Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Among the Nightmare Lovers of Hades
- 1 Eliot as Revolutionary
- 2 Goethe and Modernism: The Dream of Anachronism in Goethe's Roman Elegies
- 3 Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
- 4 Does Time Exist?
- 5 The Age of Authenticity: An American Poet in England
- 6 Whitman and Wilde in Camden
- 7 Dangerous Thoughts, Puzzling Responses
- 8 Scaling the Wall
- 9 Mass Death and Resurrection: Notes on Contemporary, Mostly American, Jewish Fiction
- 10 Rilke, Einstein, Freud and the Orpheus Mystery
- 11 Shrouds Aplenty (on poems of Janowitz, et al)
- 12 Ambushes of Amazement (on poems of Wakoski)
- 13 Dangerous and Steep (on poems of Jacobsen)
- 14 Small Touching Skill (on poems of Ponsot)
- 15 Language Mesh (on Paul Celan)
- 16 Sweet Extra (on poems of Cuddihy, Ray)
- 17 Maze of the Original (on translating poetry)
- 18 Approaching the Medieval Lyric
- 19 Dark Passage (on poems of Stafford)
- 20 Mistress of Sorrows (on Ingeborg Bachmann)
- 21 The Innocence of a Mirror (on poems of Oliver)
- 22 Peskily Written (on Sade)
- 23 Is There Sex after Sappho?
- 24 Saving One's Skin (on medieval poetry)
- 25 Brilliant White Shadow (on poems and prose of Saba)
- 26 Serpent's Tale (on Minoan archeology)
- 27 How Honest Was Cellini?
- 28 The Poetry of No Compromises (on poems of Rehder)
- 29 Assigning Names (on poems of Nurkse)
- 30 History and Ethics: Bruni's History of Florence
- 31 Virgil's Aeneid Made New (a translation by Robert Fagles)
- 32 Painting with Poetry (on the poems of Annie Boutelle)
- 33 Vampires and Freedom (on the work of Erik Butler)
- 34 How the West Learned to Read and Write: Silent Reading and the Invention of the Sonnet
- List of Publications
- Index
6 - Whitman and Wilde in Camden
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Among the Nightmare Lovers of Hades
- 1 Eliot as Revolutionary
- 2 Goethe and Modernism: The Dream of Anachronism in Goethe's Roman Elegies
- 3 Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
- 4 Does Time Exist?
- 5 The Age of Authenticity: An American Poet in England
- 6 Whitman and Wilde in Camden
- 7 Dangerous Thoughts, Puzzling Responses
- 8 Scaling the Wall
- 9 Mass Death and Resurrection: Notes on Contemporary, Mostly American, Jewish Fiction
- 10 Rilke, Einstein, Freud and the Orpheus Mystery
- 11 Shrouds Aplenty (on poems of Janowitz, et al)
- 12 Ambushes of Amazement (on poems of Wakoski)
- 13 Dangerous and Steep (on poems of Jacobsen)
- 14 Small Touching Skill (on poems of Ponsot)
- 15 Language Mesh (on Paul Celan)
- 16 Sweet Extra (on poems of Cuddihy, Ray)
- 17 Maze of the Original (on translating poetry)
- 18 Approaching the Medieval Lyric
- 19 Dark Passage (on poems of Stafford)
- 20 Mistress of Sorrows (on Ingeborg Bachmann)
- 21 The Innocence of a Mirror (on poems of Oliver)
- 22 Peskily Written (on Sade)
- 23 Is There Sex after Sappho?
- 24 Saving One's Skin (on medieval poetry)
- 25 Brilliant White Shadow (on poems and prose of Saba)
- 26 Serpent's Tale (on Minoan archeology)
- 27 How Honest Was Cellini?
- 28 The Poetry of No Compromises (on poems of Rehder)
- 29 Assigning Names (on poems of Nurkse)
- 30 History and Ethics: Bruni's History of Florence
- 31 Virgil's Aeneid Made New (a translation by Robert Fagles)
- 32 Painting with Poetry (on the poems of Annie Boutelle)
- 33 Vampires and Freedom (on the work of Erik Butler)
- 34 How the West Learned to Read and Write: Silent Reading and the Invention of the Sonnet
- List of Publications
- Index
Summary
On January 18, 1882, Oscar Wilde interrupted his exhausting lecture tour of America, donned his favorite brown felt suit and visited Walt Whitman at his home in Camden, New Jersey. There the future author of The Importance of Being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, who was at the time known chiefly for his pink buttonholes and his odd philosophy that every house should be made beautiful through the installation of imitation Renaissance statuary, managed a splendid self- abasement. He drank a milk punch prepared by Whitman's sister, quivered for a pleasant hour at the poet's feet, and rested the hand that was to pen The Ballad of Reading Gaol on the elderly American's withered knee. It is apparently the case that Wilde spent most of his one- hour attendance in Whitman's hushed study listening with vibrant awe. On the other hand, what he heard is unknown, as no trace of Whitman's monologue has survived. He was 63, and busy adding suitably touching details to his reputation as the grand old prophet, complete with tangly, biblical beard, of a new- world poetry. As for himself, the ex- journalist- turned- poet reported that he had experienced a “happy time” with England's genuine, manly, honest aesthete. Wilde seemed to him a splendid boy, and made a flattering impression by announcing that “We in England think there are only two [American poets]— Walt Whitman and Emerson.”
Puffery though it was, Wilde's remark did not quite hit home. It may have lacked sufficient reverence. The mention of Emerson, whom Whitman admired, may have touched a raw nerve. In a letter written just a week later, Whitman remarked that he had heard from Wilde, who was now off swanning about Niagara Falls, and who had sent him a photograph. “It is a photograph of himself,” scribbled America's prophet gleefully, “and is one fool tall— lifesize.” This spirited if somewhat ungrateful skewering of his recent visitor accompanied even more buoyant, if not boyish, self- congratulations, these blossoming forth in another letter, to Harry Stafford on January 25, in which he noted with satisfaction that “[Wilde] is a fine large handsome youngster— [and that he] had the good sense to take a great fancy to me.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Poetry and FreedomDiscoveries in Aesthetics, 1985–2018, pp. 47 - 54Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2020