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Who is Witter Bynner? A Biography by James Kraft, University of New Mexico Press, 1995, $19.95 (on Amazon.com), 125 pages
His best-known work, a translation of The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, quickly and naturally became one of three literary sources, along with Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, influencing me most. Thirty years thereafter elapsed during which time I knew nothing about Bynner except that he was Lao Tzu's translator and that he had a peculiar name.
"Jack Nichols gave me a copy of Witter Bynner's translation of Lao Tzu's The Way of Life….And I can't get or stay angry with him, or with Lige, because whenever I pick up the book I give myself a little party. And who can be mad at a party?" John Haynes Holmes had said of Bynner's translation that it "will stand as the perfect rendering of a classic work." In the last chapter of my own major work, Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975) I too recommended Lao Tzu, placing his wisdom next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass as one of two primary-source enhancements, both desperately needed by a spiritually-hungry developing world culture. Still, even in 1975, I knew almost nothing about Lao Tzu's translator, Bynner. I did know that Bynner was familiar—as I was—with Walt Whitman's philosophy. In his introduction to The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, Bynner had mentioned affinities between Lao Tzu and Whitman, even though 2,500 years and continental divides separated them. In Men's Liberation I had also quoted—more than once-- Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. And when Lige Clarke—to whom my book was dedicated-- was gunned down at a mysterious roadblock in Mexico, I noted in my letter to his relatives and friends—one later published in The Advocate-- that Lige was carrying with him, as usual, three books: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. At the time, I was ignorant of the fact that Witter Bynner had personally known his contemporary, Gibran.
Out of the blue, a quarter century later—last May-- I got an e-mail from the owners of The Inn of the Turquoise Bear, a gay bed and breakfast in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They explained that their award-winning Inn had once been the long-time dwelling place of Witter Bynner. And, when they discovered I was familiar with Bynner's name, they kindly sent me James Kraft's 1995 biography, Who is Witter Bynner?
Bynner, says this book, had not only been openly gay when it was not fashionable, but had shared my vision of Walt Whitman as one of the three needed foundation stones of culture. In Who is Witter Bynner? biographer Kraft quotes Bynner's poem celebrating Whitman. It recommends, just as I always have, that the good gay Poet of Democracy be hailed and embraced as our Muse, that we absorb and, in our daily lives, meet with the spiritual challenges Whitman advanced: That I in every man and he in me, Together making God, are gradually creating whole The single soul… Somebody called Walt Whitman— Dead! He is alive instead. Alive as I am. When I lift my head, His head is lifted. When his brave mouth speaks, My lips contain his word. And when his rocker creaks Ghostly in Camden, there I sit in it and watch my hands grow old And take upon my constant lips the kiss of younger truth… It is my joy to tell and to be told That he in all the world and me, Cannot be dead, That I, in all the world and him, youth after youth Shall lift my head. My new friends at the Inn of the Turquoise Bear confirmed what I immediately realized: Witter Bynner, they explained, is the very lynchpin for those three literary giants—Whitman, Lao Tzu and Gibran—whose works—starting with Whitman—have remained, throughout nearly a half-century, central to my personal and social philosophy. This, dear reader, is not only synchronicity. For me, it's an almost eerie validation of my choice of literary mentors. Few who dabble in philosophy as I do are rewarded with such uncanny confirmations. So, what kind of man was Witter Bynner? And who was he? And why, when we so glibly mention gay literary icons, has his name remained thus far unspoken? In fact, Bynner played host to icons of all persuasions. At his Sante Fe home, now an Inn, among the countless celebrities he entertained were: D.H. Lawrence, Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather, Igor Stravinsky, Amsel Adams, Edna St.Vincent Millay, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, Errol Flynn, Rita Hayworth, W.H. Auden, Georgia O'Keefe, Robert Frost, Martha Graham, Clara Bow, Robert Oppenheimer, Carl Van Vechen, and Aldous Huxley. He was, among other things, a successful lover. And, he was a successful poet of love, as is clear in the following verse: I am too simple for those lesser ways of love than love itself and you too young. Nights are a deeper carnival than days but days a brighter joy. Oh, I have sung the intimate night like many who loved before but not till now have known that day can bring between my heart and yours that I adore A song of love almost too sweet to sing! . . . Initiate me newly to the sun: Lighten the wide calm landscape with your face, Let every secret that the night has spun Glitter with crystal in an open place. Let love, breathlessly beautiful at night, Be yet more beautiful by morning light.
Biographer James Kraft, who holds a Ph.D. in literature from Fordham University, is also the editor of the five-volume edition of The Works of Witter Bynner and of The Selected Witter Bynner, also published by The University of New Mexico Press. Though he died the year before I discovered him, Bynner was quite right to anticipate the arrival of youths, such as I was then, who would embody the joys and the awarenesses he and Whitman both knew: It is my joy to tell and to be told That he in all the world and me, Cannot be dead, That I, in all the world and him, youth after youth Shall lift my head. |
Poet and translator Witter Bynner circa. 1913-1914 
Robert Hunt, for 34 years Bynner's lover 
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