Walt Whitman, born in Huntington, Long Island, worked as a journalist, teacher, government clerk and, in addition to publishing his poems, was a volunteer during the Civil War in the United States. At the beginning of his career, he also wrote a Renaissance-style novel, Franklin Evans (1842).
Walt Whitman's main work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 at his own expense. She was an attempt to establish a connection with an ordinary person, made with a truly American scale. He continued to expand and revise this work until his death in 1892. After a stroke, towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health only worsened. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral became a public event. National mourning was declared.
Walt Whitman's poems are still very popular in the United States. Which is surprising when you consider how late he turned to poetry.
early years
The biography of Walt Whitman began on May 31, 1819 in the West Hills, in the city of Huntington (Long Island). He was born into a family of Quakers Walter and Louise Van Welsor Whitman. As the second of nine children, he immediately received the nickname Walt, given specifically to distinguish him from his father. Walter Whitman Sr. named three of his seven sons in honor of prominent American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest was named Jesse, and another boy died at the age of six months, never having received a name. The sixth son of the couple, the youngest, was named Edward. At the age of four, Whitman moved with his family from the Western Hills to Brooklyn.
Walt Whitman described his childhood as rather restless and unhappy, given the difficult economic status of the family. One happy moment, which he later recalled, was connected with the Marquise de Lafayette, who lifted him up and kissed him on the cheek during the celebration of Independence Day in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.
Study and youth
At the age of eleven, Walt Whitman graduated from formal training. He then looked for work to help his family. For some time, the future poet worked as an assistant to two lawyers, and later was a trainee and journalist in the weekly newspapers Long Island and Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements. There Whitman learned about the printing press and layout. This brought at least some money, unlike newfangled popular poems.
Vocation Search
The following summer, Whitman worked for Erastus Worthington in Brooklyn. His family returned to the Western Hills in the spring, but Whitman stayed and got a job at the store of Alden Spooner, editor of the weekly Long Island Star newspaper.
At this time, Whitman became a regular visitor to the local library, joined the city’s discussion society, began attending theater performances, anonymously published some of his early poems in The New York Mirror.
In May 1835, Whitman left Brooklyn. He moved to New York to work as a composer. I tried to find a permanent job, but experienced difficulties (partly due to a strong fire in the printing and publishing district and partly due to a general collapse in the economy that led to the 1837 crisis).
In May 1836, he joined his family, now living in Hempstead (Long Island). Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, although he was not a good teacher. In the future, poetry will bring him popularity.
After his attempts at teaching, Whitman returned to Huntington, New York, to found his own Long Island newspaper. Whitman worked as a publisher, editor, pressman, distributor, and even delivered goods home.
Ten months later, he sold the publication to E.O. Crowell. The first issue appeared on July 12, 1839. There are no known surviving copies of the newspaper published under the supervision of Whitman. By the summer of 1839, he had found work as a typesetter in the Democrat Long Island newspaper, edited by James J. Brenton.
Southhold Incident
Soon, the future poet left the newspaper and made another attempt to become a teacher. He practiced this craft from the winter of 1840 until the spring of 1841. One story, perhaps apocryphal, tells how Whitman was disgraced from school in Southhold, New York, in 1840, in disgrace. After the local preacher called him "sodomite," Whitman was allegedly coated with tar and covered with cock feathers. Biographer Justin Kaplan notes that the story is probably fictitious because Whitman regularly rested in the city after this allegedly very humiliating situation. Biographer Jerome Loving calls this incident a myth.
The first creative attempts
Soon, the aspiring poet published a series of ten editorials, titled “Sun-Down Papers - From the School Teacher's Desk,” in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841.
Walt Whitman moved to New York in May 1841. At first he worked at a low-paid job in the New World under the direction of Benjamin Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He continued to work for short periods for various newspapers: in 1842 he was the editor of Aurora, and from 1846 to 1848 he worked at Brooklyn Eagle.
In 1852, Whitman wrote a novel called The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle. It was partly an autobiography, partly the story of New York at that time, where the reader could find some familiar characters from everyday metropolitan life.
In 1858, Whitman published a series of tests consisting of 47,000 words, under the general title "Manny - Health and Learning." For these publications, he used the pseudonym Moz Welsor. Apparently, he derived the name Welsor from the surname Van Welsor, which belonged to his mother. This self-help guide recommends wearing a beard and sunbathing, comfortable shoes, daily bathing in cold water, eating meat, plenty of fresh air and morning walks. Contemporaries called this work "a bizarre and stupid pseudo-scientific treatise."
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Whitman claimed that after several years of unsuccessful pursuit of recognition, he finally decided to become a poet. At first, he experimented with many popular literary genres, focusing on the cultural tastes of the time. Back in 1850, what began to become the legendary Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass soon began to emerge. He will continue to edit and revise this collection of poems until his death. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and used a free verse with a grandiloquent style based on the Bible. At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George, however, did not consider it necessary to even read it.
Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass and printed it at a local printing house during breaks from his main work. 795 copies were printed. Whitman was not listed as an author; instead, his portrait by Samuel Hollier was engraved in front of the title page. A lengthy text was also printed there: "Walt Whitman, American, rude, cosmic, promiscuous, carnal and sensual, not sentimental, not superior to men or women, or instead of them, no more modest than immodest."
The main text was preceded by a prosaic preface of 827 lines. The next twelve unnamed poems contained 2315 lines, 1336 of which belonged to the first nameless poem, later called "Song of Myself."
The book received praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five-page letter to Whitman and praised his work, advising him to all his friends. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and aroused considerable interest from readers, in part due to Emerson’s approval, but was sometimes criticized for the seemingly “indecent” nature of poetry. Geologist John Peter Leslie wrote to Emerson, calling the book "crappy, defiling, and obscene," and the author a "pretentious ass." July 11, 1855, a few days after the publication of the first book of Walt Whitman, his father died at the age of 65.
Life after glory
A few months after the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical reviews of the book began to focus more on potentially offensive sexual topics. Although the second edition has already been printed, the publisher as a result did not release even half the print run. In the end, the publication went retail with 20 additional poems in August 1856. Leaves of Grass was revised and reprinted in 1860, then in 1867 and several more times throughout Whitman's life. Several famous writers admired Whitman's work, including Amos Bronson Alcot and Henry David Thoreau.
During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman experienced financial difficulties and was forced to work as a journalist again, in particular to collaborate with Brooklyn Times from May 1857. As an editor, he monitored the contents of the newspaper, provided book reviews, and wrote editorials. He left his job in 1859, although it is not clear whether he was fired or decided to leave himself. Whitman, who usually kept detailed notebooks and magazines, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.
Illness and death
After suffering a paralytic stroke in early 1873, the poet was forced to move from Washington to the home of his brother George Washington Whitman, an engineer, at 431 Stevens Street in Camden (New Jersey). His sick mother was also there and soon died. Both events were difficult for Whitman and made him feel depressed. He remained in his brother's house until he bought a home in 1884. However, before acquiring his home, he spent a lot of time with his brother on Stevens Street. While there, he was very productive: he published three versions of Leaves of Grass, along with other works. He hosted Oscar Wilde, Thomas Eakins. His brother, Edward, disabled since birth, lived in the same house.
When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to relocate for business reasons, he bought his own house on 328 Mickle Street. First, tenants took care of everything - the poet was completely bedridden most of his time. Then he began to communicate with Mary Oaks Davis - the widow of the sea captain. She was his neighbor, living with her family on Bridge Avenue, just a few blocks from Mickle Street.
She met with Whitman on February 24, 1885 as a housekeeper in exchange for a free rental. The woman brought with her a cat, a dog, two doves, a canary and other animals. During this time, Whitman released new editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.
At that time, Whitman spent most of his time in the then pretty Puritan community of Laurel Springs (between 1876 and 1884), turning one of the buildings at Stafford Farm into his summer home. The restored summer house was preserved as a museum by the local historical community. Part of his Leaves of Grass was written here. For him, Laurel Lake was "the most beautiful lake in America and Europe."
As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared the final edition of Leaves of Grass, a version of which was called the Deathbed Edition (Edition of the Deathbed). In preparation for death, Whitman ordered a granite mausoleum in the shape of a house for $ 4,000 and often visited it during construction. In the last week of his life, he was too weak to raise a knife or fork, and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no deliverance - monotonously-monotonous-monotonous from pain."
Whitman died on March 26, 1892. An autopsy showed that his lungs decreased to one-eighth of their normal respiratory capacity as a result of bronchial pneumonia and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest destroyed one of his ribs. The cause of death was officially designated as "pleurisy, depletion of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis and parenchymal nephritis." A public inspection of the body was carried out in his house in Camden, more than three thousand people visited him in three hours. Due to the fact that everything around was showered with flowers and wreaths, Whitman's oak coffin was barely noticeable.
Four days after his death, he was buried in his tomb at the Harley cemetery in Camden. There was another public ceremony where friends made speeches, played live music and poured a variety of drinks. Whitman's friend, speaker Robert Ingersoll, made a laudatory speech in honor of the poet. Later, the remains of his parents, two brothers and their families were transferred to the mausoleum. Nowadays, many cities in the United States adorn Whitman's monuments.
Features of creativity
Whitman's work erases the boundaries of poetic form and classical prose. He also used unusual images and symbols in his poems, including rotting leaves, bunches of straw and debris. He openly wrote about death and sexuality, even described prostitution. He is often called the father of free verse, although he did not invent it. Walt Whitman's quotes diverged well thanks to his unusual style.
Poetic theory
Whitman believed that between the poet and society there was a vital, symbiotic connection. She was emphasized in The Song of Myself using first-person narration. As a fan of the American epic, he deviated from the historical tradition of using exalted heroes, and instead turned to the personalities of ordinary people. Grass Leaves were also a response to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States has had on the masses. In this context, Walt Whitman’s poem, O My Captain, Captain, is particularly noteworthy.
Sexual orientation
Although biographers continue to discuss Whitman's inclinations, he is usually called homosexual or bisexual. Whitman's orientation is usually inferred from his poetry, although this assumption is disputed. His work portrays love and sexuality in a more earthly way, common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality at the end of the 19th century. Walt Whitman's poetry is characterized by subtle homoeroticism.