Literary Homophobia from the pen of Rufus Griswold

[Xenophiliac]

I was doing some research on Edgar Allan Poe recently and came across this brutally homophobic but beautifully written review of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. It was written by the one and only literary tastemaker Rufus Griswold, best known for his posthumous (and horribly libelous) biography of Poe.

You can read the entire review here (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/leaves1855/anc.00016.html). In the middle of the piece Griswold segues into the following rant regarding homosexuals, and expresses the sentiment of the modern conservative perfectly:



"There are too many persons, who imagine they demonstrate their superiority to their fellows, by disregarding all the politenesses and decencies of life, and, therefore, justify themselves in indulging the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license. But nature, abhorring the abuse of the capacities she has given to man, retaliates upon him, by rendering extravagant indulgence in any direction followed by an insatiable, ever-consuming, and never to be appeased passion.

Thus, to these pitiful beings, virtue and honor are but names. Bloated with self-conceit, they strut abroad unabashed in the daylight, and expose to the world the festering sores that overlay them like a garment. Unless we admit this exhibition to be beautiful, we are at once set down for non-progressive conservatives, destitute of the "inner light," the far-seeingness which, of course, characterize those gifted individuals. Now, any one who has noticed the tendency of thought in these later years, must be aware that a quantity of this kind of nonsense is being constantly displayed. The immodesty of presumption exhibited by these seers; their arrogant pretentiousness; the complacent smile with which they listen to the echo of their own braying, should be, and we believe is, enough to disgust the great majority of sensible folks; but, unfortunately, there is a class that, mistaking sound for sense, attach some importance to all this rant and cant. These candid, these ingenuous, these honest "progressionists;" these human diamonds without flaws; these men that have come, detest furiously all shams; "to the pure, all things are pure;" they are pure, and, consequently, must thrust their reeking presence under every man's nose.

They seem to think that man has no instinctive delicacy; is not imbued with a conservative and preservative modesty, that acts as a restraint upon the violence of passions, which, for a wise purpose, have been made so strong. No! these fellows have no secrets, no disguises; no, indeed! But they do have, conceal it by whatever language they choose, a degrading, beastly sensuality, that is fast rotting the healthy core of all the social virtues.

There was a time when licentiousness laughed at reproval; now it writes essays and delivers lectures. Once it shunned the light; now it courts attention, writes books showing how grand and pure it is, and prophesies from its lecherous lips its own ultimate triumph.

Shall we argue with such men? Shall we admit them into our houses, that they may leave a foul odor, contaminate the pure, healthful air? Or shall they be placed in the same category with the comparatively innocent slave of poverty, ignorance and passion, that skulks along in the shadows of by-ways; even in her deep degradation possessing some sparks of the Divine light, the germ of good that reveals itself by a sense of shame?

Thus, then, we leave this gathering of muck to the laws which, certainly, if they fulfil their intent, must have power to suppress such gross obscenity. As it is entirely destitute of wit, there is no probability that any one would, after this exposure, read it in the hope of finding that; and we trust no one will require further evidence—for, indeed, we do not believe there is a newspaper so vile that would print confirmatory extracts."

In our allusions to this book, we have found it impossible to convey any, even the most faint idea of its style and contents, and of our disgust and detestation of them, without employing language that cannot be pleasing to ears polite; but it does seem that some one should, under circumstances like these, undertake a most disagreeable, yet stern duty. The records of crime show that many monsters have gone on in impunity, because the exposure of their vileness was attended with too great indelicacy. "Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum (that wretched sin, which must not be called by name amongst Christians)."


Excerpted from:

Griswold, Rufus W. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." The Criterion (10 November 1855): [unknown].So, here is yet another reason for the treacherous Griswold to be derided?

[praxis1966]

Belongs in L&F, homie. Thus, moved.

[Xenophiliac]

Belongs in L&F, homie. Thus, moved.

Appy polly loggies.

[Xenophiliac]

And it would appear, from this excerpt from a response to a laudatory review of the poet by a Charles D. Isaacson, that in the matter of Walt Whitman's irredeemable depravity, H.P. Lovecraft felt much the same way as old Rufus Griswold.



Charles d. Isaacson, the animating essence of the publication, is a character of remarkable quality. Descended from the race that produced Mendelssohn, he is himself a musician of no ordinary talent, whilst as a man of literature he is worthy of comparison with his co-religionists Moses Mendez and Isaac D’Israeli. But the very spirituality which gives elevation to the Semitic mind partially unfits it for the consideration of tastes and trends in Aryan thought and writings, hence it is not surprising that he is a radical of the extremest sort.
From an ordinary man, the acclamation of degraded Walt Whitman as the “Greatest American Thinker” would come as an insult to the American mind, yet with Mr. Isaacson one may but respectfully dissent. Penetrating and forgetting the unspeakable grossness and wildness of the erratic bard, our author seizes on the one spark of truth within, and magnifies it till it becomes for him the whole Whitman. The Conservative, in speaking for the sounder faction of American taste, is impelled to give here his own lines on Whitman, written several years ago as part of an essay on the modern poets:

Behold Great Whitman, whose licentious line
Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine;
Whose fever’d fancy shuns the measur’d pace,
And copies Ovid’s filth without his grace.
In his rough brain a genius might have grown,
Had he not sought to play the brute alone;
But void of shame, he let his wit run wild,
And liv’d and wrote as Adam’s bestial child.
Averse to culture, strange to humankind,
He never knew the pleasures of the mind.
Scorning the pure, the delicate, the clean,
His joys were sordid, and his morals mean.
Thro’ his gross thoughts a native vigour ran,
From which he deem’d himself the perfect man:
But want of decency his rank decreas’d,
And sunk him to the level of the beast.
Would that his Muse had dy’d before her birth,
Nor spread such foul corruption o’er the earth.
I don't know which is worse, Lovecraft's lofty scorn of Whitman's character or his own wretched sub-Vogon poetry.

[Xenophiliac]

An anonymous review of "Leaves of Grass":


So, then, these rank Leaves have sprouted afresh, and in still greater abundance. We hoped that they had dropped, and we should hear no more of them. But since they thrust themselves upon us again, with a pertinacity that is proverbial of noxious weeds, and since these thirty- two poems (!) threaten to become 'several hundred,—perhaps a thousand,'—we can no longer refrain from speaking of them as we think they deserve. For here is not a question of literary opinion principally, but of the very essence of religion and morality. The book might pass for merely hectoring and ludicrous, if it were not something a great deal more offensive. We are bound in conscience to call it impious and obscene. Punch made sarcastic allusion to it some time ago, as a specimen of American literature. We regard it as one of its worst disgraces. Whether or not the author really bears the name he assumes,—whether or not the strange figure opposite the title-page resembles him, or is even intended for his likeness—whether or not he is considered among his friends to be of a sane mind,—whether he is in earnest, or only playing off some disgusting burlesque,—we are hardly sure yet. We know only, that, in point of style, the book is an impertinence towards the English language; and in point of sentiment, an affront upon the recognized morality of respectable people. Both its language and thought seem to have just broken out of Bedlam. It sets off upon a sort of distracted philosophy, and openly deifies the bodily organs, senses, and appetites, in terms that admit of no double sense. To its pantheism and libidinousness it adds the most ridiculous swell of self-applause; for the author is 'one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshy, sensual, divine inside and out. This head more than churches or bibles or creeds. The scent of these arm-pits an aroma finer than prayer. If I worship any particular thing, it shall be some of the spread of my body.' He leaves 'washes and razors for foofoos;' thinks the talk 'about virtue and about vice' only 'blurt,' he being above and indifferent to both of them; and he himself, 'speaking the pass-word primeval, By God! will accept nothing which all cannot have the counterpart of on the same terms.' These quotations are made with cautious delicacy. We pick our way as cleanly as we can between other passages which are more detestable.
A friend whispers as we write, that there is nevertheless a vein of benevolence running through all this vagabondism and riot. Yes; there is plenty of that philanthropy, which cares as little for social rights as for the laws of God. This Titan in his own esteem is perfectly willing that all the rest of the world should be as frantic as himself. In fact, he has no objection to any persons whatever, unless they wear good clothes, or keep themselves tidy. Perhaps it is not judicious to call any attention to such a prodigious impudence. Dante's guide through the infernal regions bade him, on one occasion, Look and pass on. It would be a still better direction sometimes, when in neighborhoods of defilement and death, to pass on without looking. Indeed, we should even now hardly be tempted to make the slightest allusion to this crazy outbreak of conceit and vulgarity, if a sister Review had not praised it, and even undertaken to set up a plea in apology for its indecencies. We must be allowed to say, that it is not good to confound the blots upon great compositions with the compositions that are nothing but a blot. It is not good to confound the occasional ebullitions of too loose a fancy or too wanton a wit, with a profession and 'illustrated' doctrine of licentiousness. And furthermore, it is specially desirable to be able to discern the difference between the nudity of a statue and the gestures of a satyr; between the plain language of a simple state of society, and the lewd talk of the opposite state, which a worse than heathen lawlessness has corrupted; between the 'ευνη και φιλότητι,' or 'φιλότητι και ευνη μιγη ναι' of the Iliad and Odyssey, and an ithyphallic audacity that insults what is most sacred and decent among men.
There is one feature connected with the second edition of this foul work to which we cannot feel that we do otherwise than right in making a marked reference, because it involves the grossest violation of literary comity and courtesy that ever passed under our notice. Mr. Emerson had written a letter of greeting to the author on the perusal of the first edition, the warmth and eulogium of which amaze us. But 'Walt Whitman' has taken the most emphatic sentence of praise from this letter, and had it stamped in gold, signed 'R. W. Emerson,' upon the back of his second edition. This second edition contains some additional pieces, which in their loathsomeness exceed any of the contents of the first. Thus the honored name of Emerson, which has never before been associated with anything save refinement and delicacy in speech and writing, is made to indorse a work that teems with abominations.


[Anonymous]. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855) and (1856)]." The Christian Examiner 60 (November 1856): 471-3.

[Xenophiliac]

Another anonymous, but brief, review:



AN American Rough, whose name is WALT WHITMAN, and who calls himself a "Kosmos," has been publishing a mad book under the title of Leaves of Grass. We can only say that these Leaves of Grass are fully worthy to be put on a level with that heap of rubbish called Fern Leaves, by FANNY FERN, and similarly "green stuff." The fields of American literature want weeding dreadfully.

[Anonymous]. "A Strange Blade." Punch Magazine (26 April 1856): 169.

[Invader Zim]

So, here is yet another reason for the treacherous Griswold to be derided?

While highly distasteful by modern standards, his views were the norm in the 19th century.