TODAYS GAY WISDOM
From Edward Carpenter's Ioläus
I CONCLUDE this
collection with a few quotations from Whitman, for whom "the love of
comrades "perhaps stands as the most intimate part of his message to the
world — "Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting."
Whitman, by his great power, originality and initiative, as well as by
his deep insight and wide vision, is in many ways the inaugurator of a
new era to mankind; and it is especially interesting to find that this
idea of comradeship, and of its establishment as a social institution,
plays so important a part with him.
We have seen that
in the Greek age, and more or less generally in the ancient and pagan
world, comradeship was an institution; we have seen that in Christian
and modern times, though existent, it was socially denied and ignored,
and indeed to a great extent fell under a kind of ban; and now Whitman's
attitude towards it suggests to us that it really is destined to pass
into its third stage, to arise again, and become a recognized factor of
modern life, and even in a more extended and perfect form than at first.
[As Whitman in this connection (like Tennyson in connection with In
Memoriam) is sure to be accused of morbidity, it may he worthwhile to
insert the following note from In re Walt Whitman, p. 115," Dr. Drinkard
in 1870, when Whitman broke down from rupture of a small blood-vessel
in the brain, wrote to a Philadelphia doctor detailing Whitman's case,
and stating that he was a man ' with the most natural habits, bases, and
organization he had ever seen.]'
"It is to the
development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid
comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the amative love
hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it),
that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and
vulgar American Democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many
will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences; but I
confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a
half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly
interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure
and sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to degrees hitherto unknown-not
only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedentedly
emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having deepest relations
to general politics. I say Democracy infers such loving comradeship, as
its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be
incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself."
Democratic Vistas note:
The three following poems are taken from Leaves of Grass:
"Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour'd it forth,
Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wan dering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the
shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also."
Leaves of Grass, 1891
"When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still, it was not a happy night for me that follow'd,
And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, and that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continuously up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy."
"I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed
have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these
States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large
that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades."
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
Ivy Compton-Burnett
