Whitman, Symonds, Carpenter: "In paths untrodden," 1859-1924

Walt Whitman's Influence as Poet of Sex Between Men

From Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976). Copyright (c) by Jonathan Ned Katz. All rights reserved.

Although Whitman scholars have customarily deemphasized the celebratory character of his poems of male-male love and dismissed his sexual politics as totally deluded, in the perspective of homosexual emancipation history, Whitman emerges as a founding father.

Besides his importance as a poet, the evidence demonstrates Whitman's direct and powerful influence on the work of the two major, early English political philosophers of homosexual liberation, John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter--evidence presented in parallel chronological surveys.

Whitman's place within Gay history, especially as an influence on the early homosexual emancipation movement, has not been carefully explored. When the many biographical and analytical works on the American poet are finally surveyed in this historical perspective and in detail, their truly scandalous suppression or bigoted interpretation of Whitman's homosexuality will emerge with startling clarity and force. Until then, the following survey of some major documents is intended to suggest the initiatory, pivotal role of Whitman, despite his own evasions and even outright disavowal, as a pioneer in the history of the homosexual resistance.

In Paths Untrodden, September 1859

Happily for the history of Gay liberation, Walt Whitman precisely dates his resolution “To celebrate the need of comrades": an "afternoon" in September 1859. The poem recording this resolution first appears in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, as number 1 in the new “Calamus" section, whose theme is male-male love:

In paths untrodden,

In the growth by. margins of pond-waters,

Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,

From all the standards hitherto published-horn the pleasures,

profits, conformities,

Which too long I was offering to feed to my Soul;

Clear to me now, standards not yet published-dear to me that

my Soul,

That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices only in

comrades;

Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,

Tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,

No longer abashed-for in this secluded spot I can respond as I

would not dare elsewhere,

Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all

the rest,

Resolved to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,

Projecting them along that substantial life,

Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love, *

Afternoon, this delicious Ninth Month, in my forty-first year,

I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,

To tell the secret of my nights and days,

To celebrate the need of comrades.

Calamus

Poem number 4 of the same edition unequivocally identifies the symbolic meaning of calamus, a grass or rushlike plant growing around the edges of ponds. "Henceforth," says Whitman, this calamus plant shall "be the token of comrades," because at such a pond "I last saw him that tenderly loves me-and returns again, never to separate from me."

In the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman also refers to calamus or "sweet-flag" (another common name for the same plant), using it explicitly as a phallic symbol.

The "Calamus" poems are thus unambiguously identified with the love of males for males, and this love is explicitly erotic. The poems themselves emphasize the physical, as well as emotional, expression of male intimacy. Whitman's "Calamus" poems evoke a great variety of those deep feelings connected with love--in particular, the love of males for males, expressed in the most physical of terms. These feelings range from the deepest despair to the most positive, passionate love.

Whitman's Poetic Program, 1860

In the first verse of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, "Proto-Leaf," Whitman states his poetic program: among his subjects he will write of "sexual organs and ads!"--describing them "with courageous clear voice," proving them "illustrious!' Then he immediately adds that he "will sing the song of companionship"--he will show what alone will unify the states--those states which "are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me." He continues:

I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were

threatening to consume me,

I will lift what has too long kept down those smoldering fires,

I will give them complete abandonment,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,

(For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and

joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

Whitman's Sexual Politics

In his verse, Whitman begins to formulate, in poetic terms, a conception of sexual politics. "Calamus" poem number 5 emphasizes the social, unifying function of male comradeship.

STATES!

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?

By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

Away!

I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the form of courts and arms,

These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held

together.

. . . . . . . . .

There shall from me be a new friendship-It shall be called after

my name,

It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place, I

It shall twist and intertwist them through and around each other-

Compact shall they be, showing new signs,

Affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom,

Those who love each other shall be invincible…

. . . . . . . . .

It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses and streets,

to see manly affection,

The departing brother or friend shall salute the remaining brother

or friend with a kiss.

There shall be innovations,

There shall be countless linked hands.

. . . . . . . . .

These shall be masters of the world under a new power,

They shall laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the

world.

. . . . . . . . .

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron,

I, extatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the

love of lovers tie you.

In poem 35 Whitman says:

I believe the main purport of These States is to found a

superb friendship, exalt4 previously unknown,

Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting,

latent in all men.

"I wish to infuse myself among you,” says Whitman, "till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand”.

Although Whitman's sexual politics, as expressed in these poems of 1860, was later somewhat elaborated in prose, his views always retained a certain vagueness. Nevertheless, Whitman's writings are remarkable for suggesting, at an early date, intimate connections between homosexual emancipation and the full development of democracy, including a general sexual and human liberation.

While some of Whitman's verses belong among the world's most beautiful love lyrics, his clear, spare, passionate, poems of male-male love also contain the seeds of a sexual politics whose far-reaching implications are only becoming clear with the recent development of the women's and Gay liberation movements and related theoretical analyses.

• Next article on resistance: John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Walt Whitman: 1892-1893