WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.060 Think back to your high school English class. 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:04.700 You probably remember, like, opening a heavy 00:00:04.700 --> 00:00:07.379 textbook to a picture of Walt Whitman. Oh, yeah. 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:10.740 The classic photo. Right. There he is staring 00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:13.980 out at you with this massive flowing white beard 00:00:13.980 --> 00:00:16.839 looking just incredibly serious. He comes across 00:00:16.839 --> 00:00:19.100 like a marble statue of a Greek philosopher. 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:22.399 Exactly. Completely untouchable, like totally 00:00:22.399 --> 00:00:26.280 sanitized. The ultimate wise, dusty grandfather 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:29.179 of American poetry. I mean, we're generally taught 00:00:29.179 --> 00:00:32.890 to view him with this quiet. almost museum -like 00:00:32.890 --> 00:00:34.850 reverence. But then you actually pull back the 00:00:34.850 --> 00:00:37.450 curtain on the guy and that marble statue just 00:00:37.450 --> 00:00:39.609 shatters. Oh, completely. You find out that Walt 00:00:39.609 --> 00:00:41.969 Whitman was less of a dusty saint and more of 00:00:41.969 --> 00:00:45.429 an eccentric, highly controversial, absolutely 00:00:45.429 --> 00:00:48.810 shameless hustler. He really was. Like a guy 00:00:48.810 --> 00:00:50.770 who would probably be going viral on the internet 00:00:50.770 --> 00:00:53.700 today. So welcome to today's deep dive. We are 00:00:53.700 --> 00:00:56.500 taking a single fascinating source excerpts from 00:00:56.500 --> 00:00:59.740 his extensive Wikipedia page to uncover the real 00:00:59.740 --> 00:01:02.439 father of American free verse. It's quite a story. 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:05.280 It is. Our mission today is to look at the man 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:08.060 who famously wrote that he contained multitudes. 00:01:08.420 --> 00:01:10.140 And as you'll see, that meant a whole lot of 00:01:10.140 --> 00:01:12.319 messy contradictions. We will be looking far 00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:14.920 beyond the actual verses today to understand 00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:18.959 why Whitman's life, his deliberate PR choices, 00:01:19.219 --> 00:01:21.719 and just his sheer audacity. that he still resonates 00:01:21.719 --> 00:01:24.060 so deeply for you today. Yeah, his impact is 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:26.340 everywhere. Right. He didn't just write modern 00:01:26.340 --> 00:01:29.299 America into existence. In many ways, he embodied 00:01:29.299 --> 00:01:32.239 all of its brilliant, chaotic energy. OK, let's 00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:34.120 unpack this, because to understand the genius, 00:01:34.260 --> 00:01:36.180 we have to start with the dropout. The 11 -year 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:39.500 -old dropout. Yes. Whitman was born in 1819 in 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:42.680 New York to Quaker parents who were just constantly 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:45.280 struggling with money. He didn't have some elite 00:01:45.280 --> 00:01:47.439 Ivy League upbringing where he sat around in 00:01:47.439 --> 00:01:50.219 parlors debating philosophy. Far from it. At 00:01:50.219 --> 00:01:52.719 11 years old, his formal education is completely 00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:56.140 over. Wow, 11. Yeah, he drops out to help his 00:01:56.140 --> 00:01:58.579 family pay the bills, going to work as an office 00:01:58.579 --> 00:02:00.879 boy, and eventually becoming a printer's devil. 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:03.040 A printer's devil, which is an apprentice in 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:06.099 a printing shop, right? Exactly. And this lack 00:02:06.099 --> 00:02:08.599 of a traditional rigid education is actually 00:02:08.599 --> 00:02:11.620 the master key to understanding how his literary 00:02:11.620 --> 00:02:14.229 mind developed. Because he was learning the rules. 00:02:14.490 --> 00:02:16.090 Right, he wasn't sitting in a classroom being 00:02:16.090 --> 00:02:19.009 taught to revere the strict structural rules 00:02:19.009 --> 00:02:22.090 of classical British poetry. He was out in the 00:02:22.090 --> 00:02:24.349 streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan absorbing the 00:02:24.349 --> 00:02:28.330 noise of the city, but like how does being a 00:02:28.330 --> 00:02:31.770 printer's apprentice actually shape someone into 00:02:31.770 --> 00:02:34.530 a poet? What was fascinating here is the physical 00:02:34.530 --> 00:02:36.810 mechanism of the job. Yeah. Think about what 00:02:36.810 --> 00:02:39.650 a typesetter actually does in the 1830s. Okay. 00:02:39.969 --> 00:02:42.349 You are physically manipulating small blocks 00:02:42.349 --> 00:02:44.689 of metal. You're placing them backwards on a 00:02:44.689 --> 00:02:47.069 grid. So it's very hands -on. Highly tactile. 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:50.110 You begin to see words not just as invisible 00:02:50.110 --> 00:02:53.050 sounds floating in the air, but as physical objects 00:02:53.050 --> 00:02:55.610 taking up spatial real estate on a page. Oh, 00:02:55.650 --> 00:02:57.629 that makes total sense. You understand the visual 00:02:57.629 --> 00:03:00.060 layout, the weight of the ink. the blank space 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:02.539 around the text. He's looking at language architecturally. 00:03:02.719 --> 00:03:05.560 Exactly. And from there, he essentially becomes 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:08.639 a gig economy worker before the gig economy even 00:03:08.639 --> 00:03:11.099 existed. He really did. He bounces around as 00:03:11.099 --> 00:03:14.000 a journalist, a teacher, an opera reviewer. He 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:16.460 was just writing whatever paid the bills. A pure 00:03:16.460 --> 00:03:19.639 pragmatist. For example, the source material 00:03:19.639 --> 00:03:22.319 notes, he wrote a novel called Franklin Evans. 00:03:22.590 --> 00:03:25.389 Oh, the Temperance Novel. Yes, it was a Temperance 00:03:25.389 --> 00:03:28.250 Novel, riding the wave of the Washingtonian movement 00:03:28.250 --> 00:03:30.990 of the era. Which is absolutely hilarious, because 00:03:30.990 --> 00:03:33.689 years later, Whitman openly admitted he wrote 00:03:33.689 --> 00:03:36.610 that sweeping moral crusade against alcohol in 00:03:36.610 --> 00:03:39.629 three days. Right. Solely for the cash, while 00:03:39.629 --> 00:03:42.370 he was completely drunk. It's amazing. He literally 00:03:42.370 --> 00:03:45.330 called his own published book, quote, damned 00:03:45.330 --> 00:03:47.930 rot. He had absolutely no illusions about his 00:03:47.930 --> 00:03:51.580 early commercial work. But, um... He didn't stop 00:03:51.580 --> 00:03:54.599 at fiction. No, he didn't. In 1858, he churned 00:03:54.599 --> 00:03:57.539 out a 47 ,000 -word pseudonymous self -help guide. 00:03:57.740 --> 00:03:59.939 Under a fake name. Right. Under the fake name 00:03:59.939 --> 00:04:02.939 Moes Welser. It was titled Manly Health and Training, 00:04:03.159 --> 00:04:05.539 and the advice in this tract is wildly specific. 00:04:05.759 --> 00:04:08.560 It's so weird. He's instructing men to grow out 00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:10.939 their beers, to walk around in comfortable shoes, 00:04:11.340 --> 00:04:14.620 to bathe daily in freezing cold water. Cold plunges. 00:04:14.919 --> 00:04:18.120 To sunbathe completely nude. And to eat a diet 00:04:18.120 --> 00:04:21.250 consisting... almost exclusively of meat. I mean, 00:04:21.250 --> 00:04:24.129 he was pushing the carnivore diet and cold plunges 00:04:24.129 --> 00:04:27.069 in the 1850s. Sweet lunch. Moes Velsor sounds 00:04:27.069 --> 00:04:29.709 exactly like a modern day internet bro science 00:04:29.709 --> 00:04:31.910 podcaster. Yeah. You can just picture him trying 00:04:31.910 --> 00:04:34.029 to sell you supplements online. Oh, totally. 00:04:34.110 --> 00:04:36.750 It's just so far removed from that dusty grandfather 00:04:36.750 --> 00:04:39.810 of poetry image. It is, but it also reveals his 00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:43.029 growing, really intense obsession with the physical 00:04:43.029 --> 00:04:45.790 body, which would soon become the cornerstone 00:04:45.790 --> 00:04:48.009 of his art. Right. It all feeds into the poetry 00:04:48.009 --> 00:04:50.850 later. Exactly, all these seemingly disconnected 00:04:50.850 --> 00:04:53.670 odd jobs, the spatial awareness of a printer, 00:04:54.250 --> 00:04:56.709 the accessible common language of a freelance 00:04:56.709 --> 00:04:59.050 journalist. And even his time reviewing Italian 00:04:59.050 --> 00:05:01.550 opera, right? Yes, this is a huge incubator. 00:05:01.649 --> 00:05:04.569 He explicitly stated later that without the soaring 00:05:04.569 --> 00:05:07.509 unstructured emotional areas of Italian opera, 00:05:07.850 --> 00:05:09.569 he could never have written his masterpiece. 00:05:09.769 --> 00:05:12.189 So he has all these disjointed skills, the layout 00:05:12.189 --> 00:05:15.129 expertise of a printer, the ear of an opera fanatic, 00:05:15.490 --> 00:05:18.250 the shameless hustle of a gig worker. All boiling 00:05:18.250 --> 00:05:20.870 together. But how do you actually translate that 00:05:20.870 --> 00:05:23.310 into a brand new literary genre? I mean, you 00:05:23.310 --> 00:05:26.449 can't exactly pitch that to a traditional stuffy 00:05:26.449 --> 00:05:28.569 publishing house in the 19th century. Well, you 00:05:28.569 --> 00:05:30.750 don't pitch it. You bypass them entirely. Of 00:05:30.750 --> 00:05:33.569 course he does. By 1855, he decides he wants 00:05:33.569 --> 00:05:37.649 to write a distinctly American epic. but he refuses 00:05:37.649 --> 00:05:40.910 to use the prevailing forms. Right, no rhyming 00:05:40.910 --> 00:05:43.709 couplets. Traditional British poetry was like 00:05:43.709 --> 00:05:47.930 a manicured English garden. It was rigid, symmetrical, 00:05:48.509 --> 00:05:51.009 highly controlled by iambic pentameter. Very 00:05:51.009 --> 00:05:54.389 strict. Very. Whitman invents a form of free 00:05:54.389 --> 00:05:56.730 verse that is like the American frontier itself. 00:05:57.549 --> 00:06:00.670 sprawling, wild, untamed, rolling out in every 00:06:00.670 --> 00:06:03.389 direction. With a rhythm based more on the prose 00:06:03.389 --> 00:06:05.790 of the King James Bible than on classical meter. 00:06:06.029 --> 00:06:08.050 Exactly. But here's where it gets really interesting, 00:06:08.290 --> 00:06:09.870 though. Because traditional publishers won't 00:06:09.870 --> 00:06:13.029 touch this wild, sprawling manuscript, the ultimate 00:06:13.029 --> 00:06:15.649 hustler simply self -publishes. Yep. And he doesn't 00:06:15.649 --> 00:06:17.870 just pay a printer to do it. He relies on his 00:06:17.870 --> 00:06:20.930 old skills. He financed the entire first edition 00:06:20.930 --> 00:06:23.110 of Leaves of Brass with his own money, printing 00:06:23.110 --> 00:06:27.360 only 795 copies. That's a tiny run. very small, 00:06:27.939 --> 00:06:31.279 and he actually went to a local print shop and 00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:33.740 set some of the type himself during the employees 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:37.420 breaks. He was physically on the press birthing 00:06:37.420 --> 00:06:39.500 his own book. And the physical design of the 00:06:39.500 --> 00:06:41.939 book was a massive subversion of expectations 00:06:41.939 --> 00:06:44.199 too. He leaves his own name off the cover. Just 00:06:44.199 --> 00:06:46.199 completely leaves it off. Instead you just get 00:06:46.199 --> 00:06:49.100 an engraved portrait of him standing there in 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:51.160 working -class clothes, one hand on his hip, 00:06:51.660 --> 00:06:53.839 looking like a regular guy on the street. Not 00:06:53.839 --> 00:06:56.259 a stuffy author at all. Right. You actually have 00:06:56.259 --> 00:06:59.740 to read 500 lines into the poetry before he finally 00:06:59.740 --> 00:07:02.699 introduces himself. That famous line? Quote, 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:05.529 Walt Whitman, an American. one of the roughs, 00:07:05.769 --> 00:07:08.750 a cosmos disorderly, fleshly, and sensual. It 00:07:08.750 --> 00:07:11.410 was a radical declaration. He was forcing the 00:07:11.410 --> 00:07:13.829 reader to encounter the physical man before they 00:07:13.829 --> 00:07:15.790 encountered the esteemed author. And the content 00:07:15.790 --> 00:07:17.689 was just as shocking to the establishment, right? 00:07:17.730 --> 00:07:20.730 Oh, absolutely. He was writing openly about sexuality, 00:07:21.110 --> 00:07:23.449 about the dirt and the debris of common life. 00:07:24.250 --> 00:07:26.389 Geologist Peter Leslie actually wrote a letter 00:07:26.389 --> 00:07:29.370 calling the book trashy, profanity, obscene. 00:07:29.610 --> 00:07:32.720 But not everyone hated it. Whitman decides to 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:36.120 send a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is essentially 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:38.860 the A -list celebrity intellectual of America 00:07:38.860 --> 00:07:40.339 at the time. The biggest name you could get. 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:43.379 Emerson reads it, loves it, and writes Whitman 00:07:43.379 --> 00:07:47.579 a private, glowing, five -page letter. Emerson 00:07:47.579 --> 00:07:50.120 calls it the most extraordinary piece of wit 00:07:50.120 --> 00:07:53.000 and wisdom that America has yet contributed. 00:07:53.379 --> 00:07:55.839 Now most writers would frame that letter and 00:07:55.839 --> 00:07:58.220 just keep it in their study. But not Walt. Not 00:07:58.220 --> 00:08:00.259 Walt. Whitman took a quote from that private 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:02.810 letter. I greet you at the beginning of a great 00:08:02.810 --> 00:08:05.910 career and embossed it in gold leaf directly 00:08:05.910 --> 00:08:08.189 onto the spine of his second edition. Without 00:08:08.189 --> 00:08:09.970 asking. He didn't ask for permission at all. 00:08:10.029 --> 00:08:12.990 It's the 19th century equivalent of screenshotting 00:08:12.990 --> 00:08:15.709 a private DM from an A -list celebrity and using 00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:18.209 it as a sponsored ad for your product. It really 00:08:18.209 --> 00:08:22.649 is. It is pure PR genius. He completely bypassed 00:08:22.649 --> 00:08:25.689 the literary gatekeepers by forcing his own viral 00:08:25.689 --> 00:08:27.689 marketing moment. And it connects directly to 00:08:27.689 --> 00:08:29.829 his mission. He wasn't writing for the elite 00:08:29.829 --> 00:08:31.930 parlors of Boston. Right. He wanted to reach 00:08:31.930 --> 00:08:34.850 the common person to elevate the rough edges 00:08:34.850 --> 00:08:39.080 of America into high art. But just as he is successfully 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:42.120 building this loud, controversial, larger -than 00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:44.860 -life persona, the American Civil War breaks 00:08:44.860 --> 00:08:47.019 out. And that changes everything. The brutal 00:08:47.019 --> 00:08:50.120 reality of that conflict profoundly shifts his 00:08:50.120 --> 00:08:52.120 worldview. You can see the shift happen almost 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:55.139 in real time. Initially, he writes a poem called 00:08:55.139 --> 00:08:59.000 Beat, Beat Drums to Rally the Union Troops. Right. 00:08:59.179 --> 00:09:01.879 It's very patriotic, very abstract, but then 00:09:01.879 --> 00:09:05.990 the war gets deeply personal. In 1862, He sees 00:09:05.990 --> 00:09:08.529 a casualty list in the New York Tribune with 00:09:08.529 --> 00:09:10.990 the name First Lieutenant G .W. Whitmore. Oh, 00:09:10.990 --> 00:09:13.450 man. He immediately panics, assuming it's his 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:15.649 brother George, who would join the 51st New York 00:09:15.649 --> 00:09:18.529 Infantry. Whitman rushes south to the battlefront 00:09:18.529 --> 00:09:20.549 in Virginia. And it's a rough journey. Along 00:09:20.549 --> 00:09:23.009 the way, his wallet is stolen. He's walking day 00:09:23.009 --> 00:09:25.590 and night, exhausted and terrified. He does find 00:09:25.590 --> 00:09:27.950 George, and thankfully, George only has a superficial 00:09:27.950 --> 00:09:31.250 wound to his cheek. A huge relief. But what Whitman 00:09:31.250 --> 00:09:34.509 witnesses at those front lines changes the trajectory 00:09:34.509 --> 00:09:37.769 of his life. The source excerpts describe him 00:09:37.769 --> 00:09:40.490 walking past heaps of amputated limbs in the 00:09:40.490 --> 00:09:43.570 brutalized bodies of young soldiers. It's horrifying. 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:45.629 Think about the psychological whiplash of that. 00:09:45.750 --> 00:09:47.610 This is the guy who just wrote a revolutionary 00:09:47.610 --> 00:09:50.289 book celebrating the physical perfection, the 00:09:50.289 --> 00:09:52.330 sensual beauty, and the sacredness of the human 00:09:52.330 --> 00:09:55.649 body. And now? Now, he is confronted with those 00:09:55.649 --> 00:09:58.750 exact bodies being systematically shredded by 00:09:58.750 --> 00:10:01.590 artillery. The ideological shock is staggering. 00:10:02.289 --> 00:10:05.309 He abandons his bohemian life in New York, moves 00:10:05.309 --> 00:10:08.370 to Washington DC, and stays there as a volunteer 00:10:08.370 --> 00:10:10.289 nurse for the remainder of the war. Just giving 00:10:10.289 --> 00:10:13.009 up his old life completely. Yeah. He works low 00:10:13.009 --> 00:10:15.129 -level government clerk jobs during the day to 00:10:15.129 --> 00:10:17.409 survive, and spends his nights sitting in the 00:10:17.409 --> 00:10:19.830 hospitals. He isn't performing surgery, obviously. 00:10:19.889 --> 00:10:21.789 Right. He's providing psychological first aid. 00:10:22.190 --> 00:10:24.529 He holds the hands of dying young men, brings 00:10:24.529 --> 00:10:26.710 them fruit, and writes letters home for them. 00:10:26.860 --> 00:10:29.139 It's an incredible contrast. To the literary 00:10:29.139 --> 00:10:31.980 establishment, he's this notorious, obscene poet. 00:10:32.500 --> 00:10:35.720 But to these dying soldiers, he's a saint -like 00:10:35.720 --> 00:10:39.100 figure. And yet, his government bosses still 00:10:39.100 --> 00:10:41.139 view him through the lens of his controversial 00:10:41.139 --> 00:10:45.559 art. He finally lands a decent paying clerk job 00:10:45.559 --> 00:10:48.019 in the Department of the Interior only for the 00:10:48.019 --> 00:10:50.639 new secretary, James Harlan, to find a working 00:10:50.639 --> 00:10:53.340 copy of Leaves of Grass in Whitman's desk. Oh 00:10:53.340 --> 00:10:56.899 boy. Harlan fires him on the spot on moral grounds. 00:10:57.279 --> 00:10:59.600 Which triggers another major turning point for 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:02.220 his legacy. A friend of Whitman's, William Douglas 00:11:02.220 --> 00:11:05.379 O 'Connor, is so outraged by this bureaucratic 00:11:05.379 --> 00:11:08.879 firing that he writes a vindicating, highly exaggerated 00:11:08.879 --> 00:11:11.340 biographical pamphlet Defending him and what 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:13.299 was the title of that the title that pamphlet 00:11:13.299 --> 00:11:16.679 was the good gray poet and boom There's the nickname. 00:11:16.759 --> 00:11:18.899 That's where it comes from that single pamphlet 00:11:18.899 --> 00:11:21.559 completely rebrands him It takes the scandalous 00:11:21.559 --> 00:11:24.940 rebel and repackages him as a wholesome patriotic 00:11:24.940 --> 00:11:27.480 self -sacrificing grandfather figure if we connect 00:11:27.480 --> 00:11:29.649 this to the bigger picture The trauma of the 00:11:29.649 --> 00:11:31.769 war cemented his legacy in the American consciousness 00:11:31.769 --> 00:11:35.289 because it forced his poetry to evolve. He moved 00:11:35.289 --> 00:11:38.149 away from the pure boastful celebration of the 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:41.549 self and pivoted toward profound national loss 00:11:41.549 --> 00:11:45.090 and grief. This culminates in his poems mourning 00:11:45.090 --> 00:11:47.960 the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Oh, like, 00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:51.080 Oh, Captain, My Captain. Exactly. And his poem, 00:11:51.299 --> 00:11:54.080 Oh, Captain, My Captain, is actually very conventional. 00:11:54.220 --> 00:11:56.799 It rhymes. It has a strict meter. Which is so 00:11:56.799 --> 00:11:59.639 unwitman. It is. And ironically, because it sounded 00:11:59.639 --> 00:12:01.600 like traditional poetry, it was the only poem 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.500 of his that was heavily anthologized and widely 00:12:04.500 --> 00:12:06.919 popular during his own lifetime. Wow. So we have 00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:09.299 the dropout, the PR mastermind, and the saintly 00:12:09.299 --> 00:12:12.039 nurse. But the war only gave him a sanitized 00:12:12.039 --> 00:12:14.230 public image. We need to pull back the curtain 00:12:14.230 --> 00:12:16.929 on his private life now. Yes, we do. Because 00:12:16.929 --> 00:12:18.909 this is where the multitudes he wrote about become 00:12:18.909 --> 00:12:21.230 deeply contradictory. And as we look at his political 00:12:21.230 --> 00:12:23.330 and social views detailed in these historical 00:12:23.330 --> 00:12:25.889 sources, we want to be clear with you, the listener. 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:29.309 We aren't here to endorse or condemn his viewpoints. 00:12:29.549 --> 00:12:31.950 We are simply using these historical facts to 00:12:31.950 --> 00:12:34.429 examine the incredible cognitive dissonance of 00:12:34.429 --> 00:12:37.169 a complex historical figure. It's a necessary 00:12:37.169 --> 00:12:40.250 framing because his private reality rarely mapped 00:12:40.250 --> 00:12:43.250 onto his poetic ideals. Yeah. Let's look at his 00:12:43.250 --> 00:12:46.269 sexuality. Based on his letters and intense personal 00:12:46.269 --> 00:12:48.610 relationships, biographers generally describe 00:12:48.610 --> 00:12:51.629 him as homosexual or bisexual. He had deeply 00:12:51.629 --> 00:12:53.990 documented relationships with men, like Peter 00:12:53.990 --> 00:12:57.769 Doyle, a bus conductor he met in 1866. In his 00:12:57.769 --> 00:13:00.769 private notebooks, Whitman even coded Doyle's 00:13:00.769 --> 00:13:04.860 initials PD as 16 .4. P being the 16th letter, 00:13:04.980 --> 00:13:07.960 D being the fourth. Exactly. He also lived with 00:13:07.960 --> 00:13:10.139 a teenager named Bill Duckett and gave a ring 00:13:10.139 --> 00:13:13.340 to a young man named Harry Stafford. Yes. But 00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:15.460 when he was finally pushed on this by a critic 00:13:15.460 --> 00:13:18.220 named John Addington Simons, who bluntly asked 00:13:18.220 --> 00:13:20.539 in a letter if his Calamus poems were actually 00:13:20.539 --> 00:13:24.159 about homosexual love. Whitman panicked. He completely 00:13:24.159 --> 00:13:26.019 backtracked. He vehemently denied it, called 00:13:26.019 --> 00:13:28.500 the inference damnable, and then out of nowhere 00:13:28.500 --> 00:13:31.240 falsely claimed that he had fathered six illegitimate 00:13:31.240 --> 00:13:33.600 children. He built a fortress of heteronormative 00:13:33.600 --> 00:13:36.419 fiction to protect himself. He was incredibly 00:13:36.419 --> 00:13:38.820 bold on the page, but when faced with the harsh 00:13:38.820 --> 00:13:41.419 social realities of the 19th century, he hid 00:13:41.419 --> 00:13:43.919 behind fabrication. That makes sense for the 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:47.159 time, though. It does. And this massive gap between 00:13:47.159 --> 00:13:50.279 his expansive poetry and his personal limitations 00:13:50.279 --> 00:13:52.720 extends sharply into his political and racial 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:54.799 views. And this is the part that is really tough 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:58.279 to reconcile. How do you square the guy? who 00:13:58.279 --> 00:14:00.840 wrote that he is a cosmos who embraces every 00:14:00.840 --> 00:14:03.779 human soul equally with a guy who held deeply 00:14:03.779 --> 00:14:06.799 prejudiced views. Well, the Wikipedia excerpts 00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:09.679 detail that Whitman actively supported the Free 00:14:09.679 --> 00:14:12.279 Soil Party. OK, what was their deal? On the surface, 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:14.299 they opposed the extension of slavery into the 00:14:14.299 --> 00:14:17.159 Western territories. But the mechanism behind 00:14:17.159 --> 00:14:20.139 that stance wasn't primarily moral abolitionism. 00:14:20.299 --> 00:14:23.600 It was economic. They wanted to protect free 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:26.460 white labor and northern businessmen from having 00:14:26.460 --> 00:14:29.740 to compete with enslaved labor. Furthermore, 00:14:30.100 --> 00:14:32.379 Whitman actively opposed abolitionist altruism. 00:14:32.500 --> 00:14:34.460 Because he thought they were too extreme. Right. 00:14:34.759 --> 00:14:36.740 He feared that their aggressive, uncompromising 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:38.799 methods would disrupt the democratic process 00:14:38.799 --> 00:14:41.379 and tear the nation apart. The source also notes 00:14:41.379 --> 00:14:44.259 he harbored the prevailing white prejudices of 00:14:44.259 --> 00:14:47.669 his era. He wrote prejudicially about black voters. 00:14:48.210 --> 00:14:50.509 He constructed a nationalist vision that largely 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:52.889 ignored the ongoing Native American genocide. 00:14:53.149 --> 00:14:55.330 It really did. He basically believed in a strict 00:14:55.330 --> 00:14:58.350 hierarchy with America and frankly himself sitting 00:14:58.350 --> 00:15:01.889 at the top. And yet... His poetry itself operates 00:15:01.889 --> 00:15:03.990 on a completely different plane. It's like two 00:15:03.990 --> 00:15:07.070 different people. It is. The mechanics of his 00:15:07.070 --> 00:15:11.350 free verse are so radically egalitarian, so encompassing 00:15:11.350 --> 00:15:14.730 of every human experience, that future generations 00:15:14.730 --> 00:15:17.389 read his work as a beacon of absolute equality. 00:15:17.809 --> 00:15:20.710 Right. Decades later, black readers and legendary 00:15:20.710 --> 00:15:23.570 poets like Langston Hughes viewed Whitman as 00:15:23.570 --> 00:15:27.029 a literary hero and a fervent anti -racist. It's 00:15:27.029 --> 00:15:28.870 wild. And he was equally contradictory about 00:15:28.870 --> 00:15:31.330 religion. Oh, yes. He was a deist who claimed 00:15:31.330 --> 00:15:34.009 to accept every single religion and myth equally, 00:15:34.389 --> 00:15:36.570 absorbing them all into his worldview. But at 00:15:36.570 --> 00:15:38.769 the same time, he refused to believe in any single 00:15:38.769 --> 00:15:41.289 church. Very anti -institutional. Yeah. When 00:15:41.289 --> 00:15:43.690 he was asked to write a poem honoring the spiritualism 00:15:43.690 --> 00:15:45.629 movement, he basically laughed and called it 00:15:45.629 --> 00:15:48.399 a cheap, crude humbug. This raises an important 00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:50.519 question about how we engage with historical 00:15:50.519 --> 00:15:54.080 art. Can the creation outgrow the creator? That's 00:15:54.080 --> 00:15:56.940 a big question. Whitman's poetry became a template 00:15:56.940 --> 00:16:00.240 for democratic poets worldwide from Latin America 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:03.519 to Europe. His words managed to convey a soaring 00:16:03.519 --> 00:16:06.340 egalitarian sensibility that the man himself 00:16:06.340 --> 00:16:08.559 could not consistently live up to or even fully 00:16:08.559 --> 00:16:11.519 reconcile within his own psyche. So what does 00:16:11.519 --> 00:16:14.480 this all mean for his final act? How does a man 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:17.019 with an ego this massive and a life this tangled 00:16:17.019 --> 00:16:19.740 face the end? Well, it's quite an image. After 00:16:19.740 --> 00:16:21.799 suffering a paralytic stroke, he eventually moves 00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.460 to Camden, New Jersey. And the visual of his 00:16:24.460 --> 00:16:27.620 final years is just wild. It really is. He is 00:16:27.620 --> 00:16:29.840 mostly bedridden in a house he shares with a 00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:33.179 widow named Mary Oakes Davis. She brings an entire 00:16:33.179 --> 00:16:35.779 indoor menagerie of animals with her. Oh, the 00:16:35.779 --> 00:16:40.200 animals. A dog, a cat, two turtle doves, a canary. 00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:43.379 Imagine the great poet of the open road. The 00:16:43.379 --> 00:16:45.899 man who wrote about crossing the entire American 00:16:45.899 --> 00:16:49.039 continent now trapped in a small room surrounded 00:16:49.039 --> 00:16:51.860 by a barking chirping indoor zoo What a picture 00:16:51.860 --> 00:16:54.659 but even as his body failed his hyper focus on 00:16:54.659 --> 00:16:58.600 his legacy never wavered He spent his final days 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:02.059 meticulously revising leaves of grass into what 00:17:02.059 --> 00:17:05.259 is now known as the deathbed edition He also 00:17:05.259 --> 00:17:07.339 micromanaged the construction of his own tomb 00:17:07.339 --> 00:17:10.420 you did While he is actively dying, he commissions 00:17:10.420 --> 00:17:13.220 a massive house -shaped granite mausoleum in 00:17:13.220 --> 00:17:16.420 the local cemetery. It cost $4 ,000, which was 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:18.880 an absolute fortune at the time. A huge amount 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:21.099 of money. He would literally visit the construction 00:17:21.099 --> 00:17:24.099 site to inspect the progress of his own internal 00:17:24.099 --> 00:17:26.700 monument. When he finally passed away in 1892 00:17:26.700 --> 00:17:30.200 at the age of 72, the autopsy revealed the sheer 00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:32.400 mechanical failure of his body. What did they 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:34.960 find? His lungs had diminished to one eighth 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:37.440 of their normal breathing capacity due to pneumonia, 00:17:38.140 --> 00:17:40.720 and an abscess had eroded one of his ribs. Oh, 00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:43.200 wow. And his physical brain was removed and donated 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:45.920 to the American Anthropometric Society for scientific 00:17:45.920 --> 00:17:48.880 study, but in a darkly comic twist of fate, it 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:51.259 was accidentally dropped and destroyed. The physical 00:17:51.259 --> 00:17:53.500 brain of America's greatest poet just shattered 00:17:53.500 --> 00:17:55.940 on the floor by accident. Tragic, but almost 00:17:55.940 --> 00:17:58.619 fitting. But his literary mind was practically 00:17:58.619 --> 00:18:01.400 immortal at that point. Definitely. His influence 00:18:01.400 --> 00:18:04.619 infected the entire globe. Ezra Pound famously 00:18:04.619 --> 00:18:07.680 declared, quote, He is America. High praise. 00:18:08.019 --> 00:18:10.279 He provided the stylistic blueprint for the Beat 00:18:10.279 --> 00:18:12.940 Generation, deeply impacting writers like Allen 00:18:12.940 --> 00:18:15.829 Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He crossed language 00:18:15.829 --> 00:18:18.349 barriers influencing Latin American Titans like 00:18:18.349 --> 00:18:21.410 Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. He's also 00:18:21.410 --> 00:18:24.009 the core inspiration behind the rebellious teacher 00:18:24.009 --> 00:18:26.630 in Dead Poets Society. Right. He even inspired 00:18:26.630 --> 00:18:30.750 Bram Stoker. Stoker used Whitman's outsize magnetic 00:18:30.750 --> 00:18:33.730 quintessential male persona as the foundational 00:18:33.730 --> 00:18:36.009 model for the character of Dracula. That's still 00:18:36.009 --> 00:18:38.650 so crazy to me. Walt Whitman helped inspire the 00:18:38.650 --> 00:18:41.470 most famous vampire in literary history. He even 00:18:41.470 --> 00:18:43.609 has a massive suspension bridge named after him. 00:18:43.789 --> 00:18:46.349 in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Though, fitting 00:18:46.349 --> 00:18:48.609 perfectly with his lifelong habit of stirring 00:18:48.609 --> 00:18:51.029 up trouble, even the naming of the bridge caused 00:18:51.029 --> 00:18:53.930 a controversy in the 1950s. Naturally. Objectors 00:18:53.930 --> 00:18:56.309 protested because they thought his egalitarian, 00:18:56.470 --> 00:18:59.369 free -flowing views sounded a little too communist 00:18:59.369 --> 00:19:01.829 for the Cold War era. The guy couldn't even get 00:19:01.829 --> 00:19:03.670 concrete poured in his honor without causing 00:19:03.670 --> 00:19:06.470 a scene. It's incredible. We started this deep 00:19:06.470 --> 00:19:09.950 dive with An 11 -year -old dropout holding backwards 00:19:09.950 --> 00:19:13.269 metal letters in a print shop. A guy who churned 00:19:13.269 --> 00:19:16.289 out drunk temperance novels and bro science health 00:19:16.289 --> 00:19:20.049 tracks. Yep. A PR genius who basically invented 00:19:20.049 --> 00:19:23.049 viral marketing. A broken -hearted nurse holding 00:19:23.049 --> 00:19:26.049 hands in the Civil War. A man whose poetry sang 00:19:26.049 --> 00:19:28.750 of perfect equality even when his own political 00:19:28.750 --> 00:19:31.339 reality fell painfully short. He remains the 00:19:31.339 --> 00:19:34.660 ultimate American paradox. But there is one final 00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:37.359 mind bending fact from the Wikipedia excerpts 00:19:37.359 --> 00:19:39.740 that perfectly encapsulates the irony of his 00:19:39.740 --> 00:19:42.960 life. Oh, do tell. Walt Whitman was a major vocal 00:19:42.960 --> 00:19:45.160 adherent of this Shakespeare authorship question. 00:19:45.319 --> 00:19:46.900 Wait, he didn't believe Shakespeare was real? 00:19:47.079 --> 00:19:50.359 He absolutely refused to believe that the historical 00:19:50.359 --> 00:19:53.309 William Shakespeare. A cometer from a normal 00:19:53.309 --> 00:19:55.369 provincial background in Stratford -upon -Avon 00:19:55.369 --> 00:19:57.509 could have possibly written those majestic plays. 00:19:57.789 --> 00:19:59.869 You're kidding. Nope. Whitman argued that the 00:19:59.869 --> 00:20:02.150 plays were so brilliant, so filled with the towering 00:20:02.150 --> 00:20:04.150 spirit of the aristocracy, that they must have 00:20:04.150 --> 00:20:06.170 been written by some hidden descendant of nobility. 00:20:06.410 --> 00:20:08.630 Oh my god. He looked at the mechanics of the 00:20:08.630 --> 00:20:11.650 genius and literally couldn't believe a regular 00:20:11.650 --> 00:20:14.289 working -class guy could produce something so 00:20:14.289 --> 00:20:17.150 profound. That is the most incredibly ironic 00:20:17.150 --> 00:20:19.970 thing I have ever heard. Whitman doubted Shakespeare's 00:20:19.970 --> 00:20:22.009 authenticity based on his common background, 00:20:22.349 --> 00:20:24.730 when Whitman himself was an 11 -year -old school 00:20:24.730 --> 00:20:27.390 dropout who worked as a printer's devil and went 00:20:27.390 --> 00:20:30.349 on to single -handedly write the greatest literary 00:20:30.349 --> 00:20:33.190 epic in American history. The irony is just off 00:20:33.190 --> 00:20:35.890 the charts. What if, hundreds of years from now, 00:20:36.250 --> 00:20:38.650 future generations look back at Whitman's messy, 00:20:38.869 --> 00:20:41.950 chaotic, contradictory life, look at his Moe's 00:20:41.950 --> 00:20:44.210 Welser side hustles, and start wondering if he 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:46.900 actually wrote Leaves of Grass. It is the perfect 00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:49.460 full circle. The man who proved to the world 00:20:49.460 --> 00:20:52.240 that a commoner could contain multitudes couldn't 00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:54.420 accept that exact same truth about someone else. 00:20:54.759 --> 00:20:57.180 Wow. Thank you so much for joining us on this 00:20:57.180 --> 00:20:59.720 deep dive. Next time you see that dusty marble 00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:02.299 statue of Whitman in a textbook, I hope you remember 00:21:02.299 --> 00:21:04.960 the hustler, the contradictions, and the wild 00:21:04.960 --> 00:21:07.240 mechanism of his genius. Keep questioning what 00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:08.740 you read. We'll see you next time.