Whitman, unwashed
It seems unavoidable to consider Whitman in the artistic treatment of the subject of the vagabond, the Beat poet, the Hobo, homelessness in general, vagrancy, the itinerant, and others like it. The artistic exposition of the subject deserves critical exegesis of unwritten texts, of myths, folklore, and legends passed-down by word of mouth.
Why Whitman? He set the standard for the sagacious, American itinerant, analogous to what Sartre called the aristocracy of the spirit. It is a type of vagabondage which is covered by the term "Bohemian." What it lacks of the rough virility of the Hobo life, the Bohemian of the finer order is largely an attitude of rejoicing in the company of a few kindred souls, while being out of touch with the majority of men and women.
The insatiable thirst for adventure separates the Bohemian from the fugitive. The fugitive flees by necessity. This is why the literary vagabond is excellent company. Having strayed from the beaten path, he has much to tell those of us who stayed at home. He has dared to go where timid souls fear to tread. We meet again upon his inevitable return, perhaps once a year. You know the face—but can't place the name.
Anonymity is the name of the vagabond's game. He can write his own destiny by being nobody. Critical theory tracks his literary trail. I am, myself, relentless in pursuit of meaning. I'd go to hell just to grasp it. What's a little redness of face? The blunt fact about Whitman is his writing is concerned with both the vagabond and the pan-sexual. I refer to Whitman's writing—not Whitman.
Sadly, in the case of the vagabond, correlation just might be causation. What is he running from? It is because of his reputation for liberal sexuality, Whitman's writing, that is, "mature" subject matter. It remains controversial. My reaction, after finally picking-up on this nuance of Whitman's writing, was embarrassment.
But, by then I'd been embarrassed so many time by my own naivete, that I had come to the conclusion it was a test of learning. What mortifies me is ignorance. What is not embarrassing is, to me, more a problem. I think it was Aristotle who said that to do a shameful deed is bad enough, but to feel no shame about having done it—is worse.
When one's fancy has run wild, in the experience of Romance, how much cannot be put into words. Fragments of its crystallization in Roman pastoral poetry descend from antiquity. To have read a text is to have experienced it, and to have experienced a text (as I understand it), is to have picked-up on nuances of meaning, meaning never intended—explicitly. I would like to ask the poet if he is saying what I think he is saying.
Poetry is a lonely calling. I have overheard strains of eloquence on sidewalks, or, perhaps, it was genuine madness. Unless confronted, the poet may be is talking to himself. To be a Bohemian is to be aloof in a crowd. Reading Whitman in a Beat cafe could signify nothing more than a diligent student of the vagabond in literature, or an intention to "hook up" with others of the same disposition in life—what a critical theorist calls doing "research."
Men, like adolescent schoolboys in a classroom, full of pent-up energy, gaze out the windows at an alluring world beyond. But poetry is one thing, nervous instability is another—and then something snapped. The vagabond cuts loose his remaining ties to respectability. It is an idiosyncrasy of temperament not to be confounded with misanthropy. It is an ambivalent fatalism, a fierce melancholy, and a nature of greater emotional intensity than the unexceptional deadbeat. Bohemianism is an attitude of spirit, the vast difference that separates sentimentalism from Romanticism.
Walt Whitman, from the novel Franklin Evans:
"The pure and virtuous cast scorn upon such as I have been, and as thousands now are. But oh, could they look into the innermost recesses of our hearts, and see what spasms of pain—what impotent attempts to make issue with what appears to be our destiny—what fearful dreams—what ghastly phantoms of worse than hellish imagination—what of all this resides, time and again, in our miserable bosoms — then, I know, that scorn would be changed to pity. It is not well to condemn men for their frailties. Let us rather own our common bond of weakness, and endeavor to fortify each other in good conduct and in true righteousness, which is charity for the errors of our kind. The drunkard, low as he is, is a man!"