Part 26

Unless indeed, as some maintain, Whitman got the suggestion of a rhapsodical form from the once famous _Poems of Ossian_, he may be said to have invented his own ‘verse.’ These unrhymed and unmetred chants give a pleasure the degree of which is largely determined by the reader’s willingness to allow Whitman to speak in his own manner and wholly without reference to time-honored modes of poetic expression. Such receptivity of mind is indispensable.

Whitman called his rhapsodies ‘poems,’ ‘chants,’ or ‘songs’ indifferently; the last term was a favorite with him, in later editions; he has a ‘Song of the Open Road,’ a ‘Song of the Broad-Axe,’ a ‘Song for Occupations,’ a ‘Song of the Rolling Earth,’ a ‘Song of Myself,’ a ‘Song of the Exposition,’ a ‘Song of the Redwood-Tree,’ ‘Songs of Parting,’ and yet more songs. Obviously he used the word without reference to the traditional meaning. Says Whitman: ‘... it is not on _Leaves of Grass_ distinctively as _literature_, or a specimen thereof, that I feel to dwell, or advance claims. No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward art or æstheticism.’ Holding as he did that so long as ‘the States’ were dominated by the poetic ideals of the Old World they would stop short of first-class nationality, his own practice necessarily involved getting rid, first of all, of the forms in which poetry had hitherto found expression.

That the structure of Whitman’s rhapsodies is determined by some law cannot be questioned. After one has read these pieces many times, he will find himself instinctively expecting a certain cadence. The change of a word spoils it, the introduction of a rhyme is intolerable. They who are versed in Whitman’s style can probably detect at once a variation from his best manner. That his peculiarities in the arrangement of words are very subtile is plain from a glance at the numerous and generally unsuccessful parodies of _Leaves of Grass_. The parodists have not grasped Whitman’s secret. Merely to write in irregular lines and begin each line with a capital is to represent only the obvious and superficial side. Whitman is inimitable even in his catalogues. The ninth stanza of ‘I Sing the Body Electric’ reads like an extract from a papal anathema, but it has the Whitmanesque quality; no one can reproduce it. The imitations of Whitman are always amusing and often ingenious, but they are not, like Lewis Carroll’s ‘Three Voices,’ true parodies.

Whitman probably did not know every step of the process by which he attained his results. He was a poet who created his own laws and had no philosophy of poetic form to expound.

IV

_LEAVES OF GRASS_

A first impression of _Leaves of Grass_ is of uncouthness and blatancy, together with something yet more objectionable. The writer would seem to be a man fond of shocking what are called the proprieties, so frank and egregious is his animalism, so overpowering his self-assertiveness.

The author of _Laus Veneris_ accuses Whitman of indecency. The charge is a grave one and emanates from a high source. The distinguished English poet admits that there are few subjects which ‘may not be treated with success;’ but the treatment is everything. This is ‘a radical and fundamental truth of criticism.’ Whitman’s indecency then consists not so much in the choice of the subject as in the awkwardness of the touch. Or as Swinburne puts it with characteristic emphasis: ‘Under the dirty paws of a harper whose plectrum is a muck-rake any tune will become a chaos of discords, though the motive of the tune should be the first principle of nature--the passion of man for woman or the passion of woman for man.’

But along with that first impression of Whitman’s verse as the product of a strong, coarse nature, wilfully brutal at times, comes the no less marked impression that the man is serenely honest, and animated by a benevolence which helps to relieve the brutality of its most repulsive features. At all events, Whitman is what Carlyle might have described as ‘one of the palpablest of Facts in this miserable world where so much is Invertebrate and Phantasmal.’ Whether we like him or not, Whitman is by no means one of those neutral literary persons who are in danger of being overlooked.

In fact, the word ‘literary’ as applied to the author of _Leaves of Grass_ is singularly inept. Whitman is not literary, that is to say he is not a product of libraries. No meek and reverent follower of poets gone before is this. ‘He has no literary ancestor, he is an ancestor himself’--or at least takes the attitude of one. He is a son of earth, a genuine autochthon, naked and not ashamed, noisy, vociferous, naïvely delighted with the music of his own raucous voice.

In that first great rhapsody, ‘Poem of Walt Whitman, an American,’[71] we have the most characteristic expression of his genius. He proclaims his interest in all that concerns mankind--not a cold, objective interest merely, he is himself a part of the mighty pageant of life, sympathetic with every phase of joy and sorrow, identifying himself with high and low, finding nothing mean or contemptible. He states the idea with a hundred variations, returns upon it, sets it in new lights, enforces it. Every phenomenon of human life teaches this lesson. Every pleasure, every grief, every experience small or great concerns him. He identifies himself with the life of the most miserable of creatures:--

I am possess’d! Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

He carries the process of identification too far at times, leading to results that would be disgusting were they not laughably grotesque. Whitman makes no reservations on the score of taste.

This doctrine of the unity of being and experience is comprehensive, not limited to human life; the brute and insentient existences are included as well. For a statement of Whitman’s creed take the poem beginning: ‘There was a child went forth.’ If a busy man were ambitious to know something about Whitman’s poetry and had only a minimum of time to give to the subject (like Franklin when he undertook to post up on revealed religion), one would not hesitate to commend to his notice this poem as one of the first to be read. The theme is contained in the four introductory lines. All that follows is an amplification of a single thought:--

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

Every object grows incorporate with the child, an essential inseparable part of him,--the early lilacs, the noisy brood of the barnyard, people, home, the family usages, doubts even (doubts ‘whether that which appears is so, or is it all flashes and specks?’), the streets, the shops, the crowd surging along, shadows and mist, and boats and waves,

The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in, The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

The idea has another setting in ‘Salut au Monde,’ Walt Whitman’s brotherly wave of the hand to the whole world. It is a vision of kingdoms and nations, comprehensive, detailed; it is geography and the catalogue raised to the dignity of eloquence. Latitude and longitude and the hot equator ‘banding the bulge of the earth’ acquire new meaning in this strange chant. The poet hears the myriad sound of the life of all peoples:--

I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque, I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear the responsive bass and soprano,

* * * * *

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms, I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans, I hear the tale of the divine life and the bloody death of the beautiful God the Christ, I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago.

The mountains, the rivers, the stormy seas, the pageant of fallen empires and ancient religions, of cities and plains, all sweep past in this survey of the world. And to all, salutation:--

My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth, I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

The ‘Song of the Open Road,’ which may very well be read next, is a challenge to a larger life than that which conventions, and modes, and common social habits will permit:--

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

It is no journey of ease to which the poet invites his followers; he offers none of the ‘old smooth prizes:’--

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion, He going with me must go well arm’d, He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertion.

Notable among Whitman’s best poems, and most important to an understanding of him, is the ‘Song of the Answerer,’ that is to say, of the Poet. He it is who puts things in their right relations:--

Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and a tongue, He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men.

The Answerer is quite other than the Singer--he is more powerful, his existence is more significant, his words are of weight and insight:--

The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark, The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race, He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race.

In that fine rhapsody ‘By Blue Ontario’s Shore’ Whitman restates his doctrine while applying it to the need of his own America:--

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill’d from poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes, Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature, America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it or conceal from it, it is impassive enough, Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them, If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there is no fear of mistake, (The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr’d till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb’d it.)

‘By Blue Ontario’s Shore,’ from which these lines are taken, is a chant for America. Patriotism is Whitman’s darling theme. Love of native land, confidence in democracy, the self-sufficiency of the Republic and the certainty of its future--with these ideas and with this spirit his verse is charged to the full:--

A breed whose proof is in time and deeds, What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections, We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves, We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world, From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.

America is safe, thought Whitman, so long as she does her own work in her own way and cultivates a wholesome fear of civilization.

America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards, Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents, Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under their forms,

* * * * *

These States are the amplest poem, Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations, Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars, Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves, Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.

One of the most magnificent of Whitman’s patriotic chants is that known by its opening line, ‘As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free.’ He would be a hardened sceptic who, after reading these superb and uplifting verses, found himself still unconverted to some portion of the gospel of poetry as preached by Walt Whitman. There is no resisting the man here, or when he shows his power in pieces like ‘Proud Music of the Storm,’ ‘Passage to India,’ ‘The Mystic Trumpeter,’ ‘With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!’ ‘To the Man-of-War-Bird,’ ‘Song of the Universal,’ and ‘Chanting the Square Deific.’

Admirable, even wonderful, as these verses are, it may be after all that the little volume called _Drum-Taps_ (together with its _Sequel_) is Whitman’s best gift to the literature of his country. Vivid pictures of battle-field, camp, and hospital, they are not to be forgotten by him who has once looked on them. The ‘Prelude,’ ‘Cavalry Crossing a Ford,’ ‘By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame,’ ‘The Dresser,’ the impressive ‘Vigil strange I kept on the field one night,’ and the no less striking ‘A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,’ together with ‘As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,’ the ‘Hymn of Dead Soldiers,’ and ‘Spirit whose Work is Done,’--these and many more have accomplished for Whitman’s reputation what the ‘Song of Myself’ and kindred poems could not.

In _Drum-Taps_ appeared the tributes to Lincoln, ‘O Captain, my Captain,’ and the great lament beginning ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d.’ Here the poet rises to his supreme height. For pathos and tenderness, for beauty of phrase, nobility of thought, and a grand yet simple manner this threnody is indeed worthy of the praise bestowed on it by those critics whose praise is most to be desired.[72]

V

_SPECIMEN DAYS AND COLLECT_

Whitman’s prose in the definitive edition makes a stout volume of more than five hundred closely printed pages. The title, _Specimen Days and Collect_, gives an imperfect hint of the contents. Here are extracts from journals kept through twenty years. Many bear a resemblance to Hugo’s _Choses Vues_. Largely autobiographical and reminiscent, they are vivid, picturesque, and far better in their haphazard way than a good deal of formal ‘literature.’ Here are reprints of prefaces to the several editions of _Leaves of Grass_, together with papers on Burns, Tennyson, and Shakespeare, a lecture on Lincoln, a paper on American national literature, and yet more ‘diary-notes’ and ‘splinters.’ He who loves to browse in a book will find the volume of Whitman’s prose made to his hand. The prose is of high importance to an understanding of what, oddly enough, his poetry imperfectly reveals--Whitman’s character. To know the man as he really was we must read _Specimen Days and Collect_.

VI

WHITMAN’S CHARACTER

There is a certain uncanny quality in parts of Whitman’s verse. The reiteration of particular phrases and words awakens an uncomfortable feeling, a suspicion of not-to-be-named queernesses, to use no plainer term. The constant translation of conceptions of ideal love into fleshly symbols moves the reader to irreverence if not to disgust. Whitman’s favorite image of bearded ‘comrades’ who kiss when they meet, and who take long walks with their arms around each other’s necks, may be ‘nonchalant’ but it is not agreeable. Somehow it does not seem as if the doctrine of the brotherhood of man gained many supporters by so singular a method of propagandism.

When from time to time Whitman talked with Peter Doyle about his books, Doyle would say: ‘I don’t know what you are trying to get at.’[73] It is an ironical comment on the great preacher of the needs and virtues of the average man that his poetry should have been handed over to the keeping of those whose jaded taste makes them hanker after the bizarre, after anything that breeds discussion, anything demanding interpretation and defence.

Yet no one doubts the sincerity of these faithful followers. Whitmanites really like Whitman albeit they protest too much. It is difficult to read him and not like him. Unfortunately the many find it impossible to read him. Whitman prepares his feast, throws open his doors, and bids all enter who will. A few come and by their shrill volubility make it seem as if the dining-room were crowded. The majority do not trouble to cross the threshold. They have heard that the host serves queer dishes; it has even been reported that he is a cannibal.

This, or something very like it, has been Whitman’s fate. A taste for his work must be acquired. He is the idol of cliques and societies, and a meaningless name to the great people whom he loved, whose virtues he chanted with confident fervor, and in whom he trusted unreservedly.

Poetry so egoistic might be supposed to reveal the man. Strangely enough, Whitman’s poetry, despite the heavy and continued accentuation of the personal note, gives but a partial, a quite imperfect view of the man himself. Whitman tells us so emphatically what he _thinks_ that we are at a loss to know what he himself _is_. The great Shakespeare, according to popular opinion, is veiled from us through his extraordinary impersonality. Whitman accomplishes a not dissimilar end by diametrically opposite means; he hides himself by over obtrusion of the personal element. The case is not so common as to be undeserving of study. As a method it has many drawbacks.

Whitman has suffered at his own hands. The egoistic manner, indispensable to his theory and not to be taken with literalness, is nevertheless a stumbling-block. Instruct themselves how they will that in saying ‘I’ the poet also means ‘You,’ that whatever Walt Whitman claims for himself he also claims for every one else, readers somehow lose hold of the thought and are amazed and angered by the poet’s monstrous vanity.

To this feeling the prose writings are an antidote. We learn in a few pages how simple-minded, patient, and lovable this man really was; how reverent of genius, how free from envy, undisturbed by suffering, ill-repute, and delayed hopes. There was something at once pathetic and noble in his patience, in his magnificent repose and stability. The impersonal character of the tree and the rock, which he admired so much, became in a measure his. He bided his time. The success of other poets awakened no jealousy. He never called names, never picked flaws in the work of his brother bards. The better we know him the more dignified and lofty his figure becomes.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] ‘Conversations with George W. Whitman,’ _In Re Walt Whitman_, p. 36.

[70] ‘... It is therefore deemed needful only to say in relation to his [Whitman’s] removal, that his Chief--Hon. Wm. P. Dole, Commissioner of Indian affairs, who was officially answerable to me for the work in his Bureau, recommended it, _on the ground that his services were not needed_. And no other reason was ever assigned by my authority.’ Extract from a letter from James Harlan to Dewitt Miller, dated Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, July 18, 1894.

[71] So called in the edition of 1856. In the edition of 1897 it is entitled ‘Song of Myself.’

[72] See, for example, Stedman’s tribute in _Poets of America_.

[73] _Calamus_, p. 27.

_Index_

_Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey_, 9, 27.

Abolitionists, 260.

_Afloat and Ashore_, 71, 88.

_Aftermath_, 226, 245.

‘Ages, The,’ Bryant’s Phi Beta Kappa poem, 38.

Agnew, Mary, 406.

_Alhambra, The_, 9, 24.

Allan, Mr. and Mrs. John, befriend Poe, 190, 191.

Allegiance, treaty with Germany concerning, 107.

American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, Whittier secretary of, 260.

_American Democrat, The_, 70, 94.

_American Lands and Letters_, 449.

American Loyalists, Irving’s attitude towards, 30; in Westchester County, N. Y., 75.

_American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne_, 292, 315.

‘American Scholar, The,’ Emerson’s Phi Beta Kappa oration, 152, 162.

_Among My Books_, 458, 475, 476.

_Among the Hills_, 263, 280.

Amory, Susan, wife of William Hickling Prescott, 125.

‘Analectic Magazine,’ conducted by Irving, 6.

André, Major John, Irving’s treatment of, 29.

Anti-slavery movement, Whittier’s connection with, 259, 273–277; Thoreau’s, 331; Curtis’s, 420, 421; Lowell’s, 456, 466, 479.

_Anti-Slavery Papers_, Lowell’s, 459, 479.

Appleton, Frances, wife of Longfellow, 225, 226.

Archæological Institute of America, 383.

Armada, the, 374.

Arnold, Benedict, Irving’s treatment of, 29.

Arnold, Matthew, 232.

Astor, John Jacob, his commercial enterprise in the Northwest, the subject of _Astoria_, 28.

_At Sundown_, 263, 282.

‘Atlantic Monthly,’ founding of, and Whittier’s contributions to, 262; Lowell editor of, 458.

_Autocrat, The, of the Breakfast-Table_, 340, 345, 355.

_Autumn_, Thoreau’s, 324, 331.

Bachiler, Stephen, 256.

Bancroft, Aaron, father of George Bancroft, 101.

Bancroft, George: his ancestry, 101; education and foreign travel, 102; tutor at Harvard, 103; the Round Hill School, 103; early works, 104; political appointments, 105, 107; founds United States Naval Academy, 105; brings about treaty with Germany, 107; last years, 107; death, 108; character, 108; criticism of the History, 110–119.

‘Barbara Frietchie,’ remark of Whittier concerning, 265; popularity of, 276.

_Battle Summer_, 440, 444.

_Belfry, The, of Bruges_, 225, 236.

Benjamin, Mary, wife of John Lothrop Motley, 360; her death, 364.

Bigelow, Catharine, wife of Francis Parkman, 381.

_Biglow Papers, The_, 456, 458, 466.

Bismarck, his student life with Motley, 360.

Bliss, Elisabeth (Davis), wife of George Bancroft, 105.

_Blithedale Romance, The_, 291, 309.

_Bonneville_, 28.

_Book of the Roses_, 381 (note).

Borrow, George, Emerson’s knowledge of, 182.

Boston Lyceum, Poe’s appearance before, 197, 200.

_Bracebridge Hall_, 7, 17.

_Bravo, The_, 69, 89, 96.

‘Broadway Journal, The,’ Poe’s connection with, 196.

Bronson, W. C., quoted, on Bryant, 43.

Brook Farm, Emerson’s sympathy with, 154; Hawthorne’s connection with, 289.

Brown, John, Thoreau’s acquaintance with, 323.

Bryant, Peter, father of William Cullen Bryant, 35.

Bryant, Stephen, ancestor of William Cullen Bryant, 35.

Bryant, William Cullen: his ancestry, 35; early verses, 36; education, 36, 37; law practice, 37; marriage, 38; editorial work, 38–41; political affiliations, 39, 40; works published, 41; travel, 42; death, 43; character, 44; quarrel with an opponent, 45; criticism of his work, 46–62; his translations, 58; quoted, on Cooper’s quarrel with the Press, 70.

Burr, Aaron, Washington Irving among counsel for defence of, 5.

Burroughs, John, 243.

‘Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly,’ Poe’s connection with, 194.

Byron, George Gordon Noel, visits American flagship, 103.

Cabot, Sebastian, passage on, from Bancroft, 110.

Cambridge (England), University of, confers degree on Holmes, 340; on Lowell, 459.

_Cape Cod_, 324, 331.

Caraffa, Motley’s picture of, 371.

Carlyle, Thomas, Emerson’s meeting with, 150; correspondence with Emerson, 156; quotation from, applied to Whitman, 495.

_Cathedral, The_, 458, 470.

Cavalier and Puritan, Bancroft’s comparison of, 111.

_Chainbearer, The_, 71, 95.

Champlain, Samuel, 392.

Charles the Fifth, Prescott’s continuation of Robertson’s history of, 127.

_Children of the Lord’s Supper, The_, 231, 236.

_Christus, a Mystery_, 226, 245.

Civil Service reform, Curtis’s work for, 421.

Clemm, Maria, 192, 194, 198.

Clemm, Virginia, 192; her marriage to Edgar Allan Poe, 193; her death, 197.