专八人文知识需知美国名人--沃尔特.惠特曼

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--沃尔特.惠特曼

　　英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广，考生们需要平时多积累小常识，这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余，新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

　　沃尔特·惠特曼(Walt Whitman，1819年5月31日-1892年3月26日)，生于纽约州长岛，他是美国著名诗人、人文主义者，他创造了诗歌的自由体(Free Verse)，其代表作品是诗集《草叶集》。

　　He sang of America and shaped the country’s conceptionof itself.

　　他用诗歌来歌颂美国，塑造了美国的观念。

　　Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was anAmerican poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition betweenTranscendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the mostinfluential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was verycontroversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described asobscene for its overt sexuality.

　　Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and avolunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in hiscareer, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work,Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt atreaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revisingit until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, NewJersey where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a publicspectacle.

　　Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue todebate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings andattractions. However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actualsexual experiences with men. Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. Hesupported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetrypresented an egalitarian view of the races, and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery,but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.

　　Leaves of Grass

　　Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to becomea poet. He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to thecultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves ofGrass,a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death. Whitmanintended to write a distinctly American epic and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible.At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition ofLeaves of Grass. George "didn't think it worth reading".

　　Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and had it printed ata local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs. A total of 795 copies were printed. Noname is given as author; instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done by SamuelHollyer, but in the body of the text he calls himself "Walt Whitman, an American, one of theroughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men orwomen or apart from them, no more modest than immodest". The book received its strongestpraise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five page letter to Whitman and spokehighly of the book to friends. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirredup significant interest, in part due to Emerson's approval, but was occasionally criticized for theseemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry. Geologist John Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, callingthe book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass". On July 11, 1855, a fewdays after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of 65.

　　In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing moreon the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed andbound, the publisher almost did not release it. In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20additional poems, in August 1856. Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860[55] again in1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-knownwriters admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott and Henry DavidThoreau.

　　During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced towork as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857. As aneditor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials. He left thejob in 1859, though it is unclear if he was fired or chose to leave. Whitman, who typically keptdetailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.

　　Writing

　　Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like. He also usedunusual images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris. Healso openly wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution. He is often labeled as the fatherof free verse, though he did not invent it.

　　Poetic theory

　　Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is thathis country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital,symbiotic relationship between the poet and society. This connection was emphasized especially in"Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration. As an American epic, it deviatedfrom the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people.Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States had onthe masses.

　　Legacy and influence

　　Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "poet of democracy", a title meant to reflect hisability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman, Mary SmithWhitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, withoutLeaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no studentof the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman"America's poet... He is America." Andrew Carnegie called him "the great poet of America so far".Whitman considered himself a messiah-like figure in poetry. Others agreed: one of his admirers,William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating the birth of Walt Whitman asthey are now the birth of Christ".

　　The literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves ofGrass:

　　If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself,you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary works ascandidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's Moby-Dick,Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays and The Conduct ofLife. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

　　Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as AllenGinsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich andGary Snyder. Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among Whitman's "wild children", and thetitle of his 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco is a deliberate reference to Whitman'sStarting from Paumanok. Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was themodel for the character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented thequintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman'sdeath.

　　Whitman is a 2009 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

　　The final stanza of the poem "The Wound-Dresser" by Walt Whitman has been engraved acrossthe top of the massive granite walls encircling the 188-foot north entrance escalators descendingto the underground trains at the DuPont Circle stop on the Washington, D.C. transit system. Theinstallation was formally dedicated as a tribute to caregivers for those with HIV/Aids and otherdevastating illnesses at a ceremony on July 14, 2007.

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