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1869? Photographer unknown: probably William Kurtz. Saunders #14.
Courtesy Ohio Wesleyan University, Bayley Collection.
This photo is often dated 1861, but it appears to
be later, and it would seem to be the photo Whitman refers to in a
notebook dated between 1869 and 1871 where he records a desire
to "Collect the good portraits" including "Kurtz's head with
eyelids drooping." He goes on to make notes for a poem about
this portrait, including lines like "Veil with the lids thine
eyes, O soul!/ . . . Droop--droop thine eyes O Soul. . . ./ Mask
with their lids thine eyes, O Soul!/ The standards of the light
& sense shut off/ To darkness now retiring, from thy inward
abysms/ How curious, looking thence, . . ./ Appears aloof thy
life, each passion, each event. . . ./ The objective world
behind thee left. . . ." Dr. R. M. Bucke dated this photo
much earlier (1861) and saw Whitman's "attitude and aspect" here
suggestive of "the shadow of the national catastrophe, which
was to crush him as well as so many thousand others . . .
already falling upon him and darkening his life." This and
the following photo are classic examples of Kurtz's "Rembrandt"
style of light and shadow.
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