However, Was They Gay? New Secret out of Same-Gender Love throughout the 19th 100 years
From inside the August 1890, Walt Whitman unwrapped an uncomfortable piece of fan mail. “In your conception of Comradeship,” composed United kingdom literary critic John Addington Symonds, “do you think about the you can intrusion of those partial-sexual attitude and you can methods and this undoubtedly would are present ranging from boys?”
It’s a question progressive critics enjoys asked as well — and lots of features quite definitively replied they. “Walt Whitman and you may Gay Liberation are almost associated for me,” published cultural historian Rictor Norton when you look at the a 1999 essay. Norton items to Whitman’s 1860 “Calamus” poems just like the a kind of upcoming-away page, full of outlines such as:
“Your calamus area provides even allow’d the possibility of such as construction as mention’d is awful,” Whitman responded, insisting one to Symonds was to make “morbid inferences — wh’ try disavow’d by the me personally see damnable.”
It’s difficult to assume any progressive poet making reference to lying in several other people’s palms after which getting in touch with homosexuality “damnable.” Although particular same-intercourse intimacy Whitman described — and you can enjoyed inside real-world — was acknowledged during the time because the a natural part of heterosexuality. (περισσότερα…)