"All literature, even very wonderful literature, even in class society, does not involve suffering but rather celebrates merely being alive."
Carrol,
That was a great passage ("The Icososphere").
I've often wished there was a listserv where folks could share favorite poems, literary excerpts, etc., as they dealt with leftist issues -- you know, age-old stuff like intolerance, class oppression, etc. Sometimes poets and writers (of fiction) can express things in a paragraph or two, and in a much more convincing way, than the most erudite of footnoted essayists across many pages. Like the Carl Sandburg excerpt I posted a week or two ago, which I was personally surprised to have found. (About men buying and selling one another, etc.)
Having said that, yeah, no one can doubt the elan of Walt Whitman and how his exuberance drove him to write. By the same token, it's hard to imagine a cheery chap writing Les Fleurs du Mal instead of the actual writer, Baudelaire, who suffered from the double whammy of a broken heart and syphilis as he put pen to paper.
-B.