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Art News. An
Early
Estimate
Ferdinand
of Walt.
Whitman
by
Freiligrath.
From the 4 llgereneineZeitung
(Augsburg), MIay 10, 18G8.
Who is Walt. Whitman? ALT. Whitman! W The answer is: A poet ! A new American poet ! His admirers say the first, the only poet The only specifi America hashiitlherto produced. poet. No follower in the beaten cally American muse, but coming fresh paths of the European fresh and Western settlements, from the prairies rivers, fresh from from the coast and the great seaports and cities, fresh from the the crowded of the South, the odor of the soil battle-fields to his dress, him still clinging which created One whose like has inever yet hair and beard. on been; one who stands firm and self-conscious feet, a prophet of great and strange American His admirers go still further: things to come. is in fact the only poet in wbom Walt. Whitman age has found its expres the restless, searching the poet. sion, the poet par excellence, Thus on one side his admirers. among whom we the fault on the otber, even an Emerson; meet praise and beside boundless finders and abusers; sarcasm the bitterest enthusiastic recognition,and merciless invective. He indifferent. To all this the poet remains his adver accepts the praise a8f his due andmeets in himself; contempt. He believes saries with " He is," says his is unilimited. his self-reliance "*above all W. M. Rossetti, 'English publisher, convictions has earnest else the one man who that now as in the future, he will andl confesses a be the founder of a new poetical literature, to the material grandeur great literature suitable He be and incalculable of America." destinies con-sider him as muuch lieves that the future will as the as it will Columbus of America ;the maker of the Western conitinent, orWashing discoverer A sublime con ton as the founder of the States. viction indeed, expressed more than once by the poet in magnificent words, none more splendid the poem: than those beginning Corne, Iwill make the continent indissoluble, I will make themost splendid race thesun ever shone upon, I wvillmalte divine, mnagnetic lands, W it the love of comrades, W itli.the lifelong love of comrades. Has the man also the This 1has a proud ring. right to utter such thiings ? Let us become more initimate with him and consider his life and work. Let us open his book ! The lines are printed like these verses? Are No to be sure, but verses they are not. verses, but rhythmical nmetre, no rhyme, no strophies, of the Psalms. At the versification prose-the fornmless, and yet first glance rough, unpliant,
not' devoid
3
of harmony for a sensitive ear. The simple, solid, straightforward, giving laniguage its right name, feariDg nothing, everything some times obscure. The strain rhapsodical,'prophetic, and often unequal, blending the sublime and commonplace sometimes to a degree that verges on tastelessness. In spite of every other dissimi larity, he reminds us sometimes of our Hamann, or of Carlyle's oracular- wisdom, or of the " Pa roles d'un Croyant." But out of all breathes the Bible-its language, not its faith. And what does the poet give us in this form? Above all, himself, his ego-Walt. Whitman; this ego, however, is a part of America, a part of the earth, of humanity, of the universe. With this conviction and linking the sublimest to the most insignificant objects, he rolls out a huge panorama before us, always taking America as his starting and closing point (for the future belongs to a free people).' A cosmopolitan spirit, so to say, pervades Walt. Whitman and his Americanism, such as is peculiar to contemplative hatures, who, alone with infinity, spend lonely days on the sea coast or lonely nights under the starlit skies of the prairies. in everythinig He finds himself and in himself. everything He, the single man, Walt. Whitman, is humanity -and the world. And and humanity the world are one grand to him. poem he sees or hears or Everything in contact comes even the meanest, with, the most insignificant, the most commonplace, every thing appears to him as'the symbol of something higher, more something spiritual. Or, rather, materia and the spirit, reality and the ideal are one and the same to himn. Thus, self-made, he appears to us loafing at his ease, singinig his songs, a proud. free man and only a man, opening to us social and political world-wide vistas. in truth! A wonderful We ac apparition, knowledge that it impresses, alarms and strangely us. And yet we find that we are not fascinates yet finished with our judgment, that we are still Inthe mean influeinced by our first impressions. time we are probably the first in Germany to of form an opinion of the existence aiid activity The queer fellow deserves to this fresh, power. closer by our poets and thinkers, be considered as he does, to overthrow all our ars threatening, And canons and theories. poetica, our esthetic in these solemn true it is, that after having-read pages, after having listened to the deep, sonorous on our roar of Walt. Whitman's muse, rushing of the ocean's ear like the continuous beating our endeavor our traditional versification, waves, into certain traditional to force. our thoughts and forms, our jangling of verses, our counting our of of syllables, malking measuring 'sonnets, to us. strophes and stanza appear almost childish Have we really arrived At that point when life even in poetryl?. demands new modes of e4iression so and Ilas this a-le many `such important things for to tell us, that the old vessels are insufficient Are'we the new. contents? before a standing poetry of the future, ais already for years a music to us? And is of the 'future has been predicted than Richard Wagner-? Walt. Whitman greater
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Art News.
' Our strenigth grows out of our weakness. Not until we some private library, or perusinig ing through are pricked twu stuug and soi ely shlot a>, awakens thse in in some garret. vagrom magazines dignation whicl arms itsulf with secr,ettorces. Nothi and nobody is safe from him. *'Lhe wise uillauulways throws hiimiself on the side of his Nothing assijanlts. It ismore his interest thani it is theirs to find nobody is sacred to him. hlii weak points."-From B. W. EMLeRsob's' COMPENSATION." ing aind that I once remember 'rhe Echo will probably upon a time showed him several outline pencil THE ECHO. High dlrawings made by a young girl of Atlantic in feeling and remar k lands. They were exquisite is that of THE most famous echo in the world and he able in many ways for an unprofessional, to all known on the Rhine, the Lorelei liked them so well thau he asked me to give hinm I believe, it repeats seven times. To tourists. I did so. To my great surprise I found an one. I do not want to speak of these day, however, exact copy of this outline drawing used in one of butof the most of nature, quaint phonemena at Macbetlh a little that he exhibited his pictures eciLo in our American art life: conspicuous over a year ago. Arthur B. Davies. time I told him that Mr. Theodore Another It is about 1()years ago that he and several otlher of Degas' had some reproductions Robinson a copy of in Chicago to faine painted aspirants to see at his studio. Mr. Davies went drawving., from some "IChrist before Pilate" Munkaosy's them, and only a few weeks elapsed before a heap to their own it according coloring reproduction, life, all done in the circus of sketches depicting At it as the original. and exhiuiting imagination and miian. its pecular grouping Degas style, with .that time Mr. Davies had not yet the audacity a ptart of figures in of nerism merely showing he to put his own name to it. Now, I believe, by the produced ones, were stead of complete wouid now even shriiink from that. never tiring Echo. I was for some time. I know Mr. A. B. Davies attentioii I have seen the Echo 'look at Salon catalogues, even one of the very first who attracted at the tal I tlen believed that lie had original like those of the Secessionists to hill}. publications doubt. 1have watched Co.; get impressed by one or ent, which I now decidedly Berlin Pbotograph the suggestioni disagreeable and beinig-raLther him too closely; the other picture, and transform I ,uppose for nim--j ust as well acquainited with at once into an A. B. Davies. literature as he, and liaviii g a kiiowledge decadent He has told me stories as his own experiences as perfect as his, publications of contemporaryar& found out were told to him I afterwards which Gu trace the origin of all his I am iii tii.) position by others. work. -Most amusingto me was the incident of his lik at Mac Well, the Echo had another exhibition I am. mer ely an amateur ing one of my sketches. '24th to May 8thi, and revealed once beth, April of for that pastime and claim nothing wlhatever of appropriatinig capacity imiore his marvelous ideas, anid lie at times but I have mine, 4ueer One hlad to quote the names other men's work. It was a girl in a mys to like them. pretended of all artists, old and new, of all ages and climes, flower, em' smelling a long-stalked tic attitude art. reflective to do justice to Ilis phinonienal The next time the -Flowver Smeller." titled to see I had the pleasure are merely of other patchwork I came to his studio, His pictures ' It was a Smeller. For characteristics. the "Flower his version.of ideas and technical meln's under a Ruysdael instead of my damsel of the Decadence. m-n instance, a Pre-Raphaelite-figure even his few witlh him; is original Nothing an Inness light effect and a Steinlen tree with were weak imitations in wood-engraving aWalter Pater idea. Or attempts representing background, style. by thought depicted of Marcel Paris' vigorous some German philosopher's a Botticelli figure, painted in the Manet style with is just, If you do not believe that my criticism one-half a Rydersky. Oran AbbottThayersubject, cata get several volumes of Salon and Academy em with Ruskiin in Sargent's manner painted " Gil. anid Alle," fuir 'Kunst logues, "'The Studio," in Monticelli arid the other half bellishments stiff Blas." and you will soon find out of what Or a Hol reminiscences. Add to it an affectation art is made. Mr. Davies' filppisto with Japanese a lopsided Stein nude meeting bein-Beardsley from contemporarv reminiscences of naivet4. and Michel Or a hash of Moreland. len child. of technique trickery and a certain literature and of Watts, Or a pudlting Leighton Carri6re. feels at home in all styles, and you have which he At times else you like. or anything Titian, of the Echo. solved the true significance and his imitates imitators, Rosenberg even the this realizes sooner the profession The etc. Williams, Hamilton, imitators. better for our art, as he has already how well his 1896 exhibit Do you remember up to the fact himself. Perhaps he will wake I could tell from journey? reflecced his European try to rouse himself and flee to the wilderness, he route and every picture gallery it his whole I fear, original. something | forget, and produce had visited. It that is already too late. take would however, of In the whole history of art I do not know the stomach of an ostriclh to digest well all that he is such an expert of plagiarist another man who is in the way The Echo has swallowed. It is at That's something. as Mr. A. B. Davies. by cer worshipped financial success, moderate contem present his individuality. with are who unacquaintedl tain women art patrons is the art critic of his own who W. Macbeth, porary art publ ications. and Brooklyn between wiho do not even knowv the difference made avery involuntarily gallery and exhibitions, A. B. Davies' Rembrandt. a copy or a genuine of the in his "introduction," trup statement have al people what those remind of pictures "that it woulld bean Davies catalognie, namely: can They with. ready seen and are acquainted temper-* f'r an artist of MIr. Davies' impossibility Icarian flights. That is tle lis mind's on understand is always Mr. Davies arment to stand still." and the cause of his mild success with Macbeth rummag tile go, always in search of something,