|
978f1fb
|
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And par..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
5cc150c
|
Passionate intimacy between people of the same sex was common in pre--Civil War America. The lack of clear sexual categories (homo-, hetero-, bi-) made same-sex affection unself-conscious and widespread.
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
106652b
|
Dear Sir--I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy.... I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which lar..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
76614d3
|
As he himself expressed it, his was the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths--the greatest in his belief in God and everyday miracles, the least in his acceptance of any church's creeds.
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
b970636
|
American cultural historians long thought that as male and female spheres became separated with the rise of industrialism, men practiced aggressive values in the commercial marketplace while women, confined to the home, took on qualities such as passivity, piety, purity, and submissiveness. To be sure, as Ann Douglas and Barbara Welter show, the ideal of the angelic, submissive housewife was purveyed in many novels and advice manuals. But p..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
a4746c3
|
he was mainly a romantic comrade who had a series of intense relationships with young men, most of whom went on to get married and have children. Whatever the nature of his physical relationships with them, most of the passages about same-sex love in his poems were not out of keeping with then-current theories and practices that underscored the healthiness of such love.
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
856f740
|
Exclusive emphasis on either the physical or the spiritual Whitman misses his determined intermingling of the two realms. His earliest notebook poem contained the lines, "I am the poet of the body / And I am the poet of the soul," establishing at once the interpenetration and cross-fertilization between matter and spirit that is felt in virtually all his major poems. The earthly and the divine, the sensuous and the mystical, are never far f..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
b714352
|
In a day before passive spectatorship and the mass media, entertainment was supplied by actual people--not just paid performers but also ordinary people alone or in groups. Whitman's picture in "I Hear America Singing" of average people singing their "varied carols" was more than just a metaphor. It reflected a pre-mass-media culture in which Americans often entertained themselves and each other. Whitman's spouting Shakespeare atop omnibuse..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
9f0b304
|
the inundation of the average American's consciousness with profit-driven spectacles and images would not come until after the Civil War. Before the war, Americans attended to oratory with a seriousness and eagerness that would be frittered away with the advent of "show business," a term introduced in 1850 but not widely used until the late sixties."
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
dd0baad
|
His chosen medium--writing--had, he believed, a high potential for holding America together. America was a nation of readers, known worldwide for its high literacy rates. At midcentury, a full 90 percent of white American adults could read, as opposed to about 60 percent in England. Whitman crowed hyperbolically: "In regard to intelligence, education, knowledge, the masses of [English] people, in comparison with the masses of the U.S., are ..
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
d3063b6
|
In the free, easy social atmosphere of pre-Civil War America, overt displays of affection between people of the same sex were common. Women hugged, kissed, slept with, and proclaimed love for other women. Men did the same with other men.
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
5d4d4dc
|
Never trust the innocent
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |
|
b3eada7
|
The Richmond Enquirer, the South's leading paper, called antislavery senators "a pack of curs" who "have become saucy, and dare to be impudent to gentlemen" and thus "must be lashed into submission.... Let them understand, that for every vile word spoken against the South, they will suffer so many stripes, and they will soon learn to behave themselves like decent dogs--they never can be gentlemen."
|
|
|
David S. Reynolds |