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COMMENT WALT
WHITMAN
Q-NE hundredyears ago thismonthWalt Whitman life is a record was born. His simple,self-sufficient of unhurried,cumulativepower,whichwaited untilmid careerbeforesettingitselfto addresstheworld. Though works of verseand years,his complete he livedseventy-two proseare easilycontainedin twovolumes. insteadof repeating Rereading theLeaves consecutively, my
favorites over and over, I have been reminded of a
visit-in i91i-to theRembrandtgalleriesat theHermi tage in Petrograd,where, in two hundredor more can one could studythegreat vases good, bad and indifferent, painter in all his moods, search his genius through days of faltering or excess as well as days of triumph.
Even sowithWhitman, thoughhewas lessprolificthan Rembrandt,his spiritualkinsman. His Leaves show his genius entire-the timeswhen it lagged into prosy moraliz ing or leaped into bombast, as well as those proud hours of the Lincoln elegy, or Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, They show-again or the Whispers of Heavenly Death. like Rembrandt-his
power as a colorist, as a draughts
as a democrat and revolutionary rhythms, man of immense and
lover of men, and as a serious-minded thinker; also
of perspective and range,caused by lack of his limitations in self-criticism. disabilities and certain humor has been said aboutWhitman, from Almost everything
[891
POETRY:
of Ferse
a Magazine
the sneers of his firstdetractors to the large praise of present day enthusiasts-as France mentioned
when a recent article in theMercure de him, quite casually and as.a matter of
course, with Dante, Homer,
Shakespeare and the few other
masters. His centenaryfindshis fameestablished greatest and his mockers
rebuked; already his bearded
figure has
intocolossalmonumentalgranite,as grown and simplified indestructible as a mountain, a place of pilgrimage for the imaginations of men. There he is, as Henry James might say; and there, whether we like it or not, his spirit may have the power of the vates to bring These States to his
of theworld. feet,andmold ideals for thedemocratisation
It may be our province, at thismoment of general trib ute, to record with special emphasis certain details ofWhit man's service to poetic art. Even that noble shelf-monu
ment, The Cambridge History of American Literature, by closing one period with Lowell and opening another with Whitman, shows how two exactly contemporary poets may live in different ages and be ruled by contrary stars. Whit man began a new era, and the finiswhich he uttered to the old was heard by "foreign nations and the next age." Of
course his first and most obvious service to poetic art
on freedom of form-hisrejectionof the was his insistence usuallyacceptedEnglishmetrics,and his successinwriting great poems without
their aid.
Not
that he misprized
Chaucer, Shakespeare,Shelley and the rest; but he must find for himself a rhythm as personal as theirs. His
second
servicewas corollaryto the first-the rejectionof cliches, [90]
Walt Whitman includingarchaicdictionand so-called"poetic"phrasing. but enforced was notwholly instinctive, That thisrejection by consciouslabor, is provedby a sentencefromSpecimen Days: Commenced puttingLeaves of Grass to press for good,.
after many
manuscript
doings
and
undoings.
I had
great
trouble
in leaving out the stock"poetical" touches,but succeeded at last.
of the long as he had fortheserejections Such authority accepted,theworn,was derivedratherfromAsiatic than European classics-"theHebrew Bible, themightyHindu works." And this epics,and a hundredlesserbut typical bringsus to his thirdserviceto theart, a servicelarger of the thantheothers,and purelyspiritual-hisreassertion ancient conception of the poet as prophet, and of poetry as
of faith.He says: as an ecstaticexpression religion, with the Old and New Testaments All the poems of Orientalism, development at the centre, tend to deep and wide psychological the principal aesthetic, with little, or nothing at all, of the mere of our day. verse requirement
he ascribes: To biblicalpoetryespecially Faith limitless, its immense sensuousness immenselyspiritual-an incredible,all-inclusive non-worldlinessand dew-scented illiteracy (the
antipodes
of our Nineteenth-Century
business
absorption
and
morbid refinement)-nohair-splittingdoubts,no sicklysulking and sniffling.
And he asks: a student, however Will there ever be a time or place-ever not will those compositions of the grand art, to whom modern, lessons than all else of their kind in the garner afford profounder Could there be any more opportune suggestion age of the past? is yet capable times-and in primeval the office of poet was of what of being, anew, adjusted entirely to the modern?
[91]
zi Magazine
POETRY: Thus
of Verse
his effort as a poet was
to free the art of conven
tions of form and phrase, and to kindle in it the old sacred fire. Poetry was -it
was
to be no longer an ornament of the libraries
to get out-of-doors and sing the large faiths-faith
in life and death, in love and war,
inmountains
and trees
and rivers, in the sun and sky and the good hard flesh of the earth; and
it was
to sing these large faiths in large
rhythms, rhythms that follow the beat of winds and waves rather than man-made metrics. He was but one of many-there
would
be armies of poets
personnel, in any race," he insists, "can never be really superior without superior poems!" And in Blue Ontario's Shore he cries: to follow him!
Of
"The
all races and eras, These most need poets, and are
greatest.
Their
Presidents
poets shall.
Soul Eye
shall
not be
States, with veins full of poetical stuff, to have the greatest, and use them the their common
of love, and tongue of fire! to pierce the deepest deeps, and
sweep
referee
so much
as their
the world!
Indeed, at this point enthusiasm begets his one besetting sin-the
poet is lost in the rhapsodist, and we have turgid
pages describing this bard of the future, "west-bred"
and
"of the common stock." Such turgidity, such excess, should the lesser masters are hardly be mentioned, however-only impeccable artists. Let us pause rather over certain poems in which spirit and art are in complete accord. I find this-on
the whole,
and in spite of lapses which the poemWalt Whit
are carried in triumph, as itwere-in man, which
(if I am not mistaken)
[92]
opened the first edition
Walt of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman
Tohis poem was a declaration of spiritual
it establishedhis and technically and artisticindependence; system, which follows the diversifiedregularity rhythmic of waves
sweeping the shore, or of hills curving along
the
horizon, rather than the exactness of closer intervals. The poem has magnificent passages, from themuch quoted I loaf and invitemy soul;
I lean
and
loaf at my
ease,
observing
a spear
of summer
grass
to that trumpet-note near the end: I too am noet a bit tamed-I I sound my barbaric yawp
This
too am untranslatable; over the roofs of the world.
poem was also the poet's declaration of faith, a faith
fundamental, universal Waiting responses fromoracles, honoring theGods, saluting the sun; Making a fetishof the firstrockor stump,pow-wowingwith sticks in the circle of obis; Helping the lamia or brahmin
as he trims the lamps
of the idols;
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession,rapt andi austere in thewoods. Children of Adam also contains magnificent passages, but as a poem itmoves less surely than the other; as if the poet, in asserting the nobility of sex, were more
conscious of
In most fighting a battle, 4nd therefore less spontaneous. and Song of the Broad-axe, of Calamus, Salut au Monde, the poet is lost in the rhapsodist.
In the Song of the Open
Road we find him again, and follow him through the gates of the 'West; and Out
of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking, with that song of the sea-bird to its lost mate, is a perfect and prodigious masterpiece.
[93]
J Magazine
IPOETRY:
of Verse
In many of theDrum-taps we hear, as in no other mod ern songs of war,
the gathering and m ghty tramp of armies;
also the rush of city crowds at the call, the "spirit of dread ful hours," and the ultimate spirit of reconciliation: Beautiful thatwar, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sistersDeath and Night, incessantlysoftly wash again, and ever again, thissoiledworld. Superb also are certain of theMarches is Over;
Now
that theWar
and most glorious of all, of course, is that grand
est,most serene of elegies, President Lincoln's Burial Hymn, "When
lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed."
In all his
songs of death-"heavenly death," "delicate death"-some of them beautiful beyond praise, is the same high serenity. "I hear America those who Tines
singing," he cried, and it is for us and follow us to fulfil the prophecy. The London
has pointed out how accurately, inYears of theMod
crn, he foresaw the present situation of theworld-the
"tre
mendous exits and entrances," the "new combinations," "the solidarity of races," the "issuing forth against the idea of caste,"
the "marching and countermarching by swift mil
lions."
Perhaps, at thismoment of epic climax in the affairs
of this nation and all nations, we may close with his word of warning: To The States, or any one of them,or any cityof The States, Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioningobedience, once fullyenslaved Once fullyenslaved-no nation, state,city of thisearth ever after ward resumes its liberty. H. M.
[94]