Neuropathical Urnings are not hinted at in any passage of his works. As his friend and commentator Mr. Burroughs puts it: "The sentiment is primitive, athletic, taking form in all manner of large and homely out-of-door images, and springs, as anyone may see, directly from the heart and experience of the poet."
This being so, Whitman never suggests that comradeship may occasion the development of physical desires. But then he does not in set terms condemn these desires, or warn his disciples against them. To a Western boy he says:—
"If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently seek lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine."
Like Plato, in the Phædrus, Whitman describes an enthusiastic type of masculine emotion, leaving its private details to the moral sense and special inclination of the person concerned.[1]
The language of "Calamus" (that section of "Leaves of Grass" which is devoted to the gospel of comradeship) has a passionate glow, a warmth of emotional
- ↑ In this relation it is curious to note what one of Casper-Liman's correspondents says about the morals of North America (op. cit., vol. i. p. 173). "Half a year after my return I went to North America, to try my fortune. There the unnatural vice in question is more ordinary than it is here; and I was able to indulge my passions with less fear of punishment or persecution. The American's tastes in this matter resemble my own; and I discovered, in the United States, that I was always immediately recognised as a member of the confraternity." The date of this man's visit to America was the year 1871-72. He had just returned from serving as a volunteer in the great Franco-German war of 1870-71.
