Walt Whitman
American poet, essayist and journalist
1819 CE to 1892 CE
Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) is an American poet, essayist and journalist.
A humanist, he is a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works.
Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
His work is very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which is described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Born on Long Island, Whitman works as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and – in addition to publishing his poetry – is a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War.
Early in his career, he also produces a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842).
Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, is first published in 1855 with his own money.
The work is an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic.
He continues expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.
After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moves to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declines.
He dies at age 72 and his funeral becomes a public spectacle.
Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry.
Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions.
However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual sexual experiences with men.
Whitman is concerned with politics throughout his life.
He supports the Wilmot Proviso and opposes the extension of slavery generally.
His poetry presents an egalitarian view of the races, and at one point he calls for the abolition of slavery, but later he sees the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.
World
The Atlantic Lands
View →Related Events
Showing 3 events out of 3 total
John L. O'Sullivan co-founds and serves as editor for The United States Magazine and Democratic Review (generally called the Democratic Review) in 1837.
Its motto, "The best government is that which governs least," is soon to be famously paraphrased by Henry David Thoreau in On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.
A highly regarded journal meant to champion Jacksonian Democracy, a movement that has usually been disparaged in the more conservative North American Review, the magazine features political essays—many of them penned by O'Sullivan—extolling the virtues of Jacksonian Democracy and criticizing what Democrats regarded as the aristocratic pretensions of their opponents.
The Democratic Review is also (perhaps even primarily) a literary magazine, promoting the development of American literature by publishing works of authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Hawthorne and O'Sullivan are to become close friends, and Hawthorne is to have more pieces published in O'Sullivan's magazine than in any other periodical.
Walt Whitman produces his first book of poetry, the autobiographical Leaves of Grass, on July 4, 1855.
Self-published and poorly received, several of the book’s poems feature graphic depictions of the human body, enumerated in Whitman's innovative "cataloging" style, which contrasts with the reserved Victorian ethic of the era. (There is no definitive edition of Leaves of Grass—Whitman continually revised his masterwork, adding and occasionally removing poems. Despite its revolutionary content and structure, subsequent editions of the book will evoke critical indifference in the U.S. literary establishment, but outside the U.S., the book will become a worldwide sensation, especially in France, where Whitman's intense humanism will influence the naturalist revolution in French letters,)
Jules Laforgue is one of the first French poets to write in free verse.
Influenced by Walt Whitman, he writes L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune in 1885.
Philosophically, he is an ardent disciple of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
He will return to France in 1886 and marry Leah Lee, an Englishwoman.
He will die on August 20, 1887 of tuberculosis, his wife following him shortly thereafter.
His poetry will be one of the major influences on Ezra Pound and the young T. S. Eliot.
Louis Untermeyer will write, "Prufrock, published in 1917, was immediately hailed as a new manner in English literature and belittled as an echo of Laforgue and the French symbolists to whom Eliot was indebted." (Untermeyer, Louis. A Concise Treasury of Great Poems, Simon & Schuster, 1953.)
Laforgue's parents, Charles-Benoît Laforgue and Pauline Lacollay, had met in Uruguay where his father worked first as a teacher and then a bank employee.
Jules is the second of eleven children in the family, the eldest child being Jules' brother Émile, who is to become a sculptor of note.
In 1866, the family had moved back to France, to Tarbes, his father's hometown, but in 1867 Jules' father and mother had chosen to return to Uruguay, taking along their nine younger children, leaving Jules and his older brother Émile in Tarbes to be raised with a cousin's family.
In 1876 Jules's father had taken the family to Paris.
In 1877, his mother had died of pneumonia, three months after a miscarriage, and Jules, never a good student, had failed his baccalaureate exams.
He had failed again in 1878, and then a third time, but on his own had begun to read the great French authors and visit the museums of Paris.
In 1879, his father had become sick and returned to Tarbes, but Jules had stayed behind in Paris.
He published his first poem in Toulouse.
By the end of the year, he had published several poems and was noticed by well-known authors.
In 1880, he was moving in the literary circles of the capital and had become a protégé of Paul Bourget, the editor of the review La Vie moderne.
Much happened to Laforgue in 1881: he had attended a course of Taine's lectures and developed a great interest in painting and art.
Charles Ephrussi, a rich collector, one of the first collectors of Impressionist art, had taken Laforgue on as his secretary.
The direct influence of Impressionism on Laforgue's early development as a poet is a topic in Laforgue studies.
In his introduction to his edition of Les Complaintes, Michael Collie, author of a biography of Laforgue (Laforgue (1963)), will state that he sees a more or less conscious attempt on Laforgue's part to produce a literary equivalent of Impressionism.
In 1881, Laforgue had written a novel, Stephane Vassiliew, and had prepared a collection of poems entitled The Tears of the Earth, which he later abandoned, though some pieces were altered for Les Complaintes.
Also in 1881, his sister had left him alone in Paris to tend to their father, who was seriously ill in Tarbes.
When his father died, Laforgue did not attend his father's funeral.
From November 1881 until 1886, he lives in Berlin, working as the French reader for the Empress Augusta, a sort of cultural counselor.
He is well paid and can pursue his interests very freely.