]
Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of
genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue?
Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of
genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue?
Whitman
I have therefore
supplied titles of my own to such pieces as bear none in the original
edition: wherever a real title appears in that edition, I have retained it.
With these remarks I commend to the English reader the ensuing selection
from a writer whom I sincerely believe to be, whatever his faults, of the
order of _great_ poets, and by no means of pretty good ones. I would urge
the reader not to ask himself, and not to return any answer to the
questions, whether or not this poet is like other poets--whether or not the
particular application of rules of art which is found to hold good in the
works of those others, and to constitute a part of their excellence, can be
traced also in Whitman. Let the questions rather be--Is he powerful? Is he
American? Is he new? Is he rousing? Does he feel and make me feel? I
entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be
returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and
elsewhere--or to the further question, "Is Whitman then indeed a true and a
great poet? " Lincoln's verdict bespeaks the ultimate decision upon him, in
his books as in his habit as he lives--"Well, _he_ looks like a man. "
Walt Whitman occupies at the present moment a unique position on the globe,
and one which, even in past time, can have been occupied by only an
infinitesimally small number of men. He is the one man who entertains and
professes respecting himself the grave conviction that he is the actual and
prospective founder of a new poetic literature, and a great one--a
literature proportional to the material vastness and the unmeasured
destinies of America: he believes that the Columbus of the continent or the
Washington of the States was not more truly than himself in the future a
founder and upbuilder of this America. Surely a sublime conviction, and
expressed more than once in magnificent words--none more so than the lines
beginning
"Come, I will make this continent indissoluble. "[7]
[Footnote 7: See the poem headed _Love of Comrades_, p. 308.
]
Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of
genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue? Is it
not, on the contrary, true, if not absolutely, yet with a most genuine and
substantial approximation? I believe it _is_ thus true. I believe that
Whitman is one of the huge, as yet mainly unrecognised, forces of our time;
privileged to evoke, in a country hitherto still asking for its poet, a
fresh, athletic, and American poetry, and predestined to be traced up to by
generation after generation of believing and ardent--let us hope not
servile--disciples.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. " Shelley, who knew
what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and
with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out
for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be
potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken--that is
to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American
hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more
their announcer than their inspirer.
1868.
W. M. ROSSETTI.
_N. B. _--The above prefatory notice was written in 1868, and is reproduced
practically unaltered. Were it to be brought up to the present date, 1886,
I should have to mention Whitman's books _Two Rivulets_ and _Specimen-days
and Collect_, and the fact that for several years past he has been
partially disabled by a paralytic attack. He now lives at Camden, New
Jersey.
supplied titles of my own to such pieces as bear none in the original
edition: wherever a real title appears in that edition, I have retained it.
With these remarks I commend to the English reader the ensuing selection
from a writer whom I sincerely believe to be, whatever his faults, of the
order of _great_ poets, and by no means of pretty good ones. I would urge
the reader not to ask himself, and not to return any answer to the
questions, whether or not this poet is like other poets--whether or not the
particular application of rules of art which is found to hold good in the
works of those others, and to constitute a part of their excellence, can be
traced also in Whitman. Let the questions rather be--Is he powerful? Is he
American? Is he new? Is he rousing? Does he feel and make me feel? I
entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be
returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and
elsewhere--or to the further question, "Is Whitman then indeed a true and a
great poet? " Lincoln's verdict bespeaks the ultimate decision upon him, in
his books as in his habit as he lives--"Well, _he_ looks like a man. "
Walt Whitman occupies at the present moment a unique position on the globe,
and one which, even in past time, can have been occupied by only an
infinitesimally small number of men. He is the one man who entertains and
professes respecting himself the grave conviction that he is the actual and
prospective founder of a new poetic literature, and a great one--a
literature proportional to the material vastness and the unmeasured
destinies of America: he believes that the Columbus of the continent or the
Washington of the States was not more truly than himself in the future a
founder and upbuilder of this America. Surely a sublime conviction, and
expressed more than once in magnificent words--none more so than the lines
beginning
"Come, I will make this continent indissoluble. "[7]
[Footnote 7: See the poem headed _Love of Comrades_, p. 308.
]
Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of
genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue? Is it
not, on the contrary, true, if not absolutely, yet with a most genuine and
substantial approximation? I believe it _is_ thus true. I believe that
Whitman is one of the huge, as yet mainly unrecognised, forces of our time;
privileged to evoke, in a country hitherto still asking for its poet, a
fresh, athletic, and American poetry, and predestined to be traced up to by
generation after generation of believing and ardent--let us hope not
servile--disciples.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. " Shelley, who knew
what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and
with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out
for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be
potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken--that is
to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American
hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more
their announcer than their inspirer.
1868.
W. M. ROSSETTI.
_N. B. _--The above prefatory notice was written in 1868, and is reproduced
practically unaltered. Were it to be brought up to the present date, 1886,
I should have to mention Whitman's books _Two Rivulets_ and _Specimen-days
and Collect_, and the fact that for several years past he has been
partially disabled by a paralytic attack. He now lives at Camden, New
Jersey.
