Martí was integral in motivating Cuba to separate from Spanish rule and establish itself, so it is not surprising that he would identify with Whitman’s hopes for the United States. This article is very long, so I will do my best to translate the opening paragraph that reads like this in Spanish (so that Brady can correct me ):

“«Parecía un dios anoche, sentado en un sillón de terciopelo rojo, todo el cabello blanco, la barba sobre el pecho, las cejas como un bosque, la mano en un cayado.» Esto dice un diario de hoy del poeta Walt Whitman, anciano de setenta años a quien los críticos profundos, que siempre son los menos, asignan puesto extraordinario en la literatura de su país y de su época. Sólo los libros sagrados de la antigüedad ofrecen una doctrina comparable, por su profético lenguaje y robusta poesía, a la [de]… este poeta viejo, cuyo libro pasmoso está prohibido.”

“‘He resembled a god last night, seated in a chair of red velvet, the complete white gentleman, his beard on his stomach, his eyebrows like a forest, his hand on a staff.’ This is what one of today’s newspapers says about the poet Walt Whitman, an old man of 70 years whom the most profound critics, who are always the fewest in number, give an exalted position in the literature of his country and his age. Only the sacred books of antiquity offer a comparable doctrine, through his prophetic language and robust poetry, to that of… this old poet whose astonishing book is banned.”

I also found a poem about Whitman by the Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío (1867-1916). Darío is regarded as the father of the Latin American “modernism” movement (which pre-dated the English-language movement and vastly differed in its ideas and focuses) and this poem was published in his collection Azul, which is seen as the archetypal “modernismo” work. The idealized way in which Whitman is described is characteristic of the modernismo style, which I think goes with what we’ve observed about early Whitman poetry. Not surprisingly, this poem is called Walt Whitman, and reads like this in the Spanish:

En su país de hierro vive el gran viejo,
Bello como un patriarca, sereno y santo.
Tiene en la arruga olímpica de su entrecejo
Algo que impera y vence con noble encanto.

Su alma del infinito parece espejo;
Son sus cansados hombros dignos del manto;
Y con arpa labrada de un roble añejo,
Como un profeta nuevo canta su canto.

Sacerdote que alienta soplo divino,
Anuncia, en el futuro, tiempo mejor.
Dice al águila: «¡Vuela!»; «¡Boga!», al marino,

Y «¡Trabaja!», al robusto trabajador.
¡Así va ese poeta por su camino,
Con su soberbio rostro de emperador!

And here is my attempt at translation:

In his iron country lives the great old man,

Beautiful like a patriarch, serene and holy.

In the Olympic crease between his eyebrows

He has something that prevails and defeats with noble charm.

His infinite soul is like a mirror;

His tired shoulders are worthy of a cloak;

And with a carved harp from an ancient oak,

He sings his song like a new prophet.

Priest that cheers on the divine gust,

He announces, in the future, a better time.

He says to the eagle: “Fly!”: “Row!” to the sailor, 

And “Work!” to the robust worker.

So that poet goes on his way,

With his magnificent emperor’s face!

Any thoughts or observations?

“Walt Whitman is a f*g who died years ago and obviously has been worshiped to the degree that he has a school named after him.”

My friends, this, too, is Whitman under our bootsoles.

• That he admits the poetic-prophetic role blatantly? (If so, who else will we write off as just egotistical?  It’s a long list.)
• That he does so while preaching democracy?  (But doesn’t democracy have leaders and spokespeople that are, ideally, representative? Is that a hierarchy or a decent division of labor based on natural abilities and interests? And would it be better to embrace hierarchy, judgment, and inequality in order to establish or justify his elevation as a poet?  (See T.S. Eliot, a poet I adore, but please.)
• Is there something about the I of Whitman, the insistence of a lyric voice in poem that, despite his repeated assertions otherwise, is obviously epic in scope and reach, that makes the poetic-prophetic seem like egotism instead of inspiration?

Whitman describes his words as “omniverous”  and says that the poet is “not one of the chorus.”  His voice is “orotund, sweeping, and final” (one of my favorite lines, but not exactly dialogic).  My students in the past have found his inclusion of the slave, the weeping widow, and others to be not inclusive but appropriative.  What do we do with one of the most splendid passages of Song, “Through me many long dumb voices” (50-51), which announces that the poet  and his text will ethically include and represent the oppressed other, but does so only by insisting on his/its own power (”Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured”)?  (Sam P, you’re right on the money in seeing the slippage at these moments).

I don’t want to end by saying he contradicts himself.  I want better clarity on this plaguing issue this semester.  But for today I will throw in one more piece, some ethical literary theory that Erin and others are approaching already, and that is the function of the “you” address in Whitman.  A critic I really admire, William Waters, writes about the lyric “you” in his work, saying that it is a pronoun which “tends to hail; it calls everyone and everything by their inmost name. . . . One can read unidentified ‘I’ or ’she’ with comparatively small concern, but the summons of unidentified ‘you’ restlessly tugs at us, begging identification” (1996, 130).  Waters’ choice of the term “identification” is deliberate—not only do we wish to ascertain an identity for the “you,” but we may ourselves identify with it.  The reader may feel that she, as Waters writes, “(implausible as it may be) . . . is the poem’s intended addressee.”   When Whitman repeatedly, in quiet confidences and throbbing insistences, addresses “you” (who, me? you talkin’ to me, old man?), I feel called out, or called in, or called over.  

Whitman’s poem offers a vision of democracy, of poetry, of nature, of the divine, of love, of war, and more.  And since the dialogic must be reciprocal, then, if we are actively addressed by the poem by the you address, if we ourselves want to be ethical, answerable readers,  we must consider what Waters asks: “How will we stand?” (130)

Waters, William. 1996.  “Answerable Aesthetics: Reading ‘You’ in Rilke.”  Comparative Literature 48.2 (Spring): 128-149.

a parade moves through the streets of Fredericksburg, where George Washington walked and his mother Mary lived, where George Washington Whitman would have marched uphill (determined? afraid? moving between the staggering Union survivors in retreat?) and come back down (marching? dragging? on a stretcher?–exhausted, defeated, wounded, through the blood of thousands dead in a day);

my family and others march behind an election banner for our neighbor, the Commonwealth Attorney for the city: La Bravia Jenkins, an African American woman;

the cluster of African American friends, family, and supporters for La Bravia are the only people of color I see in the parade, which is a collection of children on decorated bikes, babies in strollers and wagons, the cow from Chik-fil-a, one clown;

my son walks in the parade wearing a paper George Washington mask and a tricorn hat, above his red-and-white Obama 2008 t-shirt, calling “Happy Independence Day!” to the people on the sidewalks;

I mull over the fact that the parade is called The Heritage Parade;

at the dunking booth for the Fredericksburg street festival, my son waits nearly an hour for the editor of the local paper to get in so he can pitch the balls and dunk him in chilly water for the conservative viewpoints he spouts from the editorial page;

at Montpelier, the home of James Madison, Architect of the Constitution, which sits about 50 minutes south of Fredericksburg and was used for a winter encampment of Confederate soldiers in 1863 when Whitman was two hours north in DC, we read about Madison’s death in the words of his literate “man-servant,” who reports that just before he died, Madison told his niece it was “nothing but a change of mind”;

in the basement of the home, the cellars, storage rooms to which Dolley Madison kept the keys, and indoor kitchens, which are not on the guided tour, we see the first names of 120 slaves written in cursive letters on transparent plastic informational signs throughout the rooms, their ghostly naming floating behind facts and dates;

we read that one of Madison’s slaves accompanied him to Philadelphia, where he listened to Madison, a man always well prepared for his debates, defend freedom and basic rights for all human beings and then challenged his master about slavery; Madison admired his thinking and could not deny his point, so he wrote to his father that the slave would not be fit for plantation life again and might incite unrest among the other slaves; after the Congress he was sold in Pennsylvania, a state where he might earn his freedom after seven years of servitude;

we find that one of Madison’s oldest and longest serving slaves was named Moses; my partner says, “Ironic”;

we cross wet grass barefoot to see some headstones partially hidden by trees, and find they are for race horses because the Montpelier estate houses a stable for retired thoroughbred racers, which was established by the enormously wealthy DuPont family that purchased the house and land several years after Dolley’s death in poverty;

the slave cemetary we walk to has no headstones at all, just indentations in the earth where the soil has given way to rotting coffins– about five visible though there must be 100; the sign shows a photo of the indentations filled with snow, which increases their visibility;

we see that Dolley Madison lived long enough to be photographed, her likeness hanging next to her husband’s oil painting in a small gallery;

a fraction of a letter handwritten by Madison is also on display, having been found by historic preservationists in a mouse nest inside the walls of Montpelier in the last ten years and later authenticated by experts.

History/heritage/legacy/preservation/tradition.  Race.  Economy.  Politics.  War.  Literacy/language.  My Whitman Catalogue for Independence Day.

The threads, at a minimum:  freedom and limitation/slavery/imprisonment, inspiration, poverty,  inventive language and necessary communications, race, hope and despair, the American Dream, future of the nation, the city, war/violence. . .

This will have me thinking for a long time.

Whitman House in center