The Erotic WhitmanUniversity of California Press, 4 de ago. de 2000 - 285 páginas In this provocative analysis of Whitman's exemplary quest for happiness, Vivian Pollak skillfully explores the intimate relationships that contributed to his portrayal of masculinity in crisis. She maintains that in representing himself as a characteristic nineteenth-century American and in proposing to heal national ills, Whitman was trying to temper his own inner conflicts as well. The poet's expansive vision of natural eroticism and of unfettered comradeship between democratic equals was, however, only part of the story. As Whitman waged a conscious campaign to challenge misogynistic and homophobic literary codes, he promoted a raceless, classless ideal of sexual democracy that theoretically equalized all varieties of desire and resisted none. Pollak suggests that this goal remains imperfectly achieved in his writings, which liberates some forbidden voices and silences others. Integrating biography and criticism, Pollak employs a loosely chronological organization to describe the poet's multifaceted "faith in sex." Drawing on his early fiction, journalism, poetry, and self-reviews, as well as letters and notebook entries, she shows how in spite of his personal ambivalence about sustained erotic intimacy, Whitman came to imagine himself as "the phallic choice of America." |
Conteúdo
| 1 | |
| 3 | |
Boarding at the Brentons | 24 |
A First Friendship | 30 |
Why Whirman Gave Up Fiction | 37 |
Interleaf From Walter to Walt | 56 |
Fairh in Sex Leaves of Grass in 185556 | 81 |
TwentyEight Young Men | 82 |
The TwentyNinth Bather | 114 |
The Politics of Love in the 1860 Leaves of Grass | 122 |
Enfans dAdam | 129 |
Calamus | 136 |
Whitman Unperturbed The Civil War and After | 153 |
In Loftiest Spheres Whitmans Visionary Feminism | 172 |
Notes | 195 |
Index | 245 |
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Termos e frases comuns
American Arthur Golden body Brenton Brooklyn Daily Calamus poems Calamus sequence called chapter child Corr culture death described desire Doyle early editions of Leaves Emerson Emory Holloway emotional Erkkila erotic example explained faith in sex father feel feminized fiction Franklin Evans friendship Gay Wilson Allen gender George Hannah heterosexual Heyde homoerotic homosexual imagination John Addington Symonds Justin Kaplan language later Leaves of Grass letter Lilacs Lincoln literary living look Louisa Whitman lover male male-male man's marriage masculine maternal moral mother never night notebook entry NUPM poem poet poet's political psychological quoted readers reading relationship Richard Maurice Bucke romantic seems sexual social Solitary Singer Song soul speaker story suggests Symonds Thomas Jefferson Whitman thought tion tradition Traubel Vaughan Velsor Walt Whitman Walt's Walter Senior Whit Whitman wrote Whitman's Poetry woman women words writing WWWC young youth
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Página 183 - I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
Página 175 - I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war...
Página 72 - I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Página 57 - Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Página 110 - Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers
Página 115 - Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly ; Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Página 67 - I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
Página 89 - The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
Página 110 - ... laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
Página 105 - CLOSER TO ME, Push close my lovers and take the best I possess, Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess. This is unfinished business with me .... how is it with you ? I was chilled with the cold types and cylinder and wet paper between us. 5 I pass so poorly with paper and types .... I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.