Comments on: A Whitman Sampler in the Age of Modernism

By: nataliesayth

nataliesayth — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:27:54 +0000

Ah, what a fantastic post for believers in the palimpsests of both Uncle Walt and Modernism. Like Brady, I don’t quite follow why someone would say Whitman would have been happier in England. The statement in that review that “Nietzscheism” might be replaced by “Whitmanism” is an enticing parallel I hadn’t drawn before. As for Whitman and Lawrence– I’m trying to figure out how many years I’d need to manageably speak about reconciling those two authors and their philosophies.

I would like to think that Whitman would have supported the efforts of Poetry and other modernist journals, though I do have trouble picturing him taking on as an active role as Monroe, Moore, Pound, etc.

By: brady

brady — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:28:40 +0000

Cool overview. Can it really be that Whitman wasn’t translated into French until 1908?

The notion that Whitman would have been happier and more warmly received in England is bizarre, especially in light of this review of LG that came out in London in 1856:

“WE had ceased, we imagined, to be surprised at anything that America could produce. We had become stoically indifferent to her Woolly Horses, her Mermaids, her Sea Serpents, her Barnums, and her Fanny Ferns; but the last monstrous importation from Brooklyn, New York, has scattered our indifference to the winds . . . Walt Whitman is, as unacquainted with art, as a hog is with mathematics.” –The Critic