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attempt to engage Whitman's politics
12019-07-12T12:08:43+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed9677214111Cohen page 7plain2019-07-12T12:08:43+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141Perhaps Johnson’s most extraordinary attempt to engage Whitman’s politics of democracy and race came in 1875, when he sent this four-page letter in dialect—baby dialect. In late 1874, not long after they had begun communicating, Johnson named his new son after the poet. The fiction of this letter is that it is from Walt Whitman Johnson to Walt Whitman: a strange, distant mirror. “Me is fine ittle ‘secesh,’ [Secessionist, or Rebel]” the infant “Modern Man” declares, with “plenty…F.F.V. [First Families of Virginia ancestry]” and enough talk of “back-heart bobalition [abolitionism]” to back up the assertion. Johnson’s test of Whitman’s embrace of all races extends to his description of how Walt Whitman Johnson got his name. Complaining that he went without a name for some months, the letter’s speaker says his father “not like name him babys for live mans—him said live ans do bad fings and make babies shamed—but me fink oo neber do no bad fings, man whan talk dood like oo wont neber do no bad fings.” This flattery, however, sets up the challenge to Whitman: “papa not like bobolitions neider, but may-be oo not bobolitions, may-be oo ony make-believe.” Perhaps, the child asserts, it was only to “make in der money” that Whitman took his stance against slavery. Extending the make-believe, Walt Whitman Johnson then imagines himself and Whitman sharing a house together, obtaining fiddles to “play Dixie,” and creating an ideal, unified America together: “if noder war tomes, we will be taptains of Ku Klux banditti, an’ me go east, an’ oo go west, an’ we will clean out all bobolitions.” Fantasies of living with Whitman were not uncommon among his admirers, but this one is without compare, with its disturbing mix of playfulness and violence. Whitman’s poetry helps vocalize Johnson’s appeal, the child referring to its “‘gymnastic’ mudder”; his Union pride and family’s experience of the war tweaked by lines like, “Me bully ittle boy—any ittle Jersey-boo-coat boy say ‘Union’ to me me tan whip him quicker ’n him Banner an’ Pennant tan say ‘fap’, ‘fap’, ‘fap’—oo bet!” It was Whitman’s own insistence on representing America good and bad that underwrote the letter’s concluding demand: “oo mus’ gib…love to ittle secesh mans.”
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12019-07-11T16:28:05+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141Commentary: Essay and PodcastJoelle Thomas13Cohen 1plain1102021-01-15T17:36:15+00:00Joelle Thomas0feb3b2b7a8befeee2c7d2d710d303ed96772141