When Walt Whitman Was Dying, It Was Front-Page News — for Months / Tina Jordan. In: The New York Times Dec. 18, 2018

After the beloved poet caught a chill in December 1891, The Times kept a literary bedside vigil until his death on March 26, 1892.

CreditCreditLibrary of Congress

Germany had Goethe. India had Tagore. For France, it was Victor Hugo. When nationalism swept the world in the 19th century, country after country, along with flag and anthem, demanded a guiding literary voice to stand as an avatar for the country as a whole — a national poet. In America, no one embodied this role like Walt Whitman.

“I think Walt Whitman went to the help-wanted section and found a squib that said, ‘Wanted: National Poet’,” the novelist Allan Gurganus once said in a PBS interview. “And he was innocent enough to believe that if he could just write a poem that incorporated everything he felt and suspected and hoped for from America, that he would have the position. And you know, by God, he did it.”... [mehr] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/books/walt-whitman-final-death-illness-archives.html