430 EURAMERICA were regarded as crucial for the union of a new republic (hence the military designation “comrade”).30 Whereas many gay-affirmative critics and readers regard this as nothing but camouflage for, and legitimization of, homosexuality in the guise of time-cherished mainstream ideals and values, I want to resist this assimilation by maintaining the historicist parallel stance put forth above and affirm the independent functionality of this open propagation of publicly sanctioned ideals, even though Whitman might indeed also have had something else in mind as they were declared. After all, we have no reason to ever doubt Whitman’s sincerity in promoting the ideal of democracy. The question is rather: how can we be sure of the existence of also a hidden level of coded homopolitics parallel to the open one? For one thing, Whitman himself pointedly called what he promoted “a new friendship—It shall be called after my name” (1860-1861: 349, C5);31 and given that what he promoted were all publicly sanctioned ideals, we are prompted to ask: what was really new about his promotion of those ideals, and what could possibly be his personal inflection that would necessitate branding it with his name? As Whitman’s open rendition of the friendship-fraternity ideal would be esteemed revivalist rather than something new at his time, the most likely deduction would be that there is, once again, some hidden message in his promotion of democratic comradeship for like-minded people to discover. However, as neither the “Calamus” cluster nor Leaves as a whole offers as many clues on this matter as on homotextuality, we can only take a detour by working through 30 As Richard Godbeer (2009: 155-192) meticulously traces it, not only did the American forefathers encourage friendship and love between men in their speeches and writings, but contemporaneous newspapers constantly promoted the cause in the most endearing terms. For the abundant real-life stories of friendship around that time, see, besides the main bulk of Godbeer’s book, the first half of Crain (2001). 31 As the poem was later (after the 1867 edition) broken down to make two new poems, this particular passage was deleted in the process. See Whitman (2002: 531, n. 2).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODg3MDU=