Walt Whitman

Una paradoja acecha a este libro. Una tensión entre lo individual y lo colectivo, entre lo trascendente y aquello más inmanente. Jonas Mekas ha sido, probablemente, quien mejor ha representado los logros del cine underground que se llevó a cabo en los Estados Unidos a partir de los años 50. Sin embargo, no se debería caer en personalismos pues el espíritu de entonces le excede. No aceptaremos las ataduras trata precisamente de lo que Mekas comparte con autores como Thoreau y Whitman, de una necesidad de librarse de yugos tremendamente pesados. Con todo, estas resistencias se dan en un territorio donde la mayoría de veces no se consigue dejar testimonio pero, a pesar de ello, este testimonio llega hasta hoy.

There is a common narrative among Whitman scholars that Walt Whitman 'came out' as a gay man in his late 50s with the release of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass , more specifically with the inclusion of the "Calamus" poems. While the "Calamus" cluster does consist of many poems about sensual interactions, in this paper I am going to argue that Walt Whitman did not have his homosexual awakening so late in his life.

This essay examines two contemporary cultural productions – a 2009 Levi’s Jeans commercial and a poetry collection by Rob Halpern, Music For Porn (2012) – in terms of how they adapt Walt Whitman’s poetry. Working with biopolitical theory, disability studies, and queer theory, I argue that these adaptations, or afterlives, actualize new social possibilities in Whitman’s corpus. I focus on the ways in which Levi’s and Halpern deploy Whitman as a reserve of utopian energy for responding to neoliberalism and disaster capitalism. Whereas the Levi’s commercial reinforces the American exceptionalism in Whitman, promising to heal a post-2008 United States in the midst of financial crisis through patriotic sentiment and entrepreneurial fervor, Halpern’s poetry suggests an alternative to nationalism and capitalism in the form of a prosthetic commons, or a social solidarity founded on the debilities and disabilities of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the very first edition of Leaves of Grass, no author is named, and most poems have no title other than "leaves of grass." This self-published book met a querulous public, but became almost a new gospel to some readers. Whitman's rejection of all the European conventions of poetry was thoroughgoing: no rhyme, no meter, no metaphor, no Greek or Roman references. It was distinctly American.

This essay traces the influence of Welt Whitman on the now-forgotten modernist poet MacKnigbt Black (1896-1931). Examining in particular the only book Black published in his short life, 1929's Machinery, "Whitman in the Engine Room" introduces Black's poetry to Whitman scholars and shows what a "Futurist" reading of Whitman from the political left may entail. It does so by situating Black in the context of democratic Socialism in mid-1920s Pennsylvania, exploring the poetical debate with Whitman in Black's writings from the early 19205 (and in particular his crisis year of 1922), and demonstrating that his turn to a Futurist (albeit socialist) aesthetic was not a turn away from the Camden poet, but indeed an embrace--an embrace that speaks back to Whitman's own fascination with automation.

Il 20 giugno 1930 un giovane Cesare Pavese si laurea in Lettere con punti 108 su 110 presso la Regia Università di Torino con una tesi intitolata Interpretazione della poesia di Walt Whitman. La vicenda della discussione è ormai nota, benché la critica non sia ancora oggi unanime nel valutarne gli effettivi esiti: il titolare della cattedra di Letteratura inglese, Federico Olivero, rifiutò la tesi di Pavese per motivi estetici e politici (Croce, la cultura americana invisa al Fascismo), e solamente grazie all'intercessione dell'amico Leone Ginzburg, Pavese ebbe come relatore il professore di Letteratura francese, Ferdinando Neri, antifascista e direttore della rivista «La Cultura» -di cui poi Pavese diventerà direttore a partire dal terzo numero del 1934. Secondo varie testimonianze -da Carlo Pinelli a Fernanda Pivano -, la tesi fu accolta in maniera particolarmente ostile e suscitò un grosso scalpore tra i commissari, che accusarono il laureando di aver scritto un elaborato pieno di anglicismi e americanismi, di essersi occupato di un autore contemporaneo e di aver applicato un metodo (troppo?) crociano. La storia editoriale della tesi si concluderà infine con la pubblicazione di un saggio su Whitman, che riprende non solo il titolo dell'elaborato ma anche i principi metodologici e interpretativi dell'intero elaborato, nel fascicolo luglio-settembre 1933 de «La Cultura», poi raccolto a partire dal 1951 nell'antologia La letteratura americana e altri saggi. Elio Gioanola fu tra i primi a studiare la tesi di laurea di Pavese -al tempo conservata all'Archivio Storico dell'Università degli Studi di Torino e non disponibile in altre forme -, pubblicando nel 1968 un articolo sulle pagine della «Rivista di Studi Crociani» -e poi confluito nella seminale monografia del 1971, Cesare Pavese. La poetica dell'essere. Tuttavia, se scorriamo le preziose bibliografie pavesiane curate da Monica Lanzillotta (1999), Luisella Mesiano (2007) e Roberto Dore (2016), benché presenti, gli studi analitici dedicati al rapporto tra Pavese e Whitman non sono numerosi, soprattutto se comparati a quelli dedicati ad altri grandi autori della tradizione americana cari allo scrittore italiano (Melville e Steinbeck, per esempio). Dopo il 2006, con la prima pubblicazione della tesi di laurea di Pavese a cura di Valerio Magrelli per i tipi di Einaudi, si è assistito a una sorta di Renaissance degli studi pavesiani declinati lungo una direzione 'americana' e whitmaniana, ma le difficoltà nel reperire l'edizione della tesi -limitata a soli mille esemplari -non ha certamente aiutato a indagare con maggiore profondità un nodo cruciale della poetica di Pavese e, soprattutto, a entrare nella sua biblioteca giovanile. Valgono, in questo senso, le parole di Antonino Sichera del 1997: «Il contributo complessivo di Whitman e delle sue Leaves of grass al mondo poetico di Pavese non è stato fino ad oggi esaustivamente studiato». In primo luogo, la nuova veste editoriale (Mimesis) della tesi di laurea di Pavese svolge una funzione di ordine divulgativo, nella misura in cui rende nuovamente disponibile un testo in precedenza era accessibile a pochi -sebbene si tratti di una ristampa della veste Einaudi 2006 (compresa l'introduzione di Valerio Magrelli). E, in seconda battuta, l'edizione Mimesis de L'interpretazione della poesia di Walt Whitman restituisce un testo che, per citare le parole del curatore, equivale a una «ricerca degna, a dir poco, di un dottorato attuale» (p. 8). Come giustamente rileva Magrelli, Pavese «aveva fretta» di laurearsi per entrare «nel mondo del lavoro, nella dimensione, così a lungo anelata, di quell'età adulta cui allude la dedica shakesperiana de La

The article explores in how far and to what extent Johann Wolfgang Goethe has influenced Walt Whitman’s poetic concepts, notably his notion of authorship. The investigation focuses on the concept of poetic language as a form of collective speech, as it is conceived of and amplified in the late self-characterizations and -commentaries of Goethe as well as in Whitman’s poetological, selfreflective poem »Song of Myself«. On the basis of these insights, the further consequences and wider implications of the poetic relationship in question – in which the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson function as a principal mediator – can be assessed. Insofar this study does not only aim at an investigation into the influences between singular author personalities, but also provides a comparative study of the German-American literary relationships.

Examining Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” (from his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass), this article expounds upon the subject formation contained within it: the self. This self, developed through a variant of creation myth, is inflected with both political and theological agendas. The complex democratic negotiation of these poles places Whitman’s poem in the realm of political theology. The first half of the essay traces the theological inflections in the poem: the impact, in other words, of the name of God on the formation, development, or thriving of the self. It also sketches the contours of Whitman’s political context and lays bare some of his political agendas. The latter half of the essay speculates on some potential consequences of the development of this self and raises the question: How deeply is it already embedded in American democratic subjectivity?

La literatura de la imaginación, al contrario de lo que creería el crítico literario Harold Bloom, comprendía la unidad inseparable, como en el caso de la personalidad de Lincoln, de la conciencia estética y moral, permitiendo que la ética literaria y la experiencia estética de las 'Perspectivas democráticas' resultaran afines. Las 'Perspectivas democráticas' de Whitman representan a la perfección el significado de la escritura como un acto de independencia que refleja indistintamente tanto al individuo como a la sociedad, en una clara muestra de fe en la democracia. El valor democrático de las páginas de Whitman es emancipador para el lector. Se trata, en conclusión, de una experiencia estética afín a la ética literaria que ha fundado una nación, los Estados Unidos de América.

Religion is basically absent from the scholarship on Pablo Neruda. Moreover, Neruda’s relationship to Walt Whitman, his “compañero de Manhattan," is understood to be one of uncritical adulation. But reading Neruda’s odes to particular foods as making a theological point – and one that is critical of Whitman – provides both a deeper understanding of Neruda’s thinking about religion and a more nuanced view of Whitman’s influence on him. In his “Ode to the Tomato” and his odes to particular cereal crops, Neruda reflects on divine authorship and human agency in a way that responds to both the clerical mysticism of San Juan’s “Dark Night” and the naturalistic and democratic – but ultimately politically sterile – theology of Walt Whitman’s “This Compost” and “Song of Occupations.” Whitman ascribes divinity to nature and to skilled workers in an attempt to affirm their value as against the devaluation wrought by industrial capitalism. Neruda challenges Whitman by being more skeptical about the divinity of nature and by demanding that a democratic theology be political. Wheat, in particular, is a crop of affliction until it is made holy by collective struggle rather than through chemistry or individual occupations.

Following Foucault’s distrust of identity as possibly leading to the objectivation of the subject, Said founded his works on a conception of identity as an “essentially static notion” that served imperialism by reducing colonized peoples to immutable and negative characteristics. In the wake of Culture and Imperialism, a lot has been written upon the role that was played by novels and theatre plays in the constitution and preservation of national identities. Poetry, however, has not received such extended treatment and could bring new elements to our reflection. My aim is to study what in Whitman's works allowed him to play a role in the constitution of the American identity. A foundational figure for the Americans, Whitman produced a volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, quite far from a mainstream volume representative of the spirit of a people. Contrary to what one may expect, it is rather a ground-breaking work inaugurating a new era both for world poetry and the American society. Whitman's position as a minority writer -in the sense of Deleuze- taking up a major role deserves our attention. Through what can be described as a litany of performative discourse Whitman questioned the American identity just as much as he made it become reality.

From his introduction by Quaker theologian Robert Barclay in the 1670s, until Rufus Jones’ last sermon in 1948, Socrates remained a key exemplar for Friends’ insistence on universal salvation. Following the earliest Christian theologians, Friends argued that all Greeks who preached the One True God to a pagan society were prophets. As early Friends began to focus on legends of the philosopher’s daimonion, however, Socrates gradually stepped out of their general lineup of en-Light-ened Greeks to emerge as the preferred pre-Christian ambassador for the doctrine of divine illumination. But curiously, the Quaker tradition never developed an accurate portrayal of the daemonic phenomenon, and in the case of Rufus Jones, this was especially curious because his personal philosophy was recognized as Socratic. On the other hand, antebellum New Bedford’s ex-Quaker, Mary Rotch, exhibited not only a more faithful, but more pragmatic, understanding of Socrates’ daimonion. As originally shown by Fredrick B. Tolles, her embrace of a similar spirit, or sign, played a pivotal role in the development of Emerson’s Self-Reliance — the key doctrine of Transcendentalism. This paper reviews the historic usage of Socrates as an implicit exemplar of Friendly action: as gadfly, as martyr, and above all, as mystic — specifically, as channel for the central mystery in Quaker theology: “the Ray of that true Light which lighteth every Man who cometh into the world.”

This paper investigates the origin of Whitman's use of the term "kosmos" in his most famous poem, "Song of Myself." It traces the term back to the work of the Early German Romantics and their contemporaries, in particular Alexander von Humboldt and Friedrich Schlegel

The paper examines Walt Whitman’s 1871 essay Democratic Vistas and its view
of democracy not only in America, but across the world. Whitman’s own experience in politics has
shaped his view on democracy which he perceives as a useful tool for building one’s own personality
through interaction with the outside world, namely nature. Thus, the unique American environment
shapes the notion of democracy in his poetry, which is often portayed as a woman, so it is no coincidence
that the Statue of Liberty, erected during Whitman’s lifetime in New York Harbor, is a woman.
The American poet does not however turn a blind eye at the corruption which was widespread in
his country near the middle of the 19th century. He gives his own advice on how any individual can
preserve the notion of freedom, brought forward by the American War of Independence. The final
section of the paper examines how Whitman’s notion of democracy bears itself outside his native
land, mainly by referring to German Romanticist writers. Because it is focused on the individual,
Walt Whitman’s notion of democracy can thrive in other cultures other than American, which is a
key note in the paper’s conclusion.

This pamphlet seeks to deepen our conception of Elias Hicks (1748 — 1830) beyond the mere “farmer” imagined by historians. It seeks to illuminate how Hicksite theology expressed the commercial values of the New York seaport during the Age of Sail, a world now gone with the wind — a forgotten way of life, so different from our own. In doing so, we shall touch the essence of our beliefs about human sexuality, and deepen our appreciation of Quakerism’s unique contribution to modern society: an historic advocacy of the sanctity of individual conscience.

This paper focuses in particular on two major twentieth-century Iberian poems celebrating and dialoguing with Walt Whitman’s example as a cosmopolitan paragon of queer affective networking: Federico García Lorca’s “Oda a Walt Whitman” (1930) and Fernando Pessoa’s (writing as Álvaro de Campos) “Saudação a Walt Whitman” (1915). Both Pessoa and Lorca responded forcefully to what Betsy Erkkila describes as “the centrality of Whitman’s sexual love of men to the democratic vision and experimental poetics of Leaves of Grass,” at the same time as they reciprocated poetically the cosmopolitan thrust of Whitman’s direct appeal to his hypothetical readers worldwide, as enacted especially in the poem “Salut au Monde!” The protopolitical nature of Whitman’s impact on his English readers (the original “Whitmaniacs” in A. C. Swinburne’s words)—according to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, his poetry “operated most characteristically as a conduit from one man to another of feeling that had, in many cases, been private or inchoate”—did not, however, reverberate in the Iberian context, where Lorca and Pessoa neither ever met nor read each other’s works. The missing link between their solitary exercises in queer cosmopolitanism is thus provided by their contemporary Portuguese poet António Botto, who not only wrote and published openly homoerotic verse, but also construed (as evidenced by his unpublished notes and drafts) an imaginary alternative reality of globally networked male homosexual affect, with his intimate—and entirely fictitious—friendship with Lorca as its proud centerpiece.

In this essay I test and contest Lerner’s grandiose and pessimistic generalizations in his _The Hatred of Poetry_ (2016) via Emily Dickinson, who figures prominently in his text.  I then turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” a defense of poetry that greatly inspired Whitman and Dickinson yet is nowhere mentioned by Lerner.  What if we socratically argue against _Hatred_ by deploying Emerson’s arguments, Dickinson’s practice, and other theorists' conceptions of the ends and means of literature (including poetry)?  I also will appeal to Cynthia Ozick, for whom literature, at its best, offers neither socialization nor escapism, though it skeptically anatomizes both.  Rather, she argues it opens access to an experience of “radical freedom” that has profound social consequences.  I end by swerving back to Plato, particularly his famous parable of the cave, and Emerson’s own love-hate argument with Plato’s understanding of poetry.

Abro esta breve incursión en el mundo whitmaniano con las palabras del dominicano Pedro Mir cuando poetizaba: ¡No, Walt Whitman, aquí están los poetas de hoy, los obreros de hoy, los pioneros de hoy, los campesinos de hoy, firmes y levantados para justificarte! Pero hay que ir más allá en la polvorienta inmortalidad de la vida a la que cantaba el hijo de Manhattan en su épica de un lirismo abiertamente incauto, ese ahora eterno que me pertenece a mí y a todos nosotros. Prescindiendo de figuras, influencias, acólitos y descendencia norteamericanos de esta epopeya (como

From the century of independence to the contemporary, Montaigne acted as an influential voice in the ongoing transatlantic conversation that shaped the American identity. This special issue offers a series of transhistorical and interdisciplinary studies that draw the dense network of contexts, uses and meanings assumed by Montaigne’s figure and work in America, along different fields (literature, philosophy, political theory, and gender studies).

This special issue edited and directed by Emiliano Ferrari offers a series of transhistorical and interdisciplinary studies that draw the dense network of contexts, uses and meanings assumed by Montaigne’s figure and work in America, along different fields (literature, philosophy, political theory, cultural and gender studies). What emerges from the articles presented is a clear picture of the diversity of contexts, uses, and meanings that Montaigne and his Essais might have had along the progressive process of political and cultural self-definition of America since the 18th century. From the century of independence to the contemporary, from Benjamin Franklin to Judith Butler, Montaigne acted as an influential voice in the ongoing transatlantic conversation that shaped the American social, political, and cultural identity.

[Contributors to this issue: N. Kenny (Oxford), W. E. Engel (Sewanee), D. Thompson (South Carolina), D. R. Brunstetter (UC Irvine), P. Desan (Chicago), J.-C. Laursen and K. Pham (UC Riverside), C. Edelman (Incarnate Word), T. Gontier (Lyon 3), T. Birchal and V. Sommavilla (Minas Gerais) M. Schachter (Durham), E. Ferrari (Lyon 3), Z. Zalloua (Whitman College)].

http://www.bekapital.com/#!The-Ocean-Wild-like-an-Organ-Played-Jack-Kerouac%E2%80%99s-World-Ocean/c1ze1/5564437c0cf21fee13b63719
The first road Jack Kerouac dreamed of as path to the world and as an awakening call to his vocation as writer was not highway but ocean.  As he worked on a draft of his first novel in 1942 at the age of twenty, he wrote, “Into this book, ‘The Sea is My Brother’ I shall weave all the passion and glory of living, its restlessness and peace, its fever and ennui, its mornings, noons and nights of desire, frustration, fear, triumph, and death…”  The sea-as-road Kerouac dreamed of-- while still a student at Columbia in New York City where he had begun to meet those life-hungry writers like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs who would form the subterranean homesick Beats-- was huge, world-encompassing, sweeping across the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean down to the Caribbean and around to the Pacific:  “…the old ports of Spain and Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Sidney, New Zealand; and Rio and Trinidad and Barbados and the Cape; and Panama and Honolulu and the far-flung Polynesians…”  The Sea Is My Brother, “the lost novel” published belatedly in 2011, survives as a rough sketch of those ever-early energies, drives, dualities, dreams, flights, hints at the style and scope that would give the world the amazing body of work in prose, poetry, and prose poetry that Kerouac wrought.

While the traits that Whitman is famous for - all encompassing humanism and positivity - are in vast supply in 'Song of Myself', this essay investigates how various parts of his poem aggressively contradict this reading. Using deconstruction and close-reading, I found a way to, in this brief work, completely redefine and re-evaluate Whitman's authorial purpose and attitude.
This essay was notable in receiving an 85%.

This article discusses the ways in which modern identity politics have encouraged us to label the sexuality of American authors of the past and the effects of those labels. Specifically discussing Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, I discuss the history of nineteenth-century American sexuality, the assumptions placed upon Dickinson and Whitman with regard to their sexual identities, the political and social implications, and modern media consumption and presentation of those identities.