounded or sick 00:16:59.750 --> 00:17:01.870 soldiers during the war. Bringing them small 00:17:01.870 --> 00:17:04.109 comforts, reading to them, writing letters home 00:17:04.109 --> 00:17:06.609 for them. He detailed this work vividly, often 00:17:06.609 --> 00:17:09.559 at his own expense, in his writing. His accounts, 00:17:09.619 --> 00:17:11.519 like The Great Army of the Sick, published in 00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:14.559 1863, and his later book, Memoranda During the 00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:17.019 War. They provide some of the most moving, ground 00:17:17.019 --> 00:17:19.339 -level accounts of the Civil War's impact on 00:17:19.339 --> 00:17:22.519 the individual body. This experience really became 00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:26.059 the crucible for his mature work. It did. But 00:17:26.059 --> 00:17:29.220 as a volunteer, he still needed to eat. So his 00:17:29.220 --> 00:17:31.180 friends helped him secure temporary employment? 00:17:31.420 --> 00:17:33.740 Right. He got part -time work in the Army Paymaster's 00:17:33.740 --> 00:17:37.460 office. And then in 1865, he secured a better 00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:40.319 -paying, low -grade clerkship in the Bureau of 00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:42.319 Indian Affairs. But that government stability 00:17:42.319 --> 00:17:46.019 was short -lived. On June 30, 1865, he was fired 00:17:46.019 --> 00:17:48.519 by the new Secretary of the Interior, a former 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:51.359 senator named James Harlan. And while Harlan 00:17:51.359 --> 00:17:53.420 claimed it was because Whitman's attendance was 00:17:53.420 --> 00:17:55.960 sporadic, the prevailing belief among historians 00:17:55.960 --> 00:17:58.839 is that Harlan fired Whitman purely on moral 00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:01.440 grounds. That's right. On moral grounds. Was 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:03.779 this related to his poetry? Yes. The suspicion 00:18:03.779 --> 00:18:06.240 is that Harlan, a conservative moralist, found 00:18:06.240 --> 00:18:08.980 a copy of the explicit 1860 edition of Leaves 00:18:08.980 --> 00:18:11.259 of Grass in Whitman's desk. And for a government 00:18:11.259 --> 00:18:14.019 clerk to be writing what Harlan viewed as obscene 00:18:14.019 --> 00:18:16.700 poetry was, for him, grounds for dismissal. And 00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:19.559 this political or moral persecution instantly 00:18:19.559 --> 00:18:22.279 turned the poet into a cause celebre. His friend, 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:24.720 William Douglas O 'Connor, reacted instantly 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:28.420 and furiously. O 'Connor secured Whitman a transfer 00:18:28.420 --> 00:18:30.460 to the Attorney General's office, so he kept 00:18:30.460 --> 00:18:33.240 a job. But O 'Connor didn't let the moral argument 00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:36.059 lie. No, he published an aggressive, though highly 00:18:36.059 --> 00:18:40.180 biased, defense of Whitman in January 1866 called 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:43.180 The Good Gray Poet. And this pamphlet successfully 00:18:43.180 --> 00:18:46.660 reframed Whitman's image. Completely. It moved 00:18:46.660 --> 00:18:49.559 him away from the controversial rough and repositioned 00:18:49.559 --> 00:18:52.700 him as this wholesome, patriotic, long -suffering 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:55.450 man of principle, The Good Gray Poet. And that 00:18:55.450 --> 00:18:58.470 nickname stuck, increasing his popularity tremendously 00:18:58.470 --> 00:19:00.769 and changing his public perception almost overnight. 00:19:01.069 --> 00:19:03.289 The public was already primed to appreciate this 00:19:03.289 --> 00:19:05.410 image, largely due to his work following the 00:19:05.410 --> 00:19:07.630 assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman 00:19:07.630 --> 00:19:10.049 deeply admired. His elegies for Lincoln really 00:19:10.049 --> 00:19:12.210 cemented his role as America's national voice 00:19:12.210 --> 00:19:15.630 in tragedy. He authored two iconic poems, O Captain, 00:19:16.009 --> 00:19:19.069 My Captain, and When Lilac Slashed in the Dooryard 00:19:19.069 --> 00:19:21.190 Bloomed. And it's an interesting detail that 00:19:21.190 --> 00:19:24.809 O Captain. was highly conventional in its form. 00:19:24.910 --> 00:19:27.910 It used meter and rhyme, a stark contrast to 00:19:27.910 --> 00:19:30.509 his free verse. That conventionality made it 00:19:30.509 --> 00:19:33.049 accessible and popular, and it became his only 00:19:33.049 --> 00:19:35.470 poem to appear in anthologies during his lifetime, 00:19:35.710 --> 00:19:38.569 which contributed significantly to his fame. 00:19:38.730 --> 00:19:41.049 Meanwhile, his reputation was expanding globally. 00:19:41.529 --> 00:19:43.589 Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England 00:19:43.589 --> 00:19:47.009 in 1868 and became immensely popular. Largely 00:19:47.009 --> 00:19:49.210 thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of the 00:19:49.210 --> 00:19:51.589 respected English writer Anne Gilchrist, who 00:19:51.589 --> 00:19:53.990 became a lifelong admirer and eventually even 00:19:53.990 --> 00:19:56.339 traveled to America to meet him. But just as 00:19:56.339 --> 00:19:59.200 his fame stabilized, his body began to fail. 00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:02.799 In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke. That 00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:04.980 forced him to move from Washington, D .C. to 00:20:04.980 --> 00:20:07.299 Camden, New Jersey to live with his brother George. 00:20:07.640 --> 00:20:10.579 And his mother died that same year, compounding 00:20:10.579 --> 00:20:12.839 his physical and emotional distress. He was forced 00:20:12.839 --> 00:20:15.119 into decline, but his drive remained. He eventually 00:20:15.119 --> 00:20:17.220 managed to buy his own small home in Camden in 00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:20.680 1884 at 328 Mickle Street. He was often bedridden, 00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:22.819 relying on his housekeeper, Mary Oaks Davis, 00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:25.579 who was the widow of a sea captain. She lived 00:20:25.579 --> 00:20:27.940 with him in exchange for free rent. And the sources 00:20:27.940 --> 00:20:30.200 paint this beautiful, eccentric picture of his 00:20:30.200 --> 00:20:32.660 final years there, living with Davis and her 00:20:32.660 --> 00:20:36.200 menagerie of pets, a cat, a dog, two turtle doves, 00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:38.819 a canary. It's a quiet, domestic end for the 00:20:38.819 --> 00:20:41.099 chaotic American prophet. And he used this time 00:20:41.099 --> 00:20:44.099 for his final artistic dedication. He spent his 00:20:44.099 --> 00:20:46.819 final years polishing and perfecting his great 00:20:46.819 --> 00:20:49.440 work. The sources highlight the profound, almost 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:51.900 religious emotional significance of that final 00:20:51.900 --> 00:20:55.049 collection, the deathbed edition. He considered 00:20:55.049 --> 00:20:58.569 it at last complete after 33 years of hackling 00:20:58.569 --> 00:21:01.789 at it all times and moods of my life, fair weather 00:21:01.789 --> 00:21:04.789 and foul, all parts of the land, and peace and 00:21:04.789 --> 00:21:07.240 war, young and old. He prepared for death with 00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:09.619 the same attention he gave to his book, commissioning 00:21:09.619 --> 00:21:12.140 this massive granite mausoleum shaped like a 00:21:12.140 --> 00:21:14.660 house for $4 ,000, which he visited frequently 00:21:14.660 --> 00:21:16.839 during its construction. When he died on March 00:21:16.839 --> 00:21:21.059 26, 1892, at age 72, the autopsy revealed the 00:21:21.059 --> 00:21:23.559 truth of his suffering. His lungs were operating 00:21:23.559 --> 00:21:25.960 at only one -eighth capacity due to bronchial 00:21:25.960 --> 00:21:28.859 pneumonia, and an egg -sized abscess had eroded 00:21:28.859 --> 00:21:31.400 one of his ribs. His death was a major civic 00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:34.759 event. The public viewing drew over 1 ,000 visitors 00:21:34.759 --> 00:21:37.420 in three hours, with flowers covering his coffin. 00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:40.319 His funeral at Harley Cemetery was a large public 00:21:40.319 --> 00:21:42.859 ceremony. With the famous orator Robert Ingersoll 00:21:42.859 --> 00:21:45.420 delivering the eulogy. But here is the truly 00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:49.299 bizarre footnote to his end. His brain was donated 00:21:49.299 --> 00:21:52.259 to the American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia 00:21:52.259 --> 00:21:55.119 for study. But the sources report that it was 00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:58.589 accidentally destroyed. Yes. The man who embodied 00:21:58.589 --> 00:22:01.230 the American soul, whose life was one of artistic 00:22:01.230 --> 00:22:04.710 chaos, had his final physical remnant destroyed 00:22:04.710 --> 00:22:08.910 through, well, a bureaucratic mistake. The irony 00:22:08.910 --> 00:22:11.329 is profound. The brain that birthed the American 00:22:11.329 --> 00:22:14.069 epic was lost before it could be studied. It's 00:22:14.069 --> 00:22:16.710 a final, powerful symbol of the chaotic genius 00:22:16.710 --> 00:22:19.289 he represented. That biography sets an incredibly 00:22:19.289 --> 00:22:22.130 complex stage for Section 4, unpacking the beliefs 00:22:22.130 --> 00:22:24.390 controversy, contradictions, and the individual. 00:22:24.690 --> 00:22:27.269 Whitman wasn't just a literary stylist. He was 00:22:27.269 --> 00:22:29.509 a self -styled prophet, and his beliefs were 00:22:29.509 --> 00:22:31.750 frequently at war with each other. His entire 00:22:31.750 --> 00:22:35.309 poetic theory was fundamentally symbiotic. He 00:22:35.309 --> 00:22:37.710 defined the goal of the American writer in the 00:22:37.710 --> 00:22:40.509 preface to Leaves of Grass, saying, The proof 00:22:40.509 --> 00:22:43.450 of a poet is that his country absorbs him as 00:22:43.450 --> 00:22:45.869 affectionately as he has absorbed it. And his 00:22:45.869 --> 00:22:48.269 approach involved an idiosyncratic treatment 00:22:48.269 --> 00:22:51.109 of the body and the soul, creating an epic that 00:22:51.109 --> 00:22:53.569 assumed the identity of the common person and 00:22:53.569 --> 00:22:56.549 responded directly to the rapidly urbanizing, 00:22:56.549 --> 00:22:58.730 expanding nation. Let's start with a seemingly 00:22:58.730 --> 00:23:02.250 minor contradiction, alcohol. He was an incredibly 00:23:02.250 --> 00:23:04.829 vocal proponent of temperance, even writing a 00:23:04.829 --> 00:23:07.710 wildly successful sensationalist temperance novel 00:23:07.710 --> 00:23:10.789 called Franklin Evans. Right, back in 1842. And 00:23:10.789 --> 00:23:13.880 he often argued vehemently for prohibition. And 00:23:13.880 --> 00:23:16.039 yet, years later, he completely flip -flopped. 00:23:16.099 --> 00:23:18.119 He expressed deep embarrassment over Franklin 00:23:18.119 --> 00:23:20.700 Evans, calling it damned rot and dismissing it 00:23:20.700 --> 00:23:22.920 entirely. And the irony is, he claimed he wrote 00:23:22.920 --> 00:23:25.500 the entire novel in three days just for the money. 00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:27.539 And that he wrote it while under the influence 00:23:27.539 --> 00:23:30.359 of alcohol himself. Later in life, he became 00:23:30.359 --> 00:23:32.970 quite liberal. openly enjoying local wines and 00:23:32.970 --> 00:23:35.289 champagne. That flip -flop suggests that his 00:23:35.289 --> 00:23:37.549 public moralizing, especially early in his career, 00:23:37.750 --> 00:23:40.009 was often disconnected from his private life 00:23:40.009 --> 00:23:42.450 or was driven purely by the need to hustle for 00:23:42.450 --> 00:23:45.109 cash. Exactly. He was writing to the market, 00:23:45.170 --> 00:23:47.650 even if it contradicted his future beliefs. And 00:23:47.650 --> 00:23:49.210 when we look at his relationship with religion, 00:23:49.329 --> 00:23:52.369 we find a similar kind of tension. We do. He 00:23:52.369 --> 00:23:55.269 was deeply influenced by deism, the belief in 00:23:55.269 --> 00:23:57.750 a creator God who does not interfere, and he 00:23:57.750 --> 00:24:00.730 embraced all religions equally. In Song Myself, 00:24:00.730 --> 00:24:03.329 and with Antecedents, he states he respects and 00:24:03.329 --> 00:24:06.809 accepts every faith. I adopt each theory, myth, 00:24:06.990 --> 00:24:09.630 God, and demigod. I see that the old accounts, 00:24:10.009 --> 00:24:12.450 Bibles, genealogies are true, without exception. 00:24:12.750 --> 00:24:15.130 That sounds broadly spiritual, but was he, say, 00:24:15.369 --> 00:24:18.390 a practicing Christian? No. And the crucial nuance 00:24:18.390 --> 00:24:20.539 is that he was a religious skeptic. He accepted 00:24:20.539 --> 00:24:22.799 all churches and believed in the inherent divinity 00:24:22.799 --> 00:24:24.819 of humanity, but he believed in none of them 00:24:24.819 --> 00:24:27.339 exclusively. His concept of God was pantheist 00:24:27.339 --> 00:24:30.339 or pandeist, that God is both imminent, so within 00:24:30.339 --> 00:24:33.220 the world, and transcendent beyond it. He completely 00:24:33.220 --> 00:24:35.420 rejected the concept of God as separate from 00:24:35.420 --> 00:24:38.059 creation. And he firmly believed the soul was 00:24:38.059 --> 00:24:40.559 immortal and constantly developing, not fixed 00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:43.619 by one creed. Right. Now let's move to the ultimate 00:24:43.619 --> 00:24:47.920 ongoing debate, his sexuality. This is framed 00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:50.900 by biographers as incredibly complex, acknowledging 00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:53.619 the absence of definitive proof, but relying 00:24:53.619 --> 00:24:56.119 heavily on the textual and anecdotal evidence 00:24:56.119 --> 00:24:58.880 provided by the sources. And he is generally 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:01.339 described as homosexual or bisexual in his feelings 00:25:01.339 --> 00:25:03.500 and attractions. His poetry treated love and 00:25:03.500 --> 00:25:06.559 sexuality in an extremely earthy, individualized 00:25:06.559 --> 00:25:09.299 way. And it's essential to understand this was 00:25:09.299 --> 00:25:12.160 before the late 19th century process known as 00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:15.420 the medicalization of sexuality. That's a key 00:25:15.420 --> 00:25:18.019 point. Before that, intense same -sex friendship 00:25:18.019 --> 00:25:20.279 was culturally accepted, if not always understood. 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:22.880 But once sexuality started being categorized 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.619 as a disease or deviance by the medical establishment, 00:25:25.960 --> 00:25:28.380 the cultural stakes changed radically. And we 00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:30.759 have compelling textual evidence for this. The 00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:32.940 sources note that a manuscript of Once I Passed 00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:34.500 Through a Populous City, written when he was 00:25:34.500 --> 00:25:37.420 29, indicates it was originally about his intense 00:25:37.420 --> 00:25:39.660 feeling for a man. Before he revised it to be 00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:41.960 about a woman for publication. Which is significant. 00:25:42.160 --> 00:25:44.759 The man was always present in the poetry, even 00:25:44.759 --> 00:25:47.359 when he felt he had to hide it. And beyond the 00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:50.500 text, our sources detail several intense, intimate 00:25:50.500 --> 00:25:53.039 relationships with men that strongly suggest 00:25:53.039 --> 00:25:56.119 sexual or deep emotional and romantic bonds. 00:25:56.319 --> 00:25:58.460 Who are the key figures here? Well, the most 00:25:58.460 --> 00:26:01.180 famous is likely Peter Doyle. A bus conductor 00:26:01.180 --> 00:26:04.380 Whitman met around 1866 in Washington, D .C. 00:26:04.839 --> 00:26:07.480 They were inseparable for years. And Doyle recalled 00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:10.079 that their connection was instantaneous. He said, 00:26:10.180 --> 00:26:17.359 The emotional depth is undeniable. Whitman even 00:26:17.359 --> 00:26:19.759 coded Doyle's initials numerically in his private 00:26:19.759 --> 00:26:23.440 notebooks as 16 .4. The sources mention others 00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:26.299 as well. Yes. There is Bill Duckett. a young 00:26:26.299 --> 00:26:28.079 man who lived with Whitman for a number of years 00:26:28.079 --> 00:26:30.380 in Camden. A striking photograph of the two men 00:26:30.380 --> 00:26:32.759 is described by biographers as being modeled 00:26:32.759 --> 00:26:35.180 on the conventions of a marriage portrait. Suggesting 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:37.279 they intentionally encrypted their male -male 00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:39.559 desire in a public image. And then there was 00:26:39.559 --> 00:26:43.059 Harry Stafford, a youth Whitman, met in 1876. 00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:46.220 They exchanged rings during their stormy relationship, 00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:48.960 and Stafford wrote about that ring to Whitman, 00:26:49.039 --> 00:26:51.400 saying, there was but one thing to part it from 00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:55.180 me, and that was death. These details taken together, 00:26:55.220 --> 00:26:57.720 they point to deeply intimate, emotional and 00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:00.599 potentially physical partnerships. They do. Yet 00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:02.700 the historical record is profoundly complicated 00:27:02.700 --> 00:27:05.759 by Whitman's own denial late in life, particularly 00:27:05.759 --> 00:27:08.180 when he was corresponding with English poet and 00:27:08.180 --> 00:27:11.400 critic John Addington Simons. Simons, who was 00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:13.920 himself keenly interested in classical male love, 00:27:14.140 --> 00:27:16.480 directly asked whether Whitman's calamus poems 00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:19.839 implied semisexual emotions and actions between 00:27:19.839 --> 00:27:22.240 men. And Whitman issued an extremely explicit 00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:24.599 and vehement denial. He called the suggestion 00:27:24.599 --> 00:27:28.119 terrible and damnable. So why the sudden, fierce 00:27:28.119 --> 00:27:30.279 rejection of something his poetry had celebrated 00:27:30.279 --> 00:27:32.920 for decades? This is where that historical context 00:27:32.920 --> 00:27:35.160 of the medicalization of sexuality is so vital. 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:38.140 By the 1880s, European doctors and thinkers were 00:27:38.140 --> 00:27:40.680 beginning to categorize same -sex desire as a 00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:43.559 definable pathological deviance. So for Whitman, 00:27:43.720 --> 00:27:46.579 who was trying to cement his legacy as the good 00:27:46.579 --> 00:27:49.700 gray poet, a public association with what was 00:27:49.700 --> 00:27:52.660 fast becoming labeled as sexual pathology would 00:27:52.660 --> 00:27:55.640 have been ruinous ruinous to his reputation and 00:27:55.640 --> 00:27:59.480 his book's survival his denial was really a desperate 00:27:59.480 --> 00:28:02.420 act of self -protection against newly forming 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:05.859 social stigma it's a tragic contradiction the 00:28:05.859 --> 00:28:08.420 poet of radical acceptance publicly rejects the 00:28:08.420 --> 00:28:10.819 very identity he lived and celebrated privately 00:28:10.819 --> 00:28:14.269 and to fully seal that denial He insisted, without 00:28:14.269 --> 00:28:16.990 any corroboration, that he had conceived six 00:28:16.990 --> 00:28:20.049 illegitimate children. Scholars are almost universally 00:28:20.049 --> 00:28:22.470 skeptical of that claim about the children, viewing 00:28:22.470 --> 00:28:24.609 it as a clear attempt to provide a heterosexual 00:28:24.609 --> 00:28:27.490 alibi. But the complexity doesn't end there, 00:28:27.609 --> 00:28:29.849 as he did have known relationships with women. 00:28:29.990 --> 00:28:32.210 He noted a romantic friendship with an actress, 00:28:32.349 --> 00:28:34.869 Ellen Gray, whom he referred to as an old sweetheart 00:28:34.869 --> 00:28:37.880 of mine. So as one biographer, Jerome Loving, 00:28:37.880 --> 00:28:39.819 acknowledges, the discussion of Whitman's sexual 00:28:39.819 --> 00:28:42.460 orientation will continue regardless of new evidence 00:28:42.460 --> 00:28:44.440 because the contradictions were just embedded 00:28:44.440 --> 00:28:47.740 in the man himself. And moving from sex to politics, 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.940 the contradictions become even more fraught when 00:28:50.940 --> 00:28:52.920 discussing his views on race and nationalism. 00:28:53.420 --> 00:28:55.859 He is celebrated as the champion of democracy. 00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:59.859 Yet our sources reveal deeply flawed, even racist 00:28:59.859 --> 00:29:02.539 views. He certainly opposed the extension of 00:29:02.539 --> 00:29:04.859 slavery. We saw that with the barn burners. But 00:29:04.859 --> 00:29:07.519 again, he did so largely because it threatened 00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:09.940 free white labor and northern economics. And 00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.319 initially, he vehemently opposed abolitionism, 00:29:12.359 --> 00:29:15.460 calling their methods altruism and officiousness. 00:29:15.930 --> 00:29:17.990 His core argument was that abolitionists were 00:29:17.990 --> 00:29:20.329 destabilizing the nation and disrupting democratic 00:29:20.329 --> 00:29:22.730 order. And the sources indicate his prejudice 00:29:22.730 --> 00:29:25.309 was far more direct than just political strategy. 00:29:25.589 --> 00:29:28.210 It was explicit. David Reynolds notes that Whitman 00:29:28.210 --> 00:29:30.609 openly subscribed to the prevailing white prejudice 00:29:30.609 --> 00:29:32.829 that free African -Americans should not vote. 00:29:33.079 --> 00:29:35.440 He even wrote in prejudiced terms about black 00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:37.880 legislators, shockingly referring to them as 00:29:37.880 --> 00:29:40.259 blacks with about as much intellect and caliber 00:29:40.259 --> 00:29:44.579 as so many baboons. It's hard to read. So given 00:29:44.579 --> 00:29:47.339 these deep seated prejudices, how can scholars 00:29:47.339 --> 00:29:49.859 consistently champion him as the poet of equality? 00:29:50.319 --> 00:29:53.500 This is the central puzzle. It truly is. The 00:29:53.500 --> 00:29:56.359 critic Nathaniel O 'Reilly argues that Whitman's 00:29:56.359 --> 00:30:00.240 imagined America is arrogant, expansionist, hierarchical, 00:30:00.299 --> 00:30:04.000 racist and exclusive. He failed to consistently 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:06.720 reconcile the ingrained racist character of the 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:09.579 United States with the transcendent egalitarian 00:30:09.579 --> 00:30:12.559 ideals he espoused in his poetry. He was a product 00:30:12.559 --> 00:30:15.720 of his time with all its inherent flaws. But, 00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:17.859 and this is the key that unlocks his legacy, 00:30:18.140 --> 00:30:20.920 despite the author's personal prejudices, the 00:30:20.920 --> 00:30:23.579 radically democratic and egalitarian nature embedded 00:30:23.579 --> 00:30:27.059 in the poetry itself served as a universal transcendent 00:30:27.059 --> 00:30:29.640 model. So the song of myself encompasses everyone, 00:30:29.819 --> 00:30:32.579 regardless of skin color or class. And that structure, 00:30:32.740 --> 00:30:35.359 that expansive vision, was taken up by democratic 00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:37.740 poets of all backgrounds. The art achieved an 00:30:37.740 --> 00:30:39.980 idealism that the flawed author himself never 00:30:39.980 --> 00:30:42.660 consistently embodied. We do see glimpses of 00:30:42.660 --> 00:30:45.299 more progressive thought, however. He did exhibit 00:30:45.299 --> 00:30:48.839 some complexity in external policy. In 1864, 00:30:49.119 --> 00:30:51.480 he wrote that Mexico was the only country to 00:30:51.480 --> 00:30:53.980 whom we have ever really done wrong. Acknowledging 00:30:53.980 --> 00:30:56.119 American expansionist guilt, and he argued that 00:30:56.119 --> 00:30:58.000 the indigenous and Spanish Indian elements would 00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:59.880 supply leading traits in the future composite 00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:02.730 American identity. So it shows he was constantly 00:31:02.730 --> 00:31:05.950 wrestling, constantly negotiating the ugly reality 00:31:05.950 --> 00:31:09.690 of 19th century America with the sublime, utopian 00:31:09.690 --> 00:31:12.369 vision of democracy he was creating on the page. 00:31:12.569 --> 00:31:15.329 His life was a microcosm of the very contradictions 00:31:15.329 --> 00:31:17.430 and tensions that defined the American experiment. 00:31:17.690 --> 00:31:20.009 That complexity leads us into our final section, 00:31:20.190 --> 00:31:23.390 Section 5, the enduring Echoes Whitman's massive 00:31:23.390 --> 00:31:27.430 global legacy. Despite, or perhaps because of, 00:31:27.470 --> 00:31:30.430 his contradictions, he is cemented as America's 00:31:30.430 --> 00:31:33.210 national poet. Reflecting the civilization up 00:31:33.210 --> 00:31:35.990 to date, as he might say, the praise continues 00:31:35.990 --> 00:31:39.369 to this day. The literary critic Harold Bloom 00:31:39.369 --> 00:31:42.289 called him the imaginative father and mother 00:31:42.289 --> 00:31:44.819 of Americans. and the poet prophet of the American 00:31:44.819 --> 00:31:47.779 religion. Some early hyperbolic admirers even 00:31:47.779 --> 00:31:49.759 speculated that people would one day celebrate 00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:51.900 the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the 00:31:51.900 --> 00:31:54.779 birth of Christ. To put it mildly. And his poetic 00:31:54.779 --> 00:31:57.220 DNA flows directly through the last century and 00:31:57.220 --> 00:31:59.480 a half of American literature. Even the modernists 00:31:59.480 --> 00:32:00.940 who were trying to break with everything that 00:32:00.940 --> 00:32:03.400 came before had to deal with him. Ezra Pound 00:32:03.400 --> 00:32:06.059 is the best example. Pound initially detested 00:32:06.059 --> 00:32:08.740 Whitman's expansive formless style, but in his 00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:12.299 famous 1913 poem, A Pact, Pound acknowledges 00:32:12.299 --> 00:32:15.960 his debt. He writes, I make truce with you, Walt 00:32:15.960 --> 00:32:18.859 Whitman. I have detested you long enough. I come 00:32:18.859 --> 00:32:21.380 to you as a grown child who has had a pig -headed 00:32:21.380 --> 00:32:23.920 father. I am old enough now to make friends. 00:32:24.279 --> 00:32:26.619 It's a formal recognition that you cannot write 00:32:26.619 --> 00:32:28.839 American poetry without first reckoning with 00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:31.619 Whitman. And his vagabond lifestyle and revolutionary 00:32:31.619 --> 00:32:34.019 spirit directly influenced the 20th century. 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:37.299 He was a literary hero to Langston Hughes, whose 00:32:37.299 --> 00:32:40.400 own poem I Too Sing America is a direct response 00:32:40.400 --> 00:32:43.099 and extension of Whitman's vision. His embrace 00:32:43.099 --> 00:32:45.319 of the rough and the bohemian influenced the 00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:47.480 entire beat movement. Figures like Allen Ginsberg 00:32:47.480 --> 00:32:49.880 and Jack Kerouac, who saw Whitman as the great 00:32:49.880 --> 00:32:52.519 American outsider poet. Anti -war poets like 00:32:52.519 --> 00:32:55.819 Adrian Rich also credited his spirit. And crucially, 00:32:55.940 --> 00:32:58.859 June Jordan praised him specifically for creating 00:32:58.859 --> 00:33:01.680 a democratic poetic vessel whose very structure 00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:03.819 speaks to ethnic minorities from all backgrounds. 00:33:04.099 --> 00:33:06.579 And his reach is truly global, extending far 00:33:06.579 --> 00:33:08.859 beyond the Anglosphere. In Latin America, his 00:33:08.859 --> 00:33:10.759 influence began with the Cuban nationalist José 00:33:10.759 --> 00:33:14.339 Martí in 1887 and spread to giants like César 00:33:14.339 --> 00:33:17.079 Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, and the Argentine master 00:33:17.079 --> 00:33:20.099 Jorge Luis Borges. In Europe, figures like Oscar 00:33:20.099 --> 00:33:22.420 Wilde and the English socialist Edward Carpenter 00:33:22.420 --> 00:33:25.880 saw him as a prophet not only of a utopian democratic 00:33:25.880 --> 00:33:29.059 future, but specifically of same -sex desire. 00:33:29.279 --> 00:33:32.099 The deep passion of comrades. They aligned his 00:33:32.099 --> 00:33:34.220 work with their own emerging visions of societal 00:33:34.220 --> 00:33:36.900 change. And then there's the incredible, almost 00:33:36.900 --> 00:33:39.940 bizarre anecdote about Bram Stoker, the author 00:33:39.940 --> 00:33:43.119 of Dracula. Yes. Stoker was an admirer of Whitman 00:33:43.119 --> 00:33:45.819 and corresponded with him. He actually used the 00:33:45.819 --> 00:33:47.839 poet as one of the models for the character of 00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:50.079 Dracula, seeing him as representing a certain 00:33:50.079 --> 00:33:52.920 kind of primal, quintessential, expansive male 00:33:52.920 --> 00:33:55.779 energy. Whitman's work permeates the arts beyond 00:33:55.779 --> 00:33:58.160 the page. His poetry has been set to music by 00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:00.839 over 500 composers, which rivals the attention 00:34:00.839 --> 00:34:03.119 given to Emily Dickinson among American poets. 00:34:03.279 --> 00:34:05.640 This includes major figures like Leonard Bernstein, 00:34:05.839 --> 00:34:07.519 Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, 00:34:07.660 --> 00:34:10.719 who based his colossal A Sea Symphony on Whitman's 00:34:10.719 --> 00:34:14.079 texts. And modern adaptations continue to explore 00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:17.219 his legacy. There's the 2015 Opera Crossing, 00:34:17.480 --> 00:34:19.800 which was directly inspired by his Civil War 00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:23.199 diaries. And in 2014, a German publisher released 00:34:23.199 --> 00:34:26.139 a bilingual audiobook of The Children of Adam's 00:34:26.139 --> 00:34:28.880 Cycle, featuring a complete reading by Iggy Pop. 00:34:29.199 --> 00:34:31.420 The voice of punk rock reading the father of 00:34:31.420 --> 00:34:33.699 American verse, that's a potent cultural connection. 00:34:34.079 --> 00:34:36.380 He is inescapable in popular culture as well. 00:34:36.750 --> 00:34:39.690 We see his influence in film and TV. He is referenced 00:34:39.690 --> 00:34:42.190 in the classic film Dead Poets Society. Where 00:34:42.190 --> 00:34:45.070 Robin Williams' teacher character uses Whitman's 00:34:45.070 --> 00:34:47.230 democratic spirit to inspire his students to 00:34:47.230 --> 00:34:50.570 Carpatium. And Ray Bradbury's short story, I 00:34:50.570 --> 00:34:53.630 Sing the Body Electric, based on Whitman's 1855 00:34:53.630 --> 00:34:56.429 poem, was adapted for The Twilight Zone and, 00:34:56.530 --> 00:34:59.010 perhaps most famously, used for the showcase 00:34:59.010 --> 00:35:02.110 finale in the 1980 movie Fame. Finally, his name 00:35:02.110 --> 00:35:04.969 is everywhere. from a crater on Mercury to countless 00:35:04.969 --> 00:35:07.690 schools and roads. But the recognition isn't 00:35:07.690 --> 00:35:10.389 always smooth. The most prominent namesake is 00:35:10.389 --> 00:35:12.670 the Walt Whitman Bridge. The one connecting Philadelphia 00:35:12.670 --> 00:35:15.409 and New Jersey. And the naming of that bridge 00:35:15.409 --> 00:35:17.670 faced significant opposition from local citizens. 00:35:17.929 --> 00:35:20.889 Our sources indicate that opponents specifically 00:35:20.889 --> 00:35:24.070 criticized his work for sympathizing with communist 00:35:24.070 --> 00:35:27.489 ideals and, ironically, criticized him for his 00:35:27.489 --> 00:35:30.550 egalitarian view of humanity. A view that was, 00:35:30.690 --> 00:35:33.750 for some mid -century Americans, simply too inclusive? 00:35:34.250 --> 00:35:37.369 Yet, despite those lingering controversies, his 00:35:37.369 --> 00:35:39.989 place in modern cultural history is cemented. 00:35:40.050 --> 00:35:42.650 His induction into the legacy walk in Chicago 00:35:42.650 --> 00:35:46.269 in 2013 celebrated LGBT history. Which firmly 00:35:46.269 --> 00:35:48.550 affirms a crucial part of his legacy, the celebration 00:35:48.550 --> 00:35:51.210 of love and comradeship, that he himself felt 00:35:51.210 --> 00:35:53.630 compelled to deny during his own lifetime. So 00:35:53.630 --> 00:35:55.190 what does this all mean for you as you carry 00:35:55.190 --> 00:35:57.090 this knowledge forward? We've traced the incredible 00:35:57.090 --> 00:35:59.610 trajectory of Walt Whitman from the struggling 00:35:59.610 --> 00:36:02.110 printer's devil who quit school at 11 to the 00:36:02.110 --> 00:36:04.449 chaotic journalist, the controversial Civil War 00:36:04.449 --> 00:36:07.369 nurse, and finally, the poet who redefined verse 00:36:07.369 --> 00:36:09.949 with his self -published, intensely personal 00:36:09.949 --> 00:36:12.510 American epic. We've highlighted the profound 00:36:12.510 --> 00:36:15.079 contradictions that define him. the champion 00:36:15.079 --> 00:36:17.500 of equality who struggled with deep -seated racial 00:36:17.500 --> 00:36:20.559 prejudice and economic self -interest, the intensely 00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:23.420 sensual poet who vehemently denied any semi -sexual 00:36:23.420 --> 00:36:25.840 emotions in his relationships with men, and the 00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:28.940 democratic idealist whose work was labeled obscene 00:36:28.940 --> 00:36:31.400 but inspired freedom across the globe. He was 00:36:31.400 --> 00:36:34.019 a man who absorbed America completely, its beauty, 00:36:34.179 --> 00:36:37.239 its chaos, its hypocrisy, and its profound promise. 00:36:37.659 --> 00:36:40.139 The revolutionary structure he gifted to the 00:36:40.139 --> 00:36:42.360 world of literature provided a vessel for every 00:36:42.360 --> 00:36:44.800 future voice, regardless of the flaws of the 00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:47.820 man who created it. This leaves us with one final 00:36:47.820 --> 00:36:49.659 provocative thought for you to carry forward 00:36:49.659 --> 00:36:52.159 from this deep dive. The discussion about Whitman's 00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:54.699 deeply contradictory views on race and nationalism, 00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:57.199 paired with his immense influence on democratic 00:36:57.199 --> 00:36:59.619 poets of all backgrounds, including those he 00:36:59.619 --> 00:37:02.079 personally harbored prejudice against, raises 00:37:02.079 --> 00:37:05.119 this crucial question. How can a work of art, 00:37:05.159 --> 00:37:07.320 once separated from the flawed biography of its 00:37:07.320 --> 00:37:10.119 creator, achieve a purity of democratic idealism 00:37:10.119 --> 00:37:12.619 that the author himself never consistently embodied?