d
about Calamus three years before.

"I [Traubel] said to W.: 'That's a humble letter enough: I don't
see anything in that to get excited about. He doesn't ask you to
answer the old question. In fact he rather apologizes for having
asked it.' W. fired up 'Who is excited? As to that question, he
does ask it again and again: asks it, asks it, asks it.' I
laughed at his vehemence. 'Well, suppose he does? It does not
harm. Besides, you've got nothing to hide. I think your silence
might lead him to suppose there was a nigger in your wood pile.'
'Oh, nonsense! But for thirty years my enemies and friends have
been asking me questions about the _Leaves_: I'm tired of not
answering questions.' It was very funny to see his face when he
gave a humorous twist to the fling in his last phrase. Then he
relaxed and added: 'Anyway I love Symonds. Who could fail to love
a man who could write such a letter? I suppose he will yet have
to be answered, damn 'im!'"

It is clear that these conversations considerably diminish the force of
the declaration in Whitman's letter. We see that the letter which, on the
face of it, might have represented the swift and indignant reaction of a
man who, suddenly faced by the possibility that his work may be
interpreted in a perverse sense, emphatically repudiates that
interpretation, was really nothing of the kind. Symonds for at least
eighteen years had been gently, considerately, even humbly, yet
persistently, asking the same perfectly legitimate question. If the answer
was really an emphatic no, it would more naturally have been made in 1872
than 1890. Moreover, in the face of this ever-recurring question, Whitman
constantly speaks to his friends of his great affection for Symonds and
his admiration for his intellectual cuteness, feelings that would both be
singularly out of place if applied to a man who was all the time
suggesting the possibility that his writings contained inferences that
were "terrible," "morbid," and "damnable." Evidently, during all those
years, Whitman could not decide what to reply. On the one hand he was
moved by his horror of being questioned, by his caution, by his natural
aversion to express approval of anything that could be called unnatural or
abnormal. On the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work
speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open,
and possibly by a more