November 6th, 2010 / 11:55 am
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Historical Shop Talk

A letter from H.D. Thoreau to Unitarian minister H.G.O. Blake, mostly about the subject of Walt Whitman:

Dec. 7, 1856

That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is the most interesting fact to me at the present. I have just read his 2nd edition (which he gave me) and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. Perhaps I remember best the poem of Walt Whitman an American & the Sun Down Poem. There are 2 or 3 pieces in the book which are disagreeable to say the least, simply sensual. He does not celebrate love at all. It is as if the beasts spoke. I think that men have not been ashamed of themselves without reason. No doubt, there have always been dens where such deeds were unblushingly recited, and it is no merit to compete with their inhabitants. But even on this side, he has spoken more truth than any American or modern I know. I have found his poem exhilaratingly encouraging. As for its sensuality,–& it may turn out to be less sensual than it appeared–I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men & women were so pure that they could read them without harm, that is, without understanding them. One woman told me that no woman could read it as if a man could read what a woman could not. Of course Walt Whitman can communicate to us no experience, and if we are shocked, whose experience is it that we are reminded of?

On the whole it sounds to me very brave & American after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching–

We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You cant confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read him! He is awefully good.

To be sure I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness & broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind prepared to see wonders–as it were sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain–stirs me well up, and then–throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude & sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem,–an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that if I asked him if he had read them, he answered ‘No, tell me about them.’

I did not get far in conversation with him,–two more being present,–and among the few things which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him as representing America, that I did not think much of America or of politics, and so on, which may have been somewhat of a damper to him.

Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.

He is a great fellow.

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6 Comments

  1. deadgod

      That’s an interesting letter: morally accusatory – He does not celebrate love at all. It is as if the beasts spoke. I think that men have not been ashamed of themselves without reason. (I take it Thoreau means ‘not ashamed of “unnatural” sexuality without genuinely rational moral reason’); but also justly celebratory – Though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem,-an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp.

      He’s talking to a minister; it’s interesting, the transition he makes from moral finger-shaking to hearty recommendation of the poetry and the poet: [H]e has spoken more truth than any American or modern I know. […] I do not so much wish that [the “sensual”] parts were not written, as that men & women were so pure that they could read them without harm[.]

      By putting the ‘sensuality’ of Whitman’s poetry this way, Thoreau is saying that the, what, trouble that Whitman’s poetry might cause is not Whitman’s fault – hell, the “truth” is the truth – but rather, the fault of those “men & women” who “understand” ‘sensuality’ from their own experience: Whitman can communicate to us, that is: ‘physically cause for us’ no experience, and if we are shocked, whose experience is it that we are reminded of?

      An elegant short-circuiting of the argument for censorship that vice in art produces new viciousness in that art’s audience (rather than alerting that audience to the vice in it already).

      (That an artist might be responsible for the excitation of latent viciousness – well, that’s a different conversation.)

  2. Kyle Minor

      I know from reading Frank Kermode that Blake gave up Unitarian ministry in favor of transcendentalism, but I don’t know what year.

      Deadgod, I’m starting to think of some of my posts as two-part posts, incomplete until you provide the second part.

  3. deadgod

      Well, Blake and Thoreau overlap by only a few years. I’m not sure what you mean by bringing Blake up – his possible effect on Whitman?

      My tiny knowledge of Unitarianism is that, while they’re quite progressive today – their churches are among the “sanctuaries” for undocumented workers, right? – , a Unitarian minister of 150 years ago could have been reliably predicted to have been, let’s say, disturbed by Whitman’s “sensuality”. I’m guessing that anticipation of hostility towards Whitman’s pantheistic-seeming (anyway) “transcendentalism” and homosexuality (to the extent that that’s what Whitman is actually writing about) were the context for both Thoreau’s finger-wagging (at Whitman) and his build-up to what a “great fellow” Whitman was (as a recommendation to the minister).

      I think “incomplete” is the wrong word, Kyle. A conversation, with as many participants as want to contribute, as want to seek or (at least) to risk change, doesn’t get ‘completed’ so much as put down to free the hands for newly pressing purposes. Surely none of my remarks are conclusive! – ploddingly dogmatic though I make them.

  4. Kyle Minor

      I meant H.G.O. Blake, the minister & recipient of this letter, not William Blake (I think that’s what you thought I was saying?)

  5. deadgod

      10-4. Obvious when it’s clarified, even to me. And William was never a minister!

      So when “[this] Blake gave up Unitarian ministry in favor of transcendentalism” would be absolutely material in the case that Blake had been affected in that direction by any contact with Whitman’s poetry.

      But a reading of the Introduction to Thoreau’s Letters to a Spiritual Seeker proves Whitman’s influence in this regard to have been unlikely. Blake met Emerson in 1838, when Blake was graduating from Harvard’s divinity school and Emerson delivered his smallishly famous Divinity School Address (which is a model for odd commencement addresses). I guess this Address thunderstruck Blake; at whatever rate, when he communicated an interest in Thoreau’s ideas to Thoreau ten years later (’48), he was already an ex-minister (Unitarian). At the time of the letter you’ve excerpted (eight years later), Blake was on whatever “transcendental” road he went down – or not?? would be your/our question.

      In this light, Thoreau’s qualified-to-strong recommendation seems not so much sensitive to the biases of a minister (which Blake hadn’t been for some years) as, perhaps, less calculatedly a register of Thoreau’s own mixed feelings. Eh?

  6. NLY

      I think it primarily important to recall that Thoreau was the sort of fellow to be made uneasy of his inclusion or involvement in other fellows, but to respond greatly to his inclusion or involvement in non-fellows. That is, he didn’t really like people, and Whitman does, and Whitman likes most, if not all, of what they are, and he certainly appears to claim to accept all of it. I doubt Thoreau was so much concerned about awakening vice, though vice was a concern of his in humans, as it was his immense discomfort at being so laid bare by this forced inclusion. As a man already very at odds with his own humanity, he has encountered a man very attuned to his own humanity, who has gone so far as to conclude things about Thoreau, without consulting him on the matter, which Thoreau spends a great deal of his time forgetting are true, or even perhaps fearing are true.