It had been a duration of « Boston marriage ceremonies » between female and you can intimate characters anywhere between men. Exactly what took place behind closed doors is actually anybody’s suppose.
Within the August 1890, Walt Whitman unsealed an embarrassing piece of lover send. « In your conception away from Comradeship, » wrote British literary critic John Addington Symonds, « do you contemplate brand new possible intrusion of these semi-sexual ideas and methods and that without doubt would exist between men? »
It’s a question modern experts has expected also — and several has actually quite definitively responded they. « Walt Whitman and you can Gay Liberation are nearly associated for me, » had written social historian Rictor Norton when you look at the an excellent 1999 article. Norton items to Whitman’s 1860 « Calamus » poems just like the a sort of future-out page, filled up with lines such as:
The only I love most place asleep by the me personally beneath the exact same defense from the cool nights, About stillness, about autumn moonbeams, their face was more likely on me personally, And his sleeve set gently around my personal nipple — And this night I happened to be happy. Lire la suite