Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada - With Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Note-Books

Walt Whitman

Description

Contained within the pages of this rare book is a collection of writings taken from Walt Whitman’s diaries and note-books written during his time in Canada. A keen woodsman with a passion for the outdoors, the literature contained herein was diligently transcribed for its original publication from ‘out-door notes’ composed on worn and time-stained fragments of paper by its editor, William Sloane Kennedy. A fascinating read, this book offers a unique insight into the mind of this great man and is an absolute must-read for lovers of Whitman.
Walter "Walt" Whitman (1819 - 1892) was a celebrated American poet, essayist and journalist. He is one of the most influential poets in American literature and is often referred to as the father of free verse. He is most famous for his seminal poetical work ‘Leaves of Grass’ and he was hailed by D. H Lawrence as “the greatest modern poet” and “the greatest American”. This rare book is proudly republished now with an introductory biography of the author.

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Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528761642
• Langue: English

Extrait

WALT WHITMAN S DIARY IN CANADA

With Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Note-Books
By
WALT WHITMAN
Edited by
WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY
First published in 1904
This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS

Walt Whitman
EDITORS PREFACE
WALT WHITMAN S DIARY IN CANADA
WALT WHITMAN

Walt Whitman was born on 31st May 1819 in the Town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, USA. He was the second of nine children of Walter Whitman and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. In part due to a series of bad investments, the family lived in various homes in the Brooklyn area, and Whitman recalled his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family s difficult economic status. Whitman finished his formal schooling at age eleven, and immediately sought employment to aid his family. He worked in an office of a legal firm and later as an apprentice and printer s devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper, the Patriot. The following summer, Whitman took a job with the leading Whig newspaper the Long-Island Star, and it was here that he developed a strong interest in reading, writing and theatre. He also anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the New York Mirror.
After a brief sojourn as a teacher, living back with his family in Long Island, Whitman returned to New York to establish his own newspaper; the Long Islander. He embarked on this project in the spring of 1838, but sold the paper to E.O. Crowell after only ten months. From 1840-41 Whitman attempted to further his career in teaching, but with little success, he returned to writing. During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called Sun-Down Papers-From the Desk of a Schoolmaster, in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career. It was not until 1850 that Whitman began writing what would later become Leaves of Grass; a collection of poetry which he continued editing and revising until his death. The first edition was a success, and stirred up significant interest, partly due to the praise it received by Ralph Waldo Emerson. However the volume, which Whitman intended as a distinctly American epic , attracted substantial criticism for its offensive and crude sexual themes. It deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common person; part of the transition in American literature, moving away from transcendentalism towards realism. In light of the contemporary criticism, Whitman s sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual - yet this remains speculation.
Whitman lived through the American Civil war, and volunteered as a nurse in army hospital, later serving as a clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior. In June of 1865, Whitman was fired from his job - most likely on moral grounds, by the former Iowa Senator James Harlan, after he found an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman s friend William Douglas O Connor, a well-connected poet and newspaper editor was incensed by this iniquitousness, and wrote a pamphlet defending Whitman as a wholesome patriot, greatly increasing his popularity. Further adding to Whitman s fame during this period was the publication of O Captain! My Captain!; a relatively conventional poem chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln. It was the only poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman s lifetime. The author then moved onto work at the Attorney General s office, interviewing former Confederate soldiers for Presidential Pardons - an occupation which was more to Whitman s taste. He later wrote to a friend; there are real characters among them... and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary. During this time, Whitman succeeded in finding a publisher for Leaves of Grass (eventually issued in 1871), the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident. Only two years after this great personal success, Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke (early in 1873) and was induced to move to the home of his brother in New Jersey. Whilst there, he was very productive, publishing three versions of Leaves of Grass, as well as other works. This was also the last point at which Whitman was fully mobile, and he received many famous authors, including Oscar Wilde and Thomas Eakins. In 1884, he bought his own house, remaining in New Jersey, but became completely bedridden soon after. In the last week of his life, Whitman was too weak even to lift a knife or fork, and wrote; I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony-monotony-monotony-in pain. He died from diminished lung capacity, the result of bronchial pneumonia and an abscess on the chest, on 26 March 1892.
By the time of his death, Whitman had become a veritable national celebrity, and a public viewing of his body was held at his home; an event which attracted over one thousand people in three hours. His coffin was barely visible because of all the flowers and wreaths. Whitman was buried four days later at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. He has since been eulogised as America s first poet of democracy , due to his uncanny ability to write in the American character, and remains an enduring and much loved literary figure to this day.

EDITOR S PREFACE
THE transcribing of these out-door notes from the worn and time-stained fragments of paper (backs of letters, home-made note-books, etc.), on which they were originally written, has been so fascinating a task for me that I feel confident the subject-matter will interest other lovers of Whitman. I don t know that they need any other foreword than just the telling how they came into my hands for publication.
In the autumn of 1900 I wrote to my old friend, the late Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke (the senior member of Walt Whitman s literary executors), suggesting that he join me in bringing out a Readers Handbook to Leaves of Grass, in the preparation of which I had been engaged for a number of years, by contributing any material he might have that was available. He responded with enthusiasm to this proposal for cooperative work. But, alas! a year later he had passed into eternity. * By his son, Dr. Edward Pardee Bucke, however, I was generously furnished with such manuscripts of Walt Whitman as seem to have been intended for our purpose, and from them the following diary and other notes were selected. The publication of the Readers Handbook is held over for the present.
In his Specimen Days, Whitman devotes only a couple of pages to the St. Lawrence and Saguenay trip,-a condensed abstract of his journal.
The portrait used as a frontispiece to this book is reproduced from a photograph by Edy Brothers of London, Ontario, made during the visit to Dr. Bucke recorded in the diary. It has never before been published. All the notes in the volume are by the editor.
W. S. K.
B ELMONT , M ASS .,
November, 1904.
He fell an the icy floor of a veranda of his residence, struck an the back of his head, and never regained consciousness. Few knew that this gay-hearted optimist, with his magnificent physique, had to fight his way through life (after twenty) without the aid of feet, other than artificial. His feet were amputated after being frozen in a (finally successful) attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the winter of 1856, in company with one of the two original discoverers of silver in Nevada. I have the romantic printed account of that daring feat.
WALT WHITMAN S DIARY IN CANADA
WALT WHITMAN S DIARY IN CANADA
London, Ontario , June 18, 1880. 1 Calm and glorious roll the hours here - the whole twenty-four. A perfect day (the third in succession); the sun clear; a faint, fresh, just palpable air setting in from the southwest; temperature pretty warm at midday, but moderate enough mornings and evenings. Everything growing well, especially the perennials. Never have I seen verdure - grass and trees and bushery - to greater advantage. All the accompaniments joyous. Cat-birds, thrushes, robins, etc., singing. The profuse blossoms of the tigerlily (is it the tiger-lily?) 2 mottling the lawns and gardens everywhere with their glowing orange-red. Roses everywhere, too.
A stately show of stars last night : the Scorpion erecting his head of five stars, with glittering Antares in the neck, soon stretched his whole length in the south; Arcturus hung overhead; Vega a little to the east; Aquila lower down; the constellation of the Sickle well toward setting; and the halfmoon, pensive and silvery, in the southwest.
June and July, Canada. Such a procession of long-drawn-out, delicious half-lights nearly every evening, continuing on till most 9 o clock all through the last two weeks of June and the first two of July ! It was worth coming to Canada to get these long-stretch d sunsets in their temper d shade and lingering, lingering twilights, if nothing more.