The Vault at Pfaff's

An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York

The New Walt Whitman Handbook

Allen, Gay Wilson. The New Walt Whitman Handbook. New York: New York University Press, 1975.
Type
book
Genre
literary criticism
Abstract

This influential survey of critical and biographical approaches to Whitman makes a brief mention of Whitman's time at Pfaff's with respect to Frederik Schyberg's 1933 biography, _Walt Whitman_.

People Mentioned in this Work
Whitman, Walt [pages: 40-41]

The author refers to scholarship by Schyberg and Binns about the Pfaff's period that speculates on a failed romance for Whitman during this time. Allen quotes from Binns a notebook entry by Whitman wherein the poet speaks of dedicating himself to a new stage of life that would give him "a purged, cleansed, spiritualized, invigorated body."