The (Un)Erotic Community of Bodies: From Walt Whitman to the Beats

Elisa Sabbadin, University College Cork, School of English, PhD

Farid Ghadami, Univ Paris Est Créteil, IMAGER / FRAPP, F-94010 Créteil, France

Thanks to Éric Athenot and David S. Wills for their suggestions to improve this article.

The Erotic Community of Lovers

In the “Calamus” cluster, Walt Whitman presents a “community of lovers” as the social fabric of America. He openly rejects legal, civil, and military means of binding people together, advocating instead for love as a unifying force. This love is not merely spiritual, Platonic, or symbolic; it is explicitly erotic. Whitman’s vision for a new societal structure is rooted in eroticism.

According to Betsy Erkkila, Whitman proposes in “Calamus 5” that the nation’s political crisis could be resolved through intimate love between men, prioritizing affection and comradeship over legal or martial remedies. She suggests that Whitman’s notion of “manly affection” challenges conventional perspectives on political community by emphasizing love, sympathy, and fraternal bonds (Erkkila 213-214).

In “Calamus 5” we read:

STATES!

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?

By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

Away!

I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of 

courts and arms,

These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth 

 itself is held together.

[…]

There shall from me be a new friendship—It shall 

 be called after my name,

[…]

Affection shall solve every one of the problems of 

 freedom,

Those who love each other shall be invincible,

[…]

No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,

[…]

It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses 

 and streets, to see manly affection,

The departing brother or friend shall salute the re-

 maining brother or friend with a kiss.

[…]

The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face 

 lightly,

The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,

The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron,

I, extatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the 

 love of lovers tie you.

I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet 

 shone upon,

I will make divine magnetic lands (Whitman 349-51).

Whitman aims to shape modern American society as a community of lovers, specifically an erotic one. This idea, as examined by Maurice Blanchot, refers to a community forged through passionate, transformative experiences.

In his article titled “‘Love, that Fuses’: ‘Calamus’ and the Community of Lovers,” Éric Athenot, drawing from Blanchot, suggests that the Whitmanian community can be seen as a community of lovers, embodying the political ambiguity inherent in “Calamus.” Athenot delves into how Whitman’s writing challenges individualism and emphasizes the importance of communal ties in shaping American democracy. He contends that Whitman portrays “adhesiveness” or love as a binding force that transcends political, social, and material boundaries and examines the tension between the singular and the plural, as well as the role of the (male) body in the politics of adhesiveness and the potential formation of a community of “lover-exegetes” in the “Calamus” poems. Additionally, he asserts, in line with Maurice Blanchot, that the poems oscillate between “a community of absence” and “an absence of community” (Athenot 343-355).

In Blanchot’s book The Unavowable Community, the concept of the community of lovers is explored as a paradoxical and elusive notion. He delves into the complexities of love and its relationship to community, highlighting the tension between intimacy and solitude, presence and absence. He claims the community of lovers is characterized by a shared experience of passion, desire, and eroticism. In the realm of love, the self is both drawn towards the other and confronted with its own limitations and separateness. While love brings individuals together in moments of intense connection, it also introduces a fundamental alterity and distance between them. The lovers’ desire to merge and dissolve into each other is met with the impossibility of complete unity, resulting in an eternal longing and an unbridgeable gap (Blanchot 29-56).

Through his poetry, Whitman constructs a community wherein selflessness and mutual affection reign supreme. As Vivian R. Pollak discusses in her book The Erotic Whitman, Whitman expressed his anxiety about societal norms and emphasized the importance of sexual empowerment and the development of a distinct American identity. He criticized the suppression of individuality and the rigid gender roles in conventional society, advocating for a revival of authentic human attributes (Pollak 81).

Whitman aimed to challenge traditional literary authority by defamiliarizing the body as a symbol of democratic community. “Though in Benedict Anderson’s terms he was seeking to establish an ‘eroticized nationalism,’ and though in his own terms he was seeking to create a ‘new [sexual] Bible’, as a poet who believed that he lacked intellectual authority (compared, say, to Homer or Shakespeare or Tennyson) he felt that the emotional power of his own distinct experience had to be important” (Pollak 83-84).

Whitman’s Selective Inclusion: Alcoholics and Patients Not Permitted Entry

Whitman’s community of lovers, much like his vision of popular democracy, possesses an athletic essence. His poetry consistently resonates with a heroic and athletic spirit. When he praises democracy, he characterizes it as “athletic.” In “To Foreign Lands,” he seeks to illuminate America’s athletic democracy, asserting that his poems capture this sought-after essence.

Whitman’s envisioned democracy is an erotic community of bodies, excluding those lacking erotic functionality. In “I Sing the Body Electric,” only bodies exhibiting an erotic-athletic quality are represented.

In this context, his poem reads:

The love of the Body of man or woman balks ac-

count—the body itself balks account;

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is

 perfect.

The expression of the face balks account;

But the expression of a well-made man appears not

 only in his face;

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the

 joints of his hips and wrists;

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of

 his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;

The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes

 through the cotton and flannel;

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem,

 perhaps more;

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck

 and shoulder-side (Whitman 99).

“Song of Myself” also emphasizes athletic male swimmers, reinforcing Whitman’s selective inclusion.

So, can everyone partake in this erotic community of bodies? The answer is a resounding No! Whitman assigns erotic value only to physically healthy bodies, allowing them entry into his erotic society.

Whitman’s 1858 series, Manly Health and Training, published under the pseudonym Mose Velsor in the New York Atlas, provides insights into his views on health and physique. Spanning nearly 50,000 words, this series offers a unique perspective on his fascination with achieving a perfect physique. In the introductory section, Whitman, as Mose Velsor, passionately addresses readers, emphasizing the universal significance of manly health. He paints a vivid picture of a young, robust man with herculean strength, asserting that sound health is attainable and essential for genuine manly beauty and social interaction.

This health guide, intriguingly, contrasts with Whitman’s life situation in 1858. Facing financial struggles due to the Panic of 1857 and health issues possibly exacerbated by sunstroke, Whitman’s alcohol consumption increased. This period, marked by personal turmoil and professional uncertainty, is often considered his mid-life crisis, influencing his writings and correspondence (Turpin 150-152).

In “Song of the Open Road,” Whitman integrates the body into an erotic community while overlooking bodies lacking an erotic dimension. He excludes imperfect bodies, emphasizing courage and health:

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,

Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;

Allons! from all formules! (Whitman 232).

However, he warns:

Allons! yet take warning!

He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,

None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,

Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,

Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,

No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here(232).

Kerouac: In Praise of Alcoholic Bodies and Tuberculosis Patients

In the twenty-eighth chapter of The Dharma Bums, we observe the Beat Generation’s embrace of an erotic community of bodies. At Japhy’s (Gary Snyder’s) lively party, Ray’s (Kerouac’s) initial reluctance to socialize dissipates with the arrival of wine, paving the way for an evening of lively interactions. Guests form groups, engrossed in vibrant discussions and activities, embodying the inclusive spirit of The Dharma Bums’ community, which encompasses friends, family, Buddhists, bums, and poets alike. Ray chats with Arthur Whane, the Buddhist Association’s sociable director, and dances with a woman before realizing her husband is nearby. Alvah and George decide to get naked, then Japhy follows. He frightens Psyche, Polly, and Princess whenever he sees them by roaring and jumping at them. (You can see a guide to Kerouac’s characters and their real names here.)

This erotic group of the Beat Generation celebrates bodies that Whitman might have deemed unfit—sick, alcoholic, and disabled, as well as those of prostitutes. Contrary to Whitman’s exclusionary perspective, the Beat poets and writers, inspired by his work, extend a welcoming embrace to individuals regardless of their physical or mental condition.

In Big Sur, Kerouac recounts his life as an alcoholic, and a defining moment unfolds when the Beat community visits George, a tuberculosis patient, in the hospital. This community of lovers transitions into a group of alcoholics and tuberculosis patients, reflecting the evolving dynamics of the group.

Kerouac further delves into addiction in Tristessa, a novella inspired by his relationship with a Mexican prostitute named Esperanza, whom he renamed Tristessa. The narrative explores Tristessa’s life marked by morphine addiction and poverty, juxtaposing her self-destructive tendencies with portrayals of her saintly beauty and innocence. The erotic community of lovers, symbolizing Whitman’s vision of an ideal American society, now embraces an addicted prostitute, challenging societal norms and values. This community of lovers is, in Tristessa, also markedly spiritual. In her first description, and throughout the novella, Tristessa is compared to the Virgin Mary; however, she also embodies the first of the Buddhist four noble truths, the truth of suffering. Even the way in which she prepares her dose of morphine is religious: “Tristessa is bending over the spoon boiling morphine […] she kneels prayer fashion over the bed boiling her bang” (128). However, the narrator also depicts her body, too: it is a “sacrificial sick body” (157), a “little junk-racked body […] bundle of death and beauty” (156), a “ba[g] of bones” (192). She is a “sad mutilated blue Madonna” (173) with a “sad mutilated face” (184). Yet she is embraced and desired in her physical ambivalence. Her suffering is observed with love and compassion: Kerouac’s “compassionate response to [Tristessa] causes him to sanctify her world from the profane perspectives of abject poverty, drug addiction and junk-sickness-unto-death” (Giamo 104).

Ginsberg’s Howl and Kaddish: Celebrating Sick Bodies and Minds

In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison” (21). It is after spending some time in a psychiatric institution that Ginsberg writes “Howl,” his most famous lament against the evils of a capitalist society which, in Ginsberg’s words, “forces the individual to consider himself mad if he does not reject his own deepest senses” (“AG to Richard Eberhart” 345). With “Howl,” Ginsberg begins to form a critique of madness which, developed in “Kaddish,” can also be understood as a cognitive disability, building on an understanding of disability theory which “defines disability not as an individual defect but as the product of social injustice” (Siebers 3-4). In poems such as “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” he declares that his mother was in fact murdered by “the communist anticommunist psychosis” (82). Naomi’s fatness, which is often mentioned – “Sloppier, sat around on bed or chair, in corset dreaming to herself – ‘I’m hot – I’m getting fat – I used to have such a beautiful figure before I went to hospital” (Kaddish 22) – is traced back to her shock treatment: “Electricity, following the 40 Insulin. / And Metrazol had made her fat” (20).

Throughout the poem, Naomi’s body is laid bare to the reader: “as a compendium of fractured pieces, it is objectified, denied integrity” (Reynolds 166); it forms “an undaunted physical inventory,” which reminds of a “ritual viewing of the corpse before burial” (Vendler 12-13). We see her “scars of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers” (24), even the “six dark hairs on the wen of [her] breast” (34). Throughout “Kaddish,” Naomi’s sick, deformed body is relentlessly associated with her mental illness, and in turn to the brutal psychiatric treatments she received. Her disability is totalizing. Similarly, in “Howl,” Carl Solomon is depicted as “truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers” as he demands “instantaneous lobotomy” (19).

Ginsberg’s total embrace of these sick minds and bodies allows the reader to understand the cultural background of these disabilities, to embrace difference, and to expand in compassion.

(Learn about the writing of “Howl” and its various drafts here.)

Burroughs Pushes It Further: A Rhetoric of Disease

Whereas William S. Burroughs is not, like Ginsberg, inspired by Whitman’s notion of “adhesiveness,” he also portrays love between men. His community of lovers, however, is unerotic, albeit sexual. The “soft machine,” Burroughs’ trope in his novel of the same title, is an oxymoronic body, “the human body under constant siege from a vast hungry host of parasites” (“Appendix” 130). It is soft in its vulnerability to disease, rather than in its amorous and democratic exchanges.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson proposes the disabled body as an embodied metaphor of non-conformity, “a sign for the body that refuses to be governed” (44). Disability scholars often suggest that disabled characters commonly highlight the normalcy of a non-disabled character, but Beat writers disrupt this view. Like Kerouac, an alcoholic, and Ginsberg, who had a considerable experience with mental illness, Burroughs is no stranger to otherness: indeed, he self-identifies through the titles of his novels—Junky, Queer. His (un)erotic community of lovers is one of ill and addicted characters, grotesque humans and human-animal hybrids (as we see in Naked Lunch). Affection devolves into rape and other violations. The body is constantly, entirely destabilized by external penetrations, injections, and viral contagion.

This is what Jonathan Eburne proposes as Burroughs’ “rhetoric of disease”: a master metaphor which distills the American Cold War fears of infiltration, attack, instability, and otherness through the figure of “a festering and highly contagious disease which threatened the national ‘body’ with pollution” (60). Burroughs’ chaotic worlds therefore destabilize the national ethos.

Conclusion

Whereas Whitman proposed manly affection as the basis of an erotic, democratic community of athletic bodies, the Beat Generation writers took a different approach. In contrast to Whitman’s exclusions, the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs celebrated and embraced all bodies, irrespective of their status, echoing the Beat Generation’s ethos of inclusivity and acceptance.

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–––. “Song of the Open Road.” Leaves of Grass (1867). W. E. Chapin & Co., Printers, 1867, pp. 225-37. The Walt Whitman Archive, https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1867/whole.html.