Walt Whitman , American poet and essayist, one of the most influential North American writers. Famous for his poems, he greatly influenced great writers such as José Martí , Rubén Darío , Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda .
Biographical summary
He was born in West Hills , Suffolk County, New York , on May 31 , 1819 ; and died in Camden, New Jersey , on March 26 , 1892. Poet, essayist, journalist and humanist, the work of this American author is part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both movements into his work.
He was the second of eight children in a troubled family that included lunatics, alcoholics, handicapped people, hypochondriacs, and a respectable dose of bad luck when it came to choosing a partner. It is true that among the brothers there were also some war veterans ( George Washington ) or successful engineers ( Thomas Jefferson ).
The preference for names of illustrious presidents for children of the working class was due to the excessive patriotism of the father, and was completed with that of Andrew Jackson , who died of alcoholism and tuberculosis during the Civil War . When he was four years old, his family moved to Brooklyn, where he attended a public school for six years, before working as an apprentice in a printing shop. Two years later, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a printer, but returned to Long Island in 1835 to teach at various schools in the county.
Career as a writer
Between 1838 and 1839 he published a newspaper, the Long-Islander, in Huntington ; then, bored by his lifestyle, he returned to New York and worked as a journalist. After a brief stint in New Orleans , he returned to Brooklyn , where he attempted to publish a newspaper in the Free-Soil movement. After spending several years working in a variety of jobs, including that of a real estate developer, he began to write poetry that was completely different from the canons of the time, and devoted himself entirely to this activity.
Whitman’s sexuality has been as widely discussed as his work. While he has commonly been regarded as homosexual or bisexual, it is unclear whether he ever had a sexual relationship with another man.
During the Civil War, Whitman ministered to wounded soldiers at a military hospital on the northern side in Washington , D.C. He continued to work for the government until 1873 , when he suffered a serious stroke that left him partially paralyzed.
She then went to live with her brother George in Camden, New Jersey , until 1884 , when she bought her own house. She lived there, revising and adding to Leaves of Grass , until her death on March 26 , 1892 .
He died at the age of 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.
Construction site
His masterpiece, Leaves of Grass , was first published in 1855 at his own expense. The book – a series of poems whose main novelty was a type of versification not used until then, and which radically departed from that which the poet had used in the sentimental poems he wrote in the previous decade – was an attempt to reach out to the common citizen with an American epic. However, it was highly controversial at the time of its publication, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality, as it praised the human body and glorified the joys of the senses. A Boston prosecutor even withdrew it from circulation claiming that the text violated obscenity laws.
It would eventually become the most frequently printed book by any American poet. The work was revised and expanded throughout his lifetime, with the definitive edition published in 1892 .
His most famous poem, ” Song of Myself ,” was the multiform, contradictory, and persuasive voice of America itself, a proclamation of individual and collective self-sufficiency, of vitalist exaltation, and a commitment to egalitarianism and democracy at a time when slavery was a topic of heated discussion and would end up being the subject of civil war.
During his later years, he also wrote prose works of great quality, such as the essays ” Democratic Perspectives ” ( 1871 ), which are now considered a classic exposition of the theory of democracy and its possibilities, while ” Exemplary Days ” ( 1882-1883 ), on the other hand, contains old texts on the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln , and notes on nature, written during his old age .