Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 439 the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth” (1860-1861: 373, C34; later “I Dream’d in a Dream”). While most of the time in Leaves the speaker is dashing out in expansive moves, this rare adoption of a defensive stance in speaking of being attacked is highly suggestive.45 Is it possible that the speaker here is actually citing from sources of an altogether different context, like the more embattled ancient Greece? Of course, as the Hellenistic allusions in Leaves are not particularly numerous nor systematic in any identifiable way,46 it would be hard to argue for a full-blown Greek interpretation of Whitman’s homopolitics. 47 Yet it nevertheless should also count as one of the possible models from which Whitman’s homopolitics could be extrapolated. Although there may 45 See also C5, where the two seem to mingle together: “Those who love each other shall be invincible, / They shall finally make America completely victorious, in my name. / . . . These shall be masters of the world under a new power, / They shall laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the world” (1860-1861: 349350). And interestingly we do have evidence of Whitman likely to have read Plutarch’s Lives (1865), whose chapter on Pelopidas is one of the most substantial sources for the Theban Sacred Band; see Herrero Brasas (2010: 113) for an account of this and Kennedy (2006: 291) for one easily accessible original source. 46 For example, Whitman told us some time later—in “The Base of All Metaphysics,” a poem added to “Calamus” since the 1871 edition—that he had studied “the Greek system” (besides the “Germanic” one) and found what underlay it was “The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend” (1871a: 130). As to the even more curious fact that the origin of the word Calamus is Kalamos— who in Greek mythology is a boy who fell in love with another, Karpos, and turned into a lamenting reed when the latter drowned—we have no way of knowing for sure whether Whitman was aware of its etymology or not, even though Whitman is known to have been an avid reader (albeit through translation) of the ancient Greek classics (Gummere, 1951: 270-285). 47 That is probably why the Greek thesis about Whitman, though having been brought up rather early, was never considered earnestly. One of the best known proponent of this thesis is of course Symonds, who in A Problem of Modern Ethics (published originally in 1891) not only says that Whitman’s description of comradeship reminds him of “the early Greek enthusiasm—that fellowship in arms which flourished among Dorian tribes” (2012: 195)—but namely links Whitman’s conception of it “as a social and political virtue” to “the Sacred Band of Thebans” (199). Most recently, Juan Herrero Brasas (2010: 109-116) also supports this thesis, but for reasons different from those provided here.
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