Oscar Wilde to Walt Whitman, 1 March 1882
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1267 Broadway, New York
My Dear Dear Walt—
Swinburne has just written to me to say as follows.
"I am sincerely interested and gratified by your account of Walt Whitman and the
assurance of his kindly and friendly feeling towards me: and I thank you, no less
sincerely, for your kindness in sending me word of it. As sincerely can I say, what
I shall be freshly obliged to you if you will assure him
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of in my name, that I have
by no manner of means relaxed my admiration of his noblest works—such parts,
above all, of his writings, as treat of the noblest subjects, material and
spiritual, with which poetry can deal—I have always thought it, and I believe
it will be hereafter generally thought his highest and surely
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most enviable
distinction that he never speaks so well as when he speaks of great
matters—Liberty, for instance, and Death.
This of course does not imply that I do, or rather it implies that I do not agree
with all his theories, or admire all his work in anything like equal measure—a
form of admiration which I should by no means desire for myself and am as little
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prepared to bestow on another—considering it a form of scarcely indirect
insult"
There! You see how you remain in our hearts—and how simply and grandly Swinburne speaks of you knowing you to be simple and grand yourself.
Will you in return send me for Swinburne a copy of your
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Essay on Poetry—the
pamphlet—with your name and his on it—it would please him so much.
Before I leave America I must see you again—there is no one in this wide great
world of America whom I love and honor so much.
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from Oscar Wilde | early in '82
see notes Sept 7–8–9 1888
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