Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 447 most enduring legacy of Whitman’s influence there, 63 which sometimes were even mobilized for its anti-imperialist protests against the US? Leave aside the early examples, such as Rubén Darío,64 who are often said to be not fluent enough in English to read Whitman in the original or simply not having read enough Whitman,65 but how about the much later Pablo Neruda who was also a devout communist (a Stalinist, to be precise)?66 How is it that, as late as the 1970s, while the most famous critical work debunking Whitman as racist, imperialist, and anti-Mexicanist (authored by Gonzáles de la Garza [1971]) had already been published in Spanish in Mexico, Neruda still accoladed Whitman enthusiastically (see, among other things, his speech to the New York P.E.N. convention: “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age” [1998])67 and, following the Latin American literary tradition mentioned above, chose to attack the Nixon administration for subverting the Chilean government in a long poem that begins “by invoking Walt Whitman” (2003: 825)? To give a simple answer to this complicated question, George B. Handley rightly concludes: “Too much, it would appear, was at stake to be critical of Whitman” (2007: 93). Indeed, Whitman must have provided progressive people (not just in Latin American but all around the world) like Neruda resources that were not only highly 63 For succinct accounts, see Alegría (1995), Nolan (1994: 18-34). 64 In protesting against the US support of Panama’s independence from Columbia, Darío opens his 1904 strong rebuttal poem “To Roosevelt”—addressed to President Theodore Roosevelt—thus: “It’s with a biblical voice, or with a verse by Walt Whitman, / that it would be fitting to approach you, Hunter!” (2012: 151). For Darío in general and the particular context of this poem, see Morrow (2008: 218-222). 65 Even the translations they read were said to be not directly from the English original and also highly biased in the poems selected; see Santí (2005: 66-83). 66 Interestingly, the Soviet affirmation of Whitman was rather consistent (Zassoursky, 1994). Even into the Cold War era when the USSR was in direct confrontation with the US, the official stance was still “to point to him as an example of a once idealistic, hopeful, and politically progressive country that has since become a traitor to its own origins” (Grünzweig, 2007: 350). 67 For Whitman’s longtime influence on Neruda, see Nolan (1994: 13-18).
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