A collection of notes, titles, citations, thoughts, images, acknowledgements, etc. relating to a senior thesis on the intellectual history of male homosexuality in the 19th century.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
More Katz
Responding to Sulzberger’s charge [of “licentiousness”], Whitman defended his man-love poems: “Calamus, is to me, for my intentions, indispensable… not there alone in that one series of poems, but in all…. It is one of the United States—it is the quality which makes the states whole—it is the thin thread—but, oh! the significant thread!—by which the nation is held together, a chain of comrades; it could no more be dispensed with than the ship entire.”
To the charge that his Calamus poems fostered carnal relationships between men, Whitman stressed that they fostered national unity. Whitman emphasized the socially unifying character of comradeship by way of playing down its sexual character.
Yes but not to hide it! Not to be secret about something shameful! But rather because, yes, Calamus is part of the unity of These States, and does no good as a politics all of its own.
