No More Learning

Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I
sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse: I say
the form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male I sing.
Nor cease at the theme of One's-self. I speak the word of the modern, the
word EN MASSE. My days I sing, and the lands--with interstice I knew of
hapless war. O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to
commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I
return. And thus upon our journey linked together let us go.

The book, then, taken as a whole, is the poem both of Personality and of
Democracy; and, it may be added, of American nationalism. It is _par
excellence_ the modern poem. It is distinguished also by this peculiarity--
that in it the most literal view of things is continually merging into the
most rhapsodic or passionately abstract. Picturesqueness it has, but mostly
of a somewhat patriarchal kind, not deriving from the "word-painting" of
the _litterateur_; a certain echo of the old Hebrew poetry may even be
caught in it, extra-modern though it is. Another most prominent and
pervading quality of the book is the exuberant physique of the author. The
conceptions are throughout those of a man in robust health, and might alter
much under different conditions.

Further, there is a strong tone of paradox in Whitman's writings.
He is
both a realist and an optimist in extreme measure: he contemplates evil as
in some sense not existing, or, if existing, then as being of as much
importance as anything else. Not that he is a materialist; on the contrary,
he is a most strenuous assertor of the soul, and, with the soul, of the
body as its infallible associate and vehicle in the present frame of
things. Neither does he drift into fatalism or indifferentism; the energy
of his temperament, and ever-fresh sympathy with national and other
developments, being an effectual bar to this. The paradoxical element of
the poems is such that one may sometimes find them in conflict with what
has preceded, and would not be much surprised if they said at any moment
the reverse of whatever they do say. This is mainly due to the multiplicity
of the aspects of things, and to the immense width of relation in which
Whitman stands to all sorts and all aspects of them.

But the greatest of this poet's distinctions is his absolute and entire
originality. He may be termed formless by those who, not without much
reason to show for themselves, are wedded to the established forms and
ratified refinements of poetic art; but it seems reasonable to enlarge the
canon till it includes so great and startling a genius, rather than to draw
it close and exclude him. His work is practically certain to stand as
archetypal for many future poetic efforts--so great is his power as an
originator, so fervid his initiative. It forms incomparably the _largest_
performance of our period in poetry. Victor Hugo's _Legende des Siecles_
alone might be named with it for largeness, and even that with much less of
a new starting-point in conception and treatment. Whitman breaks with all
precedent. To what he himself perceives and knows he has a personal
relation of the intensest kind: to anything in the way of prescription, no
relation at all. But he is saved from isolation by the depth of his
Americanism; with the movement of his predominant nation he is moved. His
comprehension, energy, and tenderness are all extreme, and all inspired by
actualities. And, as for poetic genius, those who, without being ready to
concede that faculty to Whitman, confess his iconoclastic boldness and his
Titanic power of temperament, working in the sphere of poetry, do in effect
confess his genius as well.

Such, still further condensed, was the critical summary which I gave of
Whitman's position among poets.