03. Walt Whitman, Father of the Free Verse Queerstory

In deze aflevering behandel ik de Amerikaanse dichter Walt Whitman, die vooral bekend staat om zijn seksuele gedichten en zijn gedichten over mannelijke liefde. Voor wie schreef Walt deze gedichten? Samen met Roland Bruijn, docent Culture aan Windesheim, praat ik over Walts leven en zijn poëzie.

De besproken gedichten:

Song of Myself, sectie 1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.



I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.



My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.



Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.



A Woman waits for me

I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,

I do not hurt any more than is necessary for you,

I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these states, I press with slow rude muscle

I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,

I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me



Once I pass'd through a populous City

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for

future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,



Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met

there who detain'd me for love of me,

Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has

long been forgotten by me,



I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.



Whoever you are, holding me now in Hand

Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest
upon your hip,

Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;

For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,

And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be
carried eternally.



I dreamed in a Dream

I dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust
love—it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of
that city,

And in all their looks and words.