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Camden, N. J. (New Jersey, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
world. After the war had ended, Whitman stayed on in Washington as a government clerk, and saw much of John Burroughs and W. D. O'Connor. John Hay was a staunch friend. Some of the best known poets and critics of England and the Continent now began to recognize his genius. But his health had been permanently shattered by his heroic service as a nurse, and in 1873 he suffered a paralytic stroke which forced him to resign his position in Washington and remove to his brother's home in Camden, New Jersey. He was only fifty-four, but his best work was already done, and his remaining years,.until his death in 1892, were those of patient and serene invalidism. He wrote some fascinating prose in this final period, and his cluttered chamber in Camden became the shrine of many a literary pilgrim, among them some of the foremost men of letters of this country and of Europe. He was cared for by loyal friends. Occasionally he appeared in public, a magnificent gray figure of a man. And th
Fortress Monroe (Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
bow-legged boy, with the face of his own Roderick Usher. He made a good record in French and Latin, read, wrote and recited poetry, tramped on the Ragged Mountains, and did not notably exceed his companions in drinking and gambling. But his Scotch fosterfather disapproved of his conduct and withdrew him from the University. A period of wandering followed. He enlisted in the army and was stationed in Boston in 1827, when his first volume, Tamerlane, was published. In 1829 he was in Fortress Monroe, and published Al Aaraf at Baltimore. He entered West Point in 1830, and was surely, except Whistler, the strangest of all possible cadets. When he was dismissed in 1831, he had written the marvellous lines To Helen, Israfel, and The city in the sea. That is enough to have in one's knapsack at the age of twenty-two. In the eighteen years from 1831 to 1849, when Poe's unhappy life came to an end in a Baltimore hospital, his literary activity was chiefly that of a journalist, critic
Dutch (West Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
istence. In a thousand similes he makes a declaration of independence for the separate person, the single man of Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa address. I wear my hat as I please, indoors and out. Sometimes this is mere swagger. Sometimes it is superb. So much for the type. Let us turn next to the story of Whitman's life. It must here be told in the briefest fashion, for Whitman's own prose and poetry relate the essentials of his biography. He was born on Long Island, of New England and Dutch ancestry, in 1819. Lowell, W. W. Story, and Charles A. Dana were born in that year, as was also George Eliot. Whitman's father was a carpenter, who leaned to the Quakers. There were many children. When little Walt --as he was called, to distinguish him from his father, Walter — was four, the family moved to Brooklyn. The boy had scanty schooling, and by the time he was twenty had tried type-setting, teaching, and editing a country newspaper on Long Island. He was a big, dark-haired fel
West Point (Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
the University. A period of wandering followed. He enlisted in the army and was stationed in Boston in 1827, when his first volume, Tamerlane, was published. In 1829 he was in Fortress Monroe, and published Al Aaraf at Baltimore. He entered West Point in 1830, and was surely, except Whistler, the strangest of all possible cadets. When he was dismissed in 1831, he had written the marvellous lines To Helen, Israfel, and The city in the sea. That is enough to have in one's knapsack at the ageeft. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. When the child-wife died in the shabby cottage at Fordham, her wasted body was covered with the old army overcoat which Poe had brought from West Point. If Poe met some of the tests of practical life inadequately, it must be remembered that his health failed at twenty-five, that he was pitiably poor, and that the slightest indulgence in drink set his over-wrought nerves jangling. Ferguson, t
Richmond (Virginia, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
ead-beat. A child of strolling players, Poe happened to be born in Boston, but he hated Frogpondium his favorite name for the city of his nativity-as much as Whistler hated his native town of Lowell. His father died early of tuberculosis, and his mother, after a pitiful struggle with'disease and poverty, soon followed her husband to the grave. The boy, by physical inheritance a neurasthenic, though with marked bodily activity in youth, was adopted by the Allans, a kindly family in Richmond, Virginia. Poe liked to think of himself as a Southerner. He was sent to school in England, and in 1826, at seventeen, he attended for nearly a year the newly founded University of Virginia. He was a dark, short, bow-legged boy, with the face of his own Roderick Usher. He made a good record in French and Latin, read, wrote and recited poetry, tramped on the Ragged Mountains, and did not notably exceed his companions in drinking and gambling. But his Scotch fosterfather disapproved of his c
Saint Francis (Arkansas, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
d Walt is still an outsider. Let us try to see first the type of mind with which we are dealing. It is fundamentally religious, perceiving the unity and kinship and glory of all created things. It is this passion of worship which inspired St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle to the Sun. It cries, Benedicite, Omnia opera Domini: All ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord! That is the real motto for Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Like St. Francis, and like his own immediate master, RalSt. Francis, and like his own immediate master, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Whitman is a mystic. He cannot argue the ultimate questions; he asserts them. Instead of marshaling and sifting the proofs for immortality, he chants I know I am deathless. Like Emerson again, Whitman shares that peculiarly American type of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, but he came at the end of this movement instead of at the beginning of it. In his Romanticism, likewise, he is an end of an era figure. His affiliations with Victor Hugo are significant; and a volu
United States (United States) (search for this): chapter 8
Chapter 8: Poe and Whitman Enter now two egotists, who have little in common save their egotism, two outsiders who upset most of the conventional American rules for winning the literary race, two men of genius, in short, about whom we are still quarreling, and whose distinctive quality is more accurately perceived in Europe than it has ever been in the United States. Both Poe and Whitman were Romanticists by temperament. Both shared in the tradition and influence of European Romanticism. But they were also late comers, and they were caught in the more morbid and extravagant phases of the great European movement while its current was beginning to ebb. Their acquaintance with its literature was mainly at second-hand and through the medium of British and American periodicals. Poe, who was older than Whitman by ten years, was fifteen when Byron died, in 1824. He was untouched by the nobler mood of Byron, though his verse was colored by the influence of Byron, Moore, and Shel
Lowell (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
ere De Quincey, Disraeli, and Bulwer. Yet he owed more to Coleridge than to any of the Romantics. He was himself a sort of Coleridge without the piety, with the same keen penetrating critical intelligence, the same lovely opium-shadowed dreams, and, alas, with something of the same reputation as a dead-beat. A child of strolling players, Poe happened to be born in Boston, but he hated Frogpondium his favorite name for the city of his nativity-as much as Whistler hated his native town of Lowell. His father died early of tuberculosis, and his mother, after a pitiful struggle with'disease and poverty, soon followed her husband to the grave. The boy, by physical inheritance a neurasthenic, though with marked bodily activity in youth, was adopted by the Allans, a kindly family in Richmond, Virginia. Poe liked to think of himself as a Southerner. He was sent to school in England, and in 1826, at seventeen, he attended for nearly a year the newly founded University of Virginia. He w
Baltimore, Md. (Maryland, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
and withdrew him from the University. A period of wandering followed. He enlisted in the army and was stationed in Boston in 1827, when his first volume, Tamerlane, was published. In 1829 he was in Fortress Monroe, and published Al Aaraf at Baltimore. He entered West Point in 1830, and was surely, except Whistler, the strangest of all possible cadets. When he was dismissed in 1831, he had written the marvellous lines To Helen, Israfel, and The city in the sea. That is enough to have in o knapsack at the age of twenty-two. In the eighteen years from 1831 to 1849, when Poe's unhappy life came to an end in a Baltimore hospital, his literary activity was chiefly that of a journalist, critic, and short story writer. He lived in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. Authors who now exploit their fat bargains with their publishers may have forgotten that letter which Poe wrote back to Philadelphia the morning after he arrived with his child-wife in New York: We are b
Concord (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 8
clothes — and a confused preface on America as a field for the true poet. Then followed the new gospel, I celebrate myself, chanted in long lines of free verse, whose patterns perplexed contemporary readers. For the most part it was passionate speech rather than song, a rhapsodical declamation in hybrid rhythms. Very few people bought the book or pretended to understand what it was all about. Some were startled by the frank sexuality of certain poems. But Emerson wrote to Whitman from Concord: I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. Until the Civil War was half over, Whitman remained in Brooklyn, patiently composing new poems for successive printings of his book. Then he went to the front to care for a wounded brother, and finally settled down in a Washington garret to spend his strength as an army hospital nurse. He wrote Drum Taps and other magnificent poems about the War, culminating in his threnody on Lincoln's death,
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