Curiosity... the dictionary defines it as "the desire to learn or know more about something or someone." I don't know if it happens to you, but when I read a text I have this desire to know about the person behind the words, thus the "nosiness" and the wish to know more about America’s world poet, Walt Whitman, to whom I have devoted the previous blog entry.
Walt Whitman was profoundly affected by the American Civil War (1861-1865). Too old to serve, or lacking the inclination to bear arms, he worked as a psychological nurse to wounded and sick soldiers in the Broadway Hospital in New York.
Walt Whitman was profoundly affected by the American Civil War (1861-1865). Too old to serve, or lacking the inclination to bear arms, he worked as a psychological nurse to wounded and sick soldiers in the Broadway Hospital in New York.
In 1863 he moved to Washington DC where he spent several years visiting more than 50 military hospitals, and made many friendships with soldiers, writing letters home for them and corresponding with many of the soldiers themselves after they had recovered and returned to the battlefront.
I think that, along with the fact that he spent some of his earning as a clerk for the Department of the Interior on gifts for the patients he cared for, say quite a lot about the type of person he was and how he really felt for others.
Therefore, when I read the recent piece of news in the Guardian and Público about the discovery of a letter with a line reading "Written by Walt Whitman", I was dying to know more.
It turns out that Walt Whitman travelled to the fronts of America's Civil War in 1862 to care for his wounded brother and apparently wrote letters for soldiers, but few of them have survived. This one, was found by Catherine Wilson, one of the 60 National Archives volunteers, and it is a letter Whitman penned for Jabo, father of 6, who was dying from tuberculosis and wanted to write to his wife.
Kenneth Price, Whitman scholar and also responsible for The Walt Whitman archive, thinks Whitman "tried to grasp the gist of what Jabo wanted to convey and then expressed clearly and straightforwardly (...) he tried to channel the sense and spirit of what Jabo wanted to convey".
Below you can see the image of the letter, and you can click on this link to NPR to see a transcription and listen to the story.
As Jackie Budell, a specialist with the National Archives concludes, "You can envision that he (Whitman) was, in effect, kind of helping them to verbalize maybe what they weren't able to say."
What a gift for us to have writers and poets to help us fully express ourselves and put into words feelings we sometimes fail to convey.
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