Not
physiognomy
alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse: I say
the form complete is worthier far.
the form complete is worthier far.
Whitman
D.
O'Connor, who
wrote a pamphlet named _The Good Grey Poet_; and Mr. John Burroughs, author
of _Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, published quite recently in New York.
His thorough-paced admirers declare Whitman to be beyond rivalry _the_ poet
of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first,
may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his
competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant,
incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and form of his
works.
Certain faults are charged against him, and, as far as they are true, shall
frankly stand confessed--some of them as very serious faults. Firstly, he
speaks on occasion of gross things in gross, crude, and plain terms.
Secondly, he uses some words absurd or ill-constructed, others which
produce a jarring effect in poetry, or indeed in any lofty literature.
Thirdly, he sins from time to time by being obscure, fragmentary, and
agglomerative--giving long strings of successive and detached items, not,
however, devoid of a certain primitive effectiveness. Fourthly, his self-
assertion is boundless; yet not always to be understood as strictly or
merely personal to himself, but sometimes as vicarious, the poet speaking
on behalf of all men, and every man and woman. These and any other faults
appear most harshly on a cursory reading; Whitman is a poet who bears and
needs to be read as a whole, and then the volume and torrent of his power
carry the disfigurements along with it, and away.
The subject-matter of Whitman's poems, taken individually, is absolutely
miscellaneous: he touches upon any and every subject. But he has prefixed
to his last edition an "Inscription" in the following terms, showing that
the key-words of the whole book are two--"One's-self" and "En Masse:"--
Small is the theme of the following chant, yet the greatest. --namely,
ONE'S-SELF; that wondrous thing, a simple separate person. That, for the
use of the New World, I sing. 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.
wrote a pamphlet named _The Good Grey Poet_; and Mr. John Burroughs, author
of _Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, published quite recently in New York.
His thorough-paced admirers declare Whitman to be beyond rivalry _the_ poet
of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first,
may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his
competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant,
incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and form of his
works.
Certain faults are charged against him, and, as far as they are true, shall
frankly stand confessed--some of them as very serious faults. Firstly, he
speaks on occasion of gross things in gross, crude, and plain terms.
Secondly, he uses some words absurd or ill-constructed, others which
produce a jarring effect in poetry, or indeed in any lofty literature.
Thirdly, he sins from time to time by being obscure, fragmentary, and
agglomerative--giving long strings of successive and detached items, not,
however, devoid of a certain primitive effectiveness. Fourthly, his self-
assertion is boundless; yet not always to be understood as strictly or
merely personal to himself, but sometimes as vicarious, the poet speaking
on behalf of all men, and every man and woman. These and any other faults
appear most harshly on a cursory reading; Whitman is a poet who bears and
needs to be read as a whole, and then the volume and torrent of his power
carry the disfigurements along with it, and away.
The subject-matter of Whitman's poems, taken individually, is absolutely
miscellaneous: he touches upon any and every subject. But he has prefixed
to his last edition an "Inscription" in the following terms, showing that
the key-words of the whole book are two--"One's-self" and "En Masse:"--
Small is the theme of the following chant, yet the greatest. --namely,
ONE'S-SELF; that wondrous thing, a simple separate person. That, for the
use of the New World, I sing. 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.
