Walt Whitman
Biography
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819. He was the
second child in a family of 11. His parents were Walter Whitman, a
housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. Whitman grew up in the Brooklyn district
of New York and Long Island. At the age of twelve Whitman, began learning to
work as a printer. It was around this time that he discovered a great passion
for literature. Largely self-taught he read voraciously, including works by the
great classic writers – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. After a
devastating fire in the printing district of New York, Whitman was left without
a job, But, in 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the
one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when
he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper,
Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In
1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans
Crescent. In New Orleans he became witness to the practise of slavery in the
city, and was repulsed by what he saw. Whitman opposed the extension of
slavery, though did not always support the abolitionists, over concerns about
their commitment to democracy. He closely followed politics throughout his
life.
He returned to Brooklyn
in the fall of 1848, where he founded a “free soil” newspaper, the Brooklyn
Freeman. As well as journalism, Whitman became absorbed in poetry, writing a
unique and distinctive style. In 1855, he finished his seminal work ‘Leaves of
Grass, which consisted of twelve sections.
I celebrate myself, and
sing myself,
And what I assume you
shall assume,
For every atom belonging
to me as good belongs to you.
- Leaves of Grass, Walt
Whitman
He published the volume
himself, and sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson in July of 1855. Emerson was
one of America’s leading writers and free thinkers. He was astonished by the
unique style of Whitman.
“I am not blind to the
worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most
extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am
very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson to
Walt Whitman 1855.
He praised the volume
extensively, and this helped Whitman gain greater recognition. In 1856, he
released a second edition, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson
praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response.
During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume,
publishing several more editions of the book.
At the outbreak of the
Civil War, Whitman wrote “Beat! Beat! Drums!” a patriotic poem and rally call
for the North. During the war, he wrote freelance journalism and visited the
wounded at New York-area hospitals. In 1862, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to
care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering
of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the
hospitals. His war time experiences left a profound mark on Whitman. He wrote
…I dress the perforated
shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a
gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant
stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail...
- Walt Whitman, The Wound Dresser
However, despite his
first hand witness of human suffering, Whitman’s poetry always contained all
range of human emotions. He wrote also of joy and the unending capacity of the
human spirit.
O the joy of that vast
elemental sympathy which only the human
soul is capable of
generating and emitting in steady and
limitless floods.
- Walt Whitman, A Song of Joys
Whitman stayed in the
city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the
Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered
that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive.
Harlan fired the poet.
Whitman struggled to
support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk’s
salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from
friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending
money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers
both in the states and in England sent him “purses” of money so that he could
get by.
Walt Whitman was heavily
influenced by Deism – a belief in God without needing an organised religion. In
his writings he suggested that all religions were valid, but he himself did not
adhere to one particular creed. This underlying oneness of the Universe is a
recurrent theme of Whitman’s poetry.
Come said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet
yet has chanted,
Sing me the universal.
In this broad earth of
ours,
Amid the measureless
grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within
its central heart,
Nestles the seed
perfection.
In the early 1870s,
Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his
brother’s house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible
to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication
of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the
simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on
additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final
volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891). After his death on March
26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in
Harleigh Cemetery.
http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/walt-whitman.html
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