Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 423 in seclusion, the “standards not yet published” become clear to the speaker and he, “No longer abashed,” now “can respond as I would not dare elsewhere” and “tell the secrets of my nights and days.” However, reading on, we are surprised to find that the supposedly unconventional beliefs and what he holds as secrets are none other than the above-mentioned “manly attachment,” “athletic love,” and “the need of comrades” (1860-1861: 341-342), which were all publicly sanctioned ideals with rather long traditions. Hence the suspicion that the speaker is actually suggesting a secret take on those traditionally cherished ideals, and perhaps even a secret side to himself. For in the poem after the next, he declares: “I am not what you supposed, but far different” (1860-1861: 344, C3; later “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”);17 and alerting readers not only about the truth of himself and his book—“For these leaves, and me, you will not understand, / They will elude you at first, and still more afterward—I will certainly elude you” (18601861: 346)—but also to the danger involved: he warns that “my poems [will not] do good only—they will do just as much evil, perhaps more.”18 However, the speaker does not seem to be afraid to have the dangerous truth (the hidden message and his real self) known, but that it would not be, for he emphatically hints at the end of the above convoluted history of revisions, readers are advised to check the highly helpful footnotes in the Norton Critical Edition of Leaves (Whitman, 2002). 17 To deal with this problem of Whitman’s, the traditional critical concept of “mask” (persona) has also been deployed (Cowley, 1970: 35-75). Although this concept is helpful in distinguishing different aspects of an author’s make-up, its use for analysis would be limited if these aspects are regarded as no more than performances and therefore not to be taken seriously together as a coherent whole. 18 See also C12 (later “Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?”), which shares the same theme of a different and dangerous personage hiding behind “this façade” (1860-1861: 358); as well as C36 (later “Earth, My Likeness”), where the speaker, after mentioning that “an athlete is enamoured of me—and I of him,” tellingly warns that “toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth, / I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs” (18601861: 374).
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