During the August 1890, Walt Whitman unsealed an embarrassing little bit of fan send. “On your own conception from Comradeship,” composed United kingdom literary critic John Addington Symonds, “might you remember new you’ll attack of those partial-sexual feelings and you can strategies and therefore surely manage can be found anywhere between people?”
It’s a concern progressive critics features expected too — and lots of possess rather definitively replied they. “Walt Whitman and you will Homosexual Liberation are practically associated for me,” composed cultural historian Rictor Norton during the an effective 1999 article. Norton things to Whitman’s 1860 “Calamus” poems due to the fact sort of coming-out letter, full of traces such as:
“That calamus region provides actually allow’d the potential for such as construction since the mention’d was terrible,” Whitman answered, insisting that Symonds is to make “morbid inferences — wh’ is actually disavow’d by me see damnable.”
It’s hard to assume one progressive poet writing on lying-in some other mans possession immediately after which getting in touch with homosexuality “damnable.” However the kind of same-intercourse closeness Whitman revealed — and you may liked within the real world — are approved at the time while the an organic section of heterosexuality. Whenever publishers did censor Whitman’s works, they left the fresh new “Calamus” poems undamaged and you can alternatively slashed his definitions of male-ladies passions. (“Love-tissue lump and you will deliciously aching,” Whitman typed, explaining a wedding couple on the relationship night. “Limitless limpid jets away from like sexy and large, quivering jelly regarding like, white-blow and you will delirious liquid.”)