No More Learning

1886.
W. M. R.




PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS.


America does not repel the past, or what it has produced under its forms,
or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old religions;
accepts the lesson with calmness; is not so impatient as has been supposed
that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while
the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms; perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house; perceives that it waits a little while in the
door, that it was fittest for its days, that its action has descended to
the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be
fittest for his days.

The Americans, of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the
fullest poetical Nature. The United States themselves are essentially the
greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most
stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here
at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the
broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation, but a
teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily
blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in vast masses.

Here is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here are the
roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul
loves. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproached in the
tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its
perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its
prolific and splendid extravagance.
One sees it must indeed own the riches
of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from
the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men
beget children.

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies: but the genius of the
United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in
its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlours, nor even
in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Their
manners, speech, dress, friendships,--the freshness and candour of their
physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage--their deathless
attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or
mean--the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the
citizens of all other states--the fierceness of their roused resentment--
their curiosity and welcome of novelty--their self-esteem and wonderful
sympathy--their susceptibility to a slight--the air they have of persons
who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors--the
fluency of their speech--their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly
tenderness and native elegance of soul--their good temper and open-
handedness--the terrible significance of their elections, the President's
taking off his hat to them, not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry.
It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.

The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a
corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not
nature, nor swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous
business, nor farms nor capital nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of
man, nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live
nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the
cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses
of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the
subjects of poets. --As if it were necessary to trot back generation after
generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the
demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make
their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by
discovery, and what has transpired since in North and South America, were
less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of
the Middle Ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and
finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all
the magnitude or geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the breed
of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple.

The American poets are to enclose old and new; for America is the race of
races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people.