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Homosexuality and the calamus poems:
- Joseph Cady
- “Whitman's notebooks show the private pain and deprivation that society's
persecution of the homosexual caused him.”
- Whitman attempted to give a positive connotation to homosexuality in response
to societal oppression
- “The Calamus poems, which in "Here the Frailest Leaves of Me" Whitman
declared "expose me more than all my other poems," → extremely personal,
reflective
- “Manuscript evidence suggests that Children of Adam was an afterthought
intended to balance the disturbing subject of Calamus” (by discussing
heterosexuality)
- “Whitman's chief problem in Calamus is to invent a way of speaking
affirmatively about a subject that his popular audience considered literally
unspeakable and that his general culture gave him no positive way of
understanding, a problem gay people continue to face even under today's
changing conditions.”
- “By affirming his homosexuality here, Whitman necessarily rejects his culture's
prevailing assumptions about sexual preference, gender identity and
relationships, social institutions and nature, and in so doing, he implicitly
challenges the idea that there is an inherent moral design and unity in
experience.”
- “The Calamus poems suggest that this self-directed and continuous search for
an authentic identity and form, with an accompanying skepticism about all
conventions that have been established for sexuality and personality (including
those that have been established for homosexuality), may be the most fitting
description of a modern "homosexual sensibility" and are the first record in
early modern writing of this kind of concerted (if only partly-conscious) effort
by a homosexual.”
- In particular, he counters assurances like Emerson's claim in "The American
Scholar" that "the deeper [man] dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment,
to his wonder he finds that this is the most acceptable, most public, and
universally true"
- reflects the political values of the Jacksonian Age
- “Manly love” challenges the fact that a homosexual is feminine → he could’ve
also done that in order to be liked by his common audience (that praises
manliness)
Homosexuality and the calamus poems:
- Joseph Cady
- “Whitman's notebooks show the private pain and deprivation that society's
persecution of the homosexual caused him.”
- Whitman attempted to give a positive connotation to homosexuality in response
to societal oppression
- “The Calamus poems, which in "Here the Frailest Leaves of Me" Whitman
declared "expose me more than all my other poems," → extremely personal,
reflective
- “Manuscript evidence suggests that Children of Adam was an afterthought
intended to balance the disturbing subject of Calamus” (by discussing
heterosexuality)
- “Whitman's chief problem in Calamus is to invent a way of speaking
affirmatively about a subject that his popular audience considered literally
unspeakable and that his general culture gave him no positive way of
understanding, a problem gay people continue to face even under today's
changing conditions.”
- “By affirming his homosexuality here, Whitman necessarily rejects his culture's
prevailing assumptions about sexual preference, gender identity and
relationships, social institutions and nature, and in so doing, he implicitly
challenges the idea that there is an inherent moral design and unity in
experience.”
- “The Calamus poems suggest that this self-directed and continuous search for
an authentic identity and form, with an accompanying skepticism about all
conventions that have been established for sexuality and personality (including
those that have been established for homosexuality), may be the most fitting
description of a modern "homosexual sensibility" and are the first record in
early modern writing of this kind of concerted (if only partly-conscious) effort
by a homosexual.”
- In particular, he counters assurances like Emerson's claim in "The American
Scholar" that "the deeper [man] dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment,
to his wonder he finds that this is the most acceptable, most public, and
universally true"
- reflects the political values of the Jacksonian Age
- “Manly love” challenges the fact that a homosexual is feminine → he could’ve
also done that in order to be liked by his common audience (that praises
manliness)
