Hampton Style - July 25, 2008 - Walt Whitman on the East End

Walt Whitman liked to refer to his native Long Island by its aboriginal name, Paumanok, meaning "fish-shaped" in Algonquin. The 19th-century naturalist poet enjoyed the moniker so much, he ultimately adopted it as his pen name in a series called "Letters from a Traveling Bachelor," the first letter of which he wrote from his sister Mary's home in Greenport on the North Fork. The nearby Orient Point Inn was where Whitman liked to entertain guests over tea. It was also here in 1849 that he composed some of his early lines for Leaves of Grass, widely revered as the height of American Transcendentalism, and "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed," according to his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Specimen Days," a prose work, published in the last year of Whitman's life, demonstrates his writing's rich diversity. How fitting that our community should fuel some of his work's most compelling lines:

The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay region, I knew quite well too-sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down to Montauk-spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that time living there entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on those rich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, own'd by farmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining Indians, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. -1892

Whitman's narrative is marked by its physical observation of these largely unkempt landscapes and its characters, and though most of his life was spent in Brooklyn, Whitman ruminated on his native Long Island throughout much of his writing. Born in Huntington, N.Y., he bounced between journalism and school teaching careers (which he grew to deeply loathe), even performing a stint as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War.

The East End has proved a fertile plot for gestating ideas and creative souls since it first established itself as a respite from metropolitan living. The area was not always home for the highest pedigreed gentry, however. Only after a railroad stretched to East Hampton in the 1890s did it become more accessible, turning it into a desirable summer spot in the process. While Southampton and East Hampton gained socialized stature, Montauk remained the wild, wild West of Long Island. Up until the last century, the land was tilled and tread on by cattle ranchers, whalers and the few remaining nomadic natives. The naturalist bard easily captured the feeling of unruly expansiveness:

Paumanok.
Sea-beauty! strech'd and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad,
with copious commerce,
streamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or
gentle-mighty
hulls dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water-healthy air and soil!
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine! -1888

The poet did not quite belong to the literary-set of the late 19th century, which included Thoreau, Emerson and, overseas, Oscar Wilde. Breaking from his forebearer's trends, he earned himself international acclaim for it, but only after an initially cool reception among his countrymen. Known to eschew convention, Whitman's fiercely democratic and at times overtly sexual verses were an acquired taste locally. The first edition of Leaves, which he self-published in 1855, opened to poor sales and virulent criticism. European intellectuals, however, expressed an instant affinity for Whitman's intoxicating liberalism, finding in him a kindred spirit of avant-garde joie de vivre, long before it became fashionable stateside. Physical terrain is central to Whitman's often visceral expression, and this rugged vitality is captured in his free-verse from 'Song of Myself' in Leaves:

You sea! I resign myself to you also-I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
Sea breathing brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

Much of his imagery is erotic, leaving his reader wanting to feel and touch and smell what Whitman describes. Speculation shrouds his sexuality, but he was known to develop significant bonds with men all his life, calling them comrades. Wilde once boasted, "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips" while visiting the States.

In the 150th-anniversary edition of Leaves, Harold Bloom, who wrote the introduction, calls Whitman's work the "secular scripture of the United States." Who knew that the father of that ineffable American spirit, the kind that propels intellectual and spiritual greatness, although speaking for the country, drew so much from our wind-whipped dunes?