Edward Carpenter (1844-1929)'s poetic prose, heavily influenced by Walt Whitman. Whitman was widely accepted in England, while he was virtually neglected in the United States around 1880s (since the publication of William Michael Rossetti's edition of Leaves of Glass in 1868). According to Andrew Elfenbein's "Whitman, Democracy, and English Clerisy" (2001, Nineteenth-Century Literature), Carpenter should be seen"less as imitator than as translator" of Whitman (81), who erases Whitman's nationalism (91) and makes the language more accessible to the readers, as well as obscure the sexual connotations. What was most interesting about Elfenbein's reading is that whereas Whitman's central trope for his sexuality is ejaculation, Carpenter is geared toward caress, thereby making it less masculine--Carpenter's shifting of sexual trope reflects his stance as a sexologist in The Intermediate Sex (1912), where he (supposedly) establishes homosexuality as a third sex (androgyne ideal?). Carpenter also writes Days with Whitman (1906) and Friends with Walt Whitman (1924). He was a friend of Havelock Ellis and had a longterm relationship with his partner, George Merill.
- Almost transcendentalism: the great coherent Whole (6)/ "
- Becoming Mother Nature: I, Nature, stand, and call to you though you heed not: Have courage, come forth, O child of mine, that you may see me. . . . I am the ground; I listen the sound of your feet. They come nearer. I shut my eyes and feel their tread over my face. I am the trees; I reach downward my long arms and touch you, though you heed not, with enamored fingers" (8) the ocean of Equality (11) Lo! my children I give myself to you; I stretch my arms; on the lips each one in the name of all I kiss you: Come! And our of your clinging kisses, see! I create a new world. (18-19)
- Coming out: "Well, come out! you do not know what you are" (7) Lovers of all handicrafts and of labor in the open air, confessed passionate lovers of our own sex, Arise! (32)
- Democracy figured as a homoerotic relationship based on touch: Oh his lips it kisses the young man from China, and the patient old man, and the spiritual faced boy (17) O disrespectable Democracy! I love you. . . . You fill me with visions, and when the night comes I see the forests upon your flanks and your horns among the stars. I climb upon you and fulfil my desire. (22) I look upon him who makes all things. I sit at his feet in silence as he lights his pipe, and feel the careless resting of his fingers upon my neck. (67)
- Impersonal erotic--becoming a thing: I will be the ground underfoot and the common clay; the ploughman shall turn me up with his plough-share among the roots of the twitch in the sweet-smelling furrow; The potter shall mould me, running his finger along my whirling edge (we will be faithful to one another, he and I); The bricklayer shall lay me: he shall tap me into place with the handle of his towel. And to him I will utter the word which with my lips I have not spoken. (78) I am the light air on the hills--deny me not; my desire which was not satisfied is satisfied, and yet can never be satisfied. . . Him I tough, and her I touch, and you I touch--I can never be satisfied. (79)
- Cataloguing and temporality: "I weave these words about myself to form a seamless web without begging or ending" (35) こう考えるとカタロギングの終わりなき羅列というのはある種リニアなテンポラリティを崩す、queer temporalityのembodimentなのかね。We shall not desire to come to the end of the journey nor consider what the end may be: the end of all things shall be with Us. (104) だからejaculation じゃなくてtouchなのかね。
- Whitman moment--bathing boys: The bathers in the late twilight, almost dark, advance naked under the trees by the waterside, five or sic together, superb, unashamed, scarcely touching the ground. The budding pens of love scorch all over me--my skin is too tight, I am ready to burst through it--a flaming girdle is round my middle. (74) Walt Whitman, Christ, your own Self distantly deriding you (102)
- Celebration of reproduction?: "Wild heard! begetting and begetting innumerable progeny (all mine)" (107) "The living mother-flesh folds round in darkness, the mother's life is an unspoken prayer, her body a temple of the Holy One." (100)
