These difficulties are reflected in some of the yet extant letters from the enormous mass which Fitzgerald addressed to "my dear Poshy."[94] A great personality of recent times, widely regarded with reverence as the prophet-poet of Democracy[95]--Walt Whitman--has aroused discussion by his sympathetic attitude toward passionate friendship, or "manly love" as he calls it, in _Leaves of Grass_.

In this book--in "Calamus," "Drumtaps," and elsewhere--Whitman celebrates a friendship in which physical contact and a kind of silent voluptuous emotion are essential elements.

In order to settle the question as to the precise significance of "Calamus," J.A.
Symonds wrote to Whitman, frankly posing the question.

The answer (written from Camden, N.J., on August 19, 1890) is the only statement of Whitman's attitude toward homosexuality, and it is therefore desirable that it should be set on record:-- "About the questions on 'Calamus,' etc., they quite daze me.
_Leaves of Grass_ is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character--all its pages and pieces so coming strictly under.

That the 'Calamus' part has ever allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is terrible.