"This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also, He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were ma.s.sive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome, They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him, They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love; He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face, He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him; When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other."
All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal; nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched. His working ideas are democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, s.e.xuality, comradeship, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the s.e.xes, etc. Out of them his work radiates. They are the eyes with which it sees, the ears with which it hears, the feet upon which it goes. The poems are less like a statement, an argument, an elucidation, and more like a look, a gesture, a tone of voice.
"The word I myself put primarily for the description of them as they stand at last," says the author, "is the word Suggestiveness."
"Leaves of Gra.s.s" requires a large perspective; you must not get your face too near the book. You must bring to it a magnanimity of spirit,--a charity and faith equal to its own. Looked at too closely, it often seems incoherent and meaningless; draw off a little and let the figure come out.
The book is from first to last a most determined attempt, on the part of a large, reflective, loving, magnetic, rather primitive, thoroughly imaginative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiasm as to lift and fill it with the deepest meanings of the spirit and disclose the order of universal nature. The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or criticism, or partiality whatever, but has squarely and lovingly faced the oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and fused them in his fervid humanity, and imbued them with deepest poetic meanings. One of the most striking features of the book is the adequacy and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era. He spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no part; and his quality, his individuality, shines through it all, as the sun through vapors. The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of Walt Whitman. It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man exploited and ill.u.s.trated. Walt Whitman does not write poems, strictly speaking,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel and carve it into a beautiful image or object, or polish and elaborate a thought, embodying it in pleasing tropes and pictures. His purpose is rather to show a towering, loving, composite personality moving amid all sorts of materials, taking them up but for a moment, disclosing new meanings and suggestions in them, pa.s.sing on, bestowing himself upon whoever or whatever will accept him, tossing hints and clues right and left, provoking and stimulating the thought and imagination of his reader, but finishing nothing for him, leaving much to be desired, much to be completed by him in his turn.
IV
The reader who would get at the spirit and meaning of "Leaves of Gra.s.s"
must remember that its animating principle, from first to last, is Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools, occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places in it. It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the life of the poet fell, and to show one master personality accepting, absorbing all and rising superior to it,--namely, the poet himself. Yet it is never Whitman that speaks so much as it is Democracy that speaks through him. He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in this character launches forth his "omnivorous words." What would seem colossal egotism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with low, rude persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to ill.u.s.trate the boundless compa.s.sion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain and easy in the works of this much misunderstood poet.
Perhaps the single poem that throws most light upon his aims and methods, and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in "Calamus," and is as follows:--
"Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you suppos"d, but far different.
"Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
"The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard, Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon"d, Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders, Put me down and depart on your way.
"Or else by stealth in some wood for trial, Or back of a rock in the open air, (For in any roof"d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company, And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,) But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares, Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island, Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you, With the comrade"s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband"s kiss, For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
"Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip, Carry me when you go forth over land or sea; For thus merely touching you is enough, is best, And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
"But these leaves conning you con at peril, For these leaves and me you will not understand, They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you, Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
"For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me, Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious, Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more, For all is useless without that for which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at, Therefore release me and depart on your way."
When one has fully mastered this poem he has got a pretty good hold upon Whitman"s spirit and method. His open-air standards, the baffling and elusive character of his work, the extraordinary demand it makes, its radical and far-reaching effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil as a necessary part of the good (there was a human need of sin, said Margaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and suggestive method, that it can be fully read only through our acquaintance with life and real things at first hand, etc.,--all this and more is in the poem.
HIS SELF-RELIANCE
I
It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a German author was to be a German martyr. I presume things have changed in Germany since those times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moliere, or Byron, was Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times; but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise. It was of a kind that tries a man"s mettle, and brings out his heroic traits if he has any.
One almost envies him his unpopularity. It was of the kind that only the greatest ones have experienced, and that attests something extraordinary in the recipient of it. He said he was more resolute because all had denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
"I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor ridicule."
There are no more precious and tonic pages in history than the records of men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature.
Whitman"s is the most striking case in our literary annals,--probably the most striking one in our century outside of politics and religion. The inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: "My commission obeying, to question it never daring."
The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and cannot be avoided.
"Have you learn"d lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you? and stood aside for you?
Have you not learn"d great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the pa.s.sage with you?"
Every man is a partaker in the triumph of him who is always true to himself and makes no compromises with customs, schools, or opinions.
Whitman"s life, underneath its easy tolerance and cheerful good-will, was heroic. He fought his battle against great odds and he conquered; he had his own way, he yielded not a hair to the enemy.
The pressure brought to bear upon him by the press, by many of his friends, and by such a man as Emerson, whom he deeply reverenced, to change or omit certain pa.s.sages from his poems, seems only to have served as the opposing hammer that clinched the nail. The louder the outcry the more deeply he felt it his duty to stand by his first convictions. The fierce and scornful opposition to his s.e.x poems, and to his methods and aims generally, was probably more confirmatory than any approval could have been. It went to the quick. During a dark period of his life, when no publisher would touch his book and when its exclusion from the mails was threatened, and poverty and paralysis were upon him, a wealthy Philadelphian offered to furnish means for its publication if he would omit certain poems; but the poet does not seem to have been tempted for one moment by the offer. He cheerfully chose the heroic part, as he always did.
Emerson reasoned and remonstrated with him for hours, walking up and down Boston Common, and after he had finished his argument, says Whitman, which was unanswerable, "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so, whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true of all men,--that is genius."
In many ways was Whitman, quite unconsciously to himself, the man Emerson invoked and prayed for,--the absolutely self-reliant man; the man who should find his own day and land sufficient; who had no desire to be Greek, or Italian, or French, or English, but only himself; who should not whine, or apologize, or go abroad; who should not duck, or deprecate, or borrow; and who could see through the many disguises and debas.e.m.e.nts of our times the lineaments of the same G.o.ds that so ravished the bards of old.
The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him."
Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good,"--popularity, for instance.
"The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have chosen your part abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world." "Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age." Heroism "is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists." "A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were t.i.tular and ephemeral but he." "Great works of art," he again says, "teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-natured inflexibility, the more when the whole cry of voices is on the other side."
These brave sayings of Emerson were all ill.u.s.trated and confirmed by Whitman"s course. The spectacle of this man sitting there by the window of his little house in Camden, poor and partially paralyzed, and looking out upon the trite and commonplace scenes and people, or looking athwart the years and seeing only detraction and denial, yet always serene, cheerful, charitable, his wisdom and tolerance ripening and mellowing with time, is something to treasure and profit by. He was a man who needed no a.s.surances. He had the patience and the leisure of nature. He welcomed your friendly and sympathetic word, or with equal composure he did without it.
I remember calling upon him shortly after Swinburne"s fierce onslaught upon him had been published, some time in the latter part of the eighties.
I was curious to see how Whitman took it, but I could not discover either in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne"s account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat upon himself as Swinburne had done. In fact I think hostile criticism, fiercely hostile, gave Whitman nearly as much comfort as any other. Did it not attest reality? Men do not brace themselves against shadows.
Swinburne"s polysyllabic rage showed the force of the current he was trying to stem. As for Swinburne"s hydrocephalic muse, I do not think Whitman took any interest in it from the first.
Self-reliance, or self-trust, is one of the principles Whitman announces in his "Laws for Creations." He saw that no first-cla.s.s work is possible except it issue from a man"s deepest, most radical self.
"What do you suppose creation is?
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no superior?
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as G.o.d?
And that there is no G.o.d any more divine than yourself?
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?"
I think it probable that Whitman antic.i.p.ated a long period of comparative oblivion for himself and his works. He knew from the first that the public would not be with him; he knew that the censors of taste, the critics and literary professors, would not be with him; he knew that the vast army of Philistia, the respectable, fashionable mammon-worshiping crowd, would not be with him,--that the timid, the pampered, the prurient, the conforming, the bourgeoisie spirit, the cla.s.s spirit, the academic spirit, the Pharisaic spirit in all its forms, would all work against him; and that, as in the case of nearly all original, first-cla.s.s men, he would have to wait to be understood for the growth of the taste of himself. None knew more clearly than he did how completely our people were under the illusion of the genteel and the conventional, and that, even among the emanc.i.p.ated few, the possession of anything like robust aesthetic perception was rare enough. America, so bold and original and independent in the world of practical politics and material endeavor, is, in spiritual and imaginative regions, timid, conforming, imitative. There is, perhaps, no civilized country in the world wherein the native, original man, the real critter, as Whitman loved to say, that underlies all our culture and conventions, crops out so little in manners, in literature, and in social usages. The fear of being unconventional is greater with us than the fear of death. A certain evasiveness, polish, distrust of ourselves, amounting to insipidity and insincerity, is spoken of by observant foreigners. In other words, we are perhaps the least like children of any people in the world. All these things were against Whitman, and will continue to be against him for a long time. With the first stroke he broke through the conventional and took his stand upon the natural. With rude hands he tore away the veils and concealments from the body and from the soul. He ignored entirely all social and conventional usages and hypocrisies, not by revolt against them, but by choosing a point of view from which they disappeared. He embraced the unrefined and the savage as well as the tender and human. The illusions of the past, the models and standards, he freed himself of at once, and declared for the beauty and the divinity of the now and the here. The rude realism of his "Leaves" shocked like a plunge in the surf, but it invigorated also, if we were strong enough to stand it.
Out of Whitman"s absolute self-trust arose his prophetic egotism,--the divine fervor and audacity of the simple ego. He shared the conviction of the old prophets that man is a part of G.o.d, and that there is nothing in the universe any more divine than the individual soul. "I, too," he says, and this line is the key to much there is in his work--
"I, too, have felt the resistless call of myself."
With the old Biblical writers the motions of their own spirits, their thoughts, their dreams, were the voice of G.o.d. There is something of the same sort in Whitman. The voice of that inner self was final and authoritative with him. It was the voice of G.o.d. He could drive through and over all the conventions of the world in obedience to that voice. This call to him was as a voice from Sinai. One of his mastering thoughts was the thought of ident.i.ty,--that you are you, and I am I. This was the final meaning of things, and the meaning of immortality. "Yourself, _yourself_, YOURSELF," he says, with swelling vehemence, "forever and ever." To be compacted and riveted and fortified in yourself, so as to be a law unto yourself, is the final word of the past and of the present.
II