Content area
Full Text
The attempt to make the definitive statement about Whitman's sexual preferences reminds me of comedian Lenny Bruce's solution to the problem of the Jews and their alleged crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One day, he says, he found a note in the basement from his uncle Irving. "Stop the fuss, already," it said. "I confess-I killed him." Bruce's point was that neither his uncle's confession nor the Pope's statement vindicating the Jews were going to solve the problem instantly.
Versions of Whitman's proclivities keep showing up. In his biography of the Irish poet and playwright, Richard Ellmann quotes Oscar Wilde's comment about his first meeting with Whitman during his trip to the United States:
He is the grandest man I have ever seen, the simplest, most natural, and strongest character I have ever met in my life. I regard him as one of those wonderful, large entire men who might have lived in any age and is not peculiar to any people. Strong, true, and perfectly sane: the closest approach to the Greek we have yet had in modern times.1
For his part, Whitman thought Wilde "frank and outspoken and manly." During Wilde's second visit in May 1882, Ellmann notes, "Whitman had made no effort to conceal his homosexuality from him as he would do with John Addington Symonds." Wilde maintained, "The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips."2 There were, of course, no witnesses to any of these occurrences.
Scholars interested in Whitman are increasingly turning their attention to his sexual orientation and attitudes, more and more insisting that Whitman is indeed the "good, gay poet." There is no question that the general issue is crucial to our understanding of the founder of modern poetry. But not enough attention is paid to Whitman's comments about the significance of sex in his work. In one his most insightful statements, Whitman explains in A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads:
From another point of view "Leaves of Grass" is avowedly the song of Sex and Amativeness, and even Animality-though meanings that do not usually go along with those words are behind all and will duly emerge; and all are sought to be lifted into a different light and atmosphere.... Difficult as it will be, it has...