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Goodbye, Walt? (1 Viewer)

In the past couple hours, I read that the statue of Walt Whitman is being removed from Rutgers-Camden campus because he was racist.

My first reaction was 'G-damn these oversensitive young activists, ' and I went into full defense mode. It was Whitman who wrote in Leaves of Grass :

A man’s body at auction
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale.)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. . .
Gentlemen look on this wonder.
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it. (1)
This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns
In him the start of populous states and rich republics, Of him count-
less immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments,

I adore the egalitarian, huge hearted queer and his hymn to America and to us all. An amazing man, an observer not detached from what he observed, caught up with the very solid earth beneath his feet, the sun on his back, the hand of his lover, but also an idealist seeing the inherent promise of perfection in the less than perfect world we live in:

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.

By every life a share or more or less,
None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is
waiting.

How could they chuck him in the Old Racist Loser pile? But I started hunting around a little, and yup, indeed he was a racist. It's bad, too. The site doesn't allow copying, but it's here --I think people can access it as a courtesy if you're not a member.

books.google.com

Walt Whitman's America

Winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award and Finalist for the National for the Book Critics Circle Award In his poetry Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America and in so doing heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his...
books.google.com

So what do I do with this cognitive dissonance? And it's big. He sounds like Ontologuy or SmartCat. Or maybe, since he came first, they sound like him. I don't know how the same man who wrote Leaves of Grass could possibly be the one quoted in that biography. But he is. Maybe the answer is in Song of the Universal: "Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection." To Walt was born a piece, or more or less, and it shone out at times, like the sun on a cloudy day.

But you all might as well know I'm sort of heartbroken, confused and saddened to learn that Walt had a lousy view of African Americans as an amorphous whole, although when confronted with individuals, he was more fair. It was the fashion of the time to study the shape of skulls and to postulate on behavior and apply Survival of the Fittest. It was ugly, and part of the grossness of our feet of clay.

So I can see why they're taking down his statue, but I'm still crying.
 
Click to expand...
Am i the only one that thought of breaking bad?

"Gliding o'er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul—not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing." ―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Sucks to hear (and read) your point though.
I was always surprised to hear about william shockley, the transistor inventor's beliefs on the bell curve. Not pretty.
 
Aletheia said:
Am i the only one that thought of breaking bad?

"Gliding o'er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul—not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing." ―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Sucks to hear (and read) your point though.
I was always surprised to hear about william shockley, the transistor inventor's beliefs on the bell curve. Not pretty.
Click to expand...
I didn't see that series. What made you think of that?
 
MaryP said:
I didn't see that series. What made you think of that?
Click to expand...
You'd really have to watch it to understand. Walter White was the main character in the show. There was an episode, 'Gliding Above All,' that had a huge revelation between the initials walt whitman and walter white.
 
Kiwimac said:
Whitman was a product of his time. Love him or hate him at least have the decency to judge him according to his milieu not according to todays' mores.
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My first reaction, too. Those ideas he was spouting about n****** are still being pushed, though, even popular in some circles. It's not some quaint idea like phrenology. So I can understand people being genuinely distressed. Owning a slave to polish your boots and answer your door, or if you had a farm, owning a lot of slaves to work it, that's milieu. The poison Whitman was spouting in his essays and comments was worse than custom. IMO

But I still honor him, and I still can't figure out how his verse and his ideas could be so different.
 
MaryP said:
My first reaction, too. Those ideas he was spouting about n****** are still being pushed, though, even popular in some circles. It's not some quaint idea like phrenology. So I can understand people being genuinely distressed. Owning a slave to polish your boots and answer your door, or if you had a farm, owning a lot of slaves to work it, that's milieu. The poison Whitman was spouting in his essays and comments was worse than custom. IMO

But I still honor him, and I still can't figure out how his verse and his ideas could be so different.
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As he said "...Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ..."
 
Kiwimac said:
As he said "...Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ..."
Click to expand...
Thank you.
 
MaryP said:
In the past couple hours, I read that the statue of Walt Whitman is being removed from Rutgers-Camden campus because he was racist.

My first reaction was 'G-damn these oversensitive young activists, ' and I went into full defense mode. It was Whitman who wrote in Leaves of Grass :

A man’s body at auction
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale.)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. . .
Gentlemen look on this wonder.
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it. (1)
This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns
In him the start of populous states and rich republics, Of him count-
less immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments,

I adore the egalitarian, huge hearted queer and his hymn to America and to us all. An amazing man, an observer not detached from what he observed, caught up with the very solid earth beneath his feet, the sun on his back, the hand of his lover, but also an idealist seeing the inherent promise of perfection in the less than perfect world we live in:

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.

By every life a share or more or less,
None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is
waiting.

How could they chuck him in the Old Racist Loser pile? But I started hunting around a little, and yup, indeed he was a racist. It's bad, too. The site doesn't allow copying, but it's here --I think people can access it as a courtesy if you're not a member.

books.google.com

Walt Whitman's America

Winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award and Finalist for the National for the Book Critics Circle Award In his poetry Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America and in so doing heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his...
books.google.com

So what do I do with this cognitive dissonance? And it's big. He sounds like Ontologuy or SmartCat. Or maybe, since he came first, they sound like him. I don't know how the same man who wrote Leaves of Grass could possibly be the one quoted in that biography. But he is. Maybe the answer is in Song of the Universal: "Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection." To Walt was born a piece, or more or less, and it shone out at times, like the sun on a cloudy day.

But you all might as well know I'm sort of heartbroken, confused and saddened to learn that Walt had a lousy view of African Americans as an amorphous whole, although when confronted with individuals, he was more fair. It was the fashion of the time to study the shape of skulls and to postulate on behavior and apply Survival of the Fittest. It was ugly, and part of the grossness of our feet of clay.

So I can see why they're taking down his statue, but I'm still crying.
Click to expand...

It is beyond me why any person would want to do what you are doing right now, here.

Go back through history and judge who are or who are not "racists".

Who gives a crap? Certainly not I.

Thats life in the big city, deal with it. Times are different today. Yes some people are still "racists", and there just really isnt a darned thing you or I can do about that. We wont ever be able to control the thoughts, beliefs, etc of others.

The general progression and evolution is toward less "racism", and you just have to be happy with that and have faith in that. Good luck.
 
PeacefulWarrior said:
It is beyond me why any person would want to do what you are doing right now, here.

Go back through history and judge who are or who are not "racists".

Who gives a crap? Certainly not I.

Thats life in the big city, deal with it. Times are different today. Yes some people are still "racists", and there just really isnt a darned thing you or I can do about that. We wont ever be able to control the thoughts, beliefs, etc of others.

The general progression and evolution is toward less "racism", and you just have to be happy with that and have faith in that. Good luck.
Click to expand...
I love it when my feelings are soundly invalidated.

Nevermind.
 
I'm glad that Philadelphia can still celebrate Walt while keeping a steady eye on what he got wrong.

For some, the defense that Whitman was socially progressive for his time — post-Civil War reconstruction — does not assuage the fact that his beliefs that are considered deeply racist today.

For others, Whitman was an outsider shunned by the literary establishment of his time, who turned poetry into a personal confirmation on the most grand scale. Many poets who came later, including Langston Hughes and Margaret Walker of the Black Arts Movement, revered Whitman as a hero.

“I do think this whole piece is an exploration of flawed heroes, and in that an exploration of our own flaws,” said Jarboe.

https://whyy.org/articles/walt-whitman-put-on-trial-for-his-200th-birthday/
 
So this would be an instance of the left eating it's own?

Why, yes, yes I do believe so.

1626323361567.png
 
Can't wait till some of the older universities in the east have to come down due to the slave labor used to build them.
 
Aletheia said:
Am i the only one that thought of breaking bad?

"Gliding o'er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul—not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing." ―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Sucks to hear (and read) your point though.
I was always surprised to hear about william shockley, the transistor inventor's beliefs on the bell curve. Not pretty.
Click to expand...

My father mentioned Shockley all the time. Brilliant scientist, but a raging antisemite and a bigot.
 
I'm beginning to think only one other poster here has read Whitman. I'm surprised.
 
MaryP said:
I'm beginning to think only one other poster here has read Whitman. I'm surprised.
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I read Whitman. I liked some aspects of his writing. Until I read your blog I didn't know what a virulent racist he was. But I'm sure many creative people have major flaws. It is kind of unsettling and dissatisfying to learn of the major flaws of those who have created works that we enjoy. I have had the same experience with Woody Allen and Bill Cosby. But the bottom line is, the works stand on their own. Deeply flawed human beings are capable of creating lasting, positive works. And it is the works that speak to us, not the flawed human being. We shouldn't let knowledge of the creator of the works dampen our enjoyment of them. But I guess it is also something that makes us little bit sad at the same time, because we want the artist to be as great as the art. It just doesn't happen that way very often.
 
Kiwimac said:
Whitman was a product of his time. Love him or hate him at least have the decency to judge him according to his milieu not according to todays' mores.
Click to expand...
Oh, really? Does that also apply to someone like James Earl Ray?

What is the year that we should start holding people accountable for something like racism? 1930? 1970? 2010?

Even if we follow your injunction, it's not good. While obviously no one had a 2021 mentality in 1855, there were certainly many abolitionists alive during that era, publicly advocating against slavery, without referring to blacks as "wild brutes."

We shouldn't simply write off everything he's done. However, it really shouldn't be surprising that people today are more circumspect in how they feel about him and his work, especially in a city that is now 50% black.
 
MaryP said:
Got a kind word for Walt?
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Well, I've always been quite a bit more inclined towards prose than poetry. I suspect the only Whitman I've ever read was assigned, and long ago.

Generally speaking, I don't write artists off entirely because they have X,Y,Z ugly thing in the past. But it depends. I wouldn't want to hear Louis C.K. do a routine about sex stuff now because, ew, he really is a pervert/assaulter. On the other hand, I still enjoy hemmingway even though anti-semitism radiated off The Sun Also Rises (I'm Jewish).

But, I can very much understand targets of a person's "ism" opposing a statue's existence. The statue is an open celebration. I imagine a black person looking at a statue of a virulent racist feels rather like I might if I came across a statue of some Nazi. Sure, slavery and nazism weren't exactly the same, but they boil down to the same ultimate beliefs: the other is not a person, but some lower animal.

There's a pretty big difference between personally enjoying work despite its creator's shortcomings, and putting forth someone as sufficiently heroic/noble to warrant a public statue.




At any rate, I wouldn't pay Peaceful Warrior any heed. He just wanted to get under your skin.
 
Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful words and keeping me company as I sort this out.
 
MaryP said:
In the past couple hours, I read that the statue of Walt Whitman is being removed from Rutgers-Camden campus because he was racist.

My first reaction was 'G-damn these oversensitive young activists, ' and I went into full defense mode. It was Whitman who wrote in Leaves of Grass :...

...So what do I do with this cognitive dissonance? And it's big. He sounds like Ontologuy or SmartCat. Or maybe, since he came first, they sound like him. I don't know how the same man who wrote Leaves of Grass could possibly be the one quoted in that biography. But he is. Maybe the answer is in Song of the Universal: "Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection." To Walt was born a piece, or more or less, and it shone out at times, like the sun on a cloudy day.

But you all might as well know I'm sort of heartbroken, confused and saddened to learn that Walt had a lousy view of African Americans as an amorphous whole, although when confronted with individuals, he was more fair. It was the fashion of the time to study the shape of skulls and to postulate on behavior and apply Survival of the Fittest. It was ugly, and part of the grossness of our feet of clay.

So I can see why they're taking down his statue, but I'm still crying.
Click to expand...

As one progresses through life, one soon discovers that everyone (including the loftiest idols) have feet of clay in some way or another.

IMO you should simply reconcile the facts of this discovery with your enjoyment of his works. Condemn the sins while recognizing the remaining genius.

This is how I deal with the fact that several of our "Founding Fathers" were themselves slave owners, including the author of the Declaration of Independence. This despite the fact he abhorred the institution, but his personal finances depended on it while he lived.

Too many people refuse to accept the reality that humans are made up of positive and negative attributes, and that few (if any) are perfect angels.

It is easy to point to the speck in someone else's eye, without seeking to remove the beam in one's own. That is the basic fallacy in every attempt to "purify" history we see occurring these days.
 
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