Walt Whitman
Walter “Walt” Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential poet the United States has ever produced.
Translated into more than 30 languages, Whitman is said to have invented contemporary American literature as a genre. He abandons the rigid rhythmic and metrical structures of European poetry for an expansionist free verse style, which appropriately delivers his philosophical view that America was destined to reinvent the world as emancipator and liberator of the human spirit.
Whitman, American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist was born in West Hills, Huntington on Long Island in New York. His most famous work is Leaves of Grass, which he would continue to edit and revise until his death. A group of civil war poems included within Leaves of Grass is often published as an independent collection under the name of Drum-Taps.
The first few versions of Leaves of Grass were self-published and poorly received. Several poems featured graphic depictions of the human body, endlessly enumerated in Whitman’s innovative “cataloguing” style, which contrasted with the reserved Puritan ethic of the times. Despite its revolutionary content and structure, subsequent editions of the book would continue to evoke critical indifference in the US literary establishment. But abroad the book was a world-wide sensation, especially in France, where Whitman’s intense humanism would help to provoke the naturalist revolution in French letters.
By 1864, Walt Whitman was already a world celebrity and Leaves of Grass had finally found a publishing house in the US. Though still considered an iconoclast and a literary outsider, at last, the poet’s status began to grow at home. During his final years, Whitman had become a respected literary vanguard visited by young artists from around the world. During his later years, several photographs and paintings of the great bard would cultivate a certain “Christ-figure” mystique. Though Whitman did not invent American transcendentalism, he had become its most famous exponent and his name was not only synonomous with poetry, but the blossoming of American mysticism, as well. Still, it wasn’t until the 20th century that the true scope of Whitman’s immense shadow would begin to emerge. Young writers such as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Allan Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac rediscovered the quintessential American bard and reinterpreted his literary manifesto for younger audiences. At last, the magnitude of Whitman’s accomplishment would come to true light and take its rightful place in the North American canon. From that point on, Whitman’s ubiquitous influence in American — and world — literature has never been doubted.
