In the following, he as faithfully defends the poet.
First: Of the charged egotism: "It was not to parade himself as an
exceptional being, but rather as an average man to hold the mirror up to
other men and declare his kinship with them."
Second: "Taking Whitman simply at his own valuation we get much. The
joys of free fellowship, the love of comrades, none has sung more
heartily or worthily. And his courage and optimism are as deep as
Emerson's."
Third: "He became the truest laureate of the war, and of Lincoln the
idol of the people."
Fourth: "Comerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man! As
such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song,
but a cry vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it."
Professor Newcomer closes his estimate by the declaration that Whitman
stands for the American people, but not in the sense that Washington or
Lincoln or Lowell does, and that his office was somewhat like one who
stands by and cheers while the procession goes by. He thinks that
Whitman did not sit in the seats of the mighty.
Charles W. Hubner is much more charitable and in fact just, with our
poet of the body. He says: "Proclaiming the sanctity of manhood and
womanhood, the power and eminence of God within us and without us; the
divine relationship of body and soul; the eternalness of spirit and
matter, he aims to teach us that all of these are manifestations of the
Almighty spirit, present within and without all things, and out of whom
all created things have come." How far this critic removes Whitman from
the class of those who stood by and cheered while the procession moved
on! Hubner makes him a _real teacher_ and revealer of divine laws and
eternal truth.
Joel Chandler Harris has also given a vivid picture and a most wholesome
interpretation of Whitman: "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and
his purpose, it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the
mind to grasp in instant and express admiration, the vast group of facts
that make man--that make liberty--that make America. There is no poetry
in the details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive
assimilation of the mighty forces behind them--the inevitable,
unaccountable, irresistible forward movement of man in the making of the
republic." These estimates pro and con could be multiplied indefinitely.
How much more beautiful it is to face this new force in American poetry
and deal with it justly, than to stand off and bark like some of our
lesser critics have done and are doing! A recent comment upon Whitman
says he has come to stay, and we must make up our minds to study him and
to dispose of him by getting in sympathy with him, rather than by
decrying him. This seems the just way, and the only safe way to deal
with any great original force in literature.
John Burroughs has undoubtedly interpreted Whitman better than any other
critic, and unquestionably owes Whitman more than any one else. He has
found in the poet what so many others have found in Burroughs. "Whitman
does not to me suggest the wild and unkempt, as he seems to do to many;
he suggests the cosmic and the elemental.... He cherished the hope that
he had put into his 'Leaves', some of the tonic and fortifying quality
of Nature in her more grand and primitive aspects." From Whitman, I
am constrained to believe, Burroughs has drawn much of his primitive
strength as a writer. Whitman opened the book of Nature to him, and led
him into a certain wilderness of beauty. At twenty, Burroughs began to
read Whitman's poems, and says of them: "I was attracted by the new
poet's work from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air
than I found in the current poetry.... Not a poet of dells and fells,
but of the earth and the orbs." He knew that he had found in Whitman a
very strong and imposing figure, but he was doubly reassured when he
came upon the statement from the English critic, John Addington Symonds,
that Whitman had influenced him more than any other book except the
Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.
[Illustration: THE PILE OF STONES MARKING THE SITE OF THOREAU'S CABIN,
BY WALDEN POND]
It was about the year 1858, when Burroughs first began reading Whitman
and five years after that, in 1863, when Burroughs moved to Washington,
the two men began to cultivate each other and were frequent companions
till Whitman moved to Camden in 1873.
The friendship of the two men became so beautiful and grew so sacred,
till Mr. Burroughs visited him every year in Camden, from 1873 till
1891, when he saw the poet for the last time. Whitman also visited Mr.
Burroughs, who had gone back up the Hudson in 1873, and built his home
at West Park, New York.
The peculiar mountain wilderness around Slabsides induced the Naturalist
to name the woods about his home, Whitman Land, and now you will hear
him speak of the border of "Whitman Land," when he approaches Slabsides.
I have sometimes thought that Whitman's influence on him, more than
Thoreau's, induced him to retreat to the woods and build Slabsides,
where he could "follow out these lessons of the earth and air." So much
of this elemental power or force has he seen in Whitman, that he
honestly, and probably justly, thinks him "the strongest poetic pulse
that has yet beat in America, or perhaps in Modern times." A study of
the poet is to him an application of the laws of Nature to higher
matters, and he pleads guilty to a "loving interest in Whitman and his
work, which may indeed amount to one-sided enthusiasm." But this is
honest, real, and not affected.
After a long study of the art of poetry and the artists, together with a
thorough appreciation of form and beauty in all art, Burroughs declares
there is once in a great while "born to a race or people, men who are
like an eruption of life from another world, who belong to another
order, who bring other standards, and sow the seeds of new and larger
types; who are not the organs of the culture or modes of their time and
whom their times for the most part decry and disown--the primal,
original, elemental men. It is here in my opinion that we must place
Whitman; not among the minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its
prophets and saviors. He is nearer the sources of things than the
popular poets--nearer the founder and discoverer, closer akin to the
large, fervent, prophetic, patriarchal men, who figure in the early
heroic ages. His work ranks with the great primitive books. He is of the
type of the skald, the bard, the seer, the prophet." In another place,
Burroughs thinks that one can better read Whitman after reading the
Greeks, than after reading our finer artists, and I have found this
true.
We cannot wonder that he finds Whitman "the one mountain in our literary
landscape," though, as he appropriately says there are many beautiful
hills. Tall and large, he grew more beautiful in his declining years,
and "the full beauty of his face and head did not appear till he was
past sixty." However he was dressed, and wherever he was, one could not
fail to be impressed "with the clean, fresh quality of the man." To me,
his poems have this same clean, fresh quality, and I never read one of
them that I don't feel far more satisfied with my lot.
Whitman says: "I do not call one greater and one smaller. That which
fills its place is equal to any." To him, as to any prophet of the soul,
greatness is filling one's place, and the poor get as much consolation
out of this almost, as they do from Christ's beatitude: "Blessed are
the poor for they shall inherit the earth." To make a world, it takes
many kinds of individuals, and Whitman did not rank them severally
according to money, culture and social position. If a man filled his
place, he was equal to any one else, for that is the whole duty of man.
He did not grovel in the earthly and disgusting, as one of our
"artistic" critics has said above. He alluded to many things that the
over-nice could call disgusting, but he saw and painted only the
beautiful in it all. For an instance that happens to come to my mind, he
alludes to the battle of Alamo, but overlooks the military display, the
common part of the slaughter. This may be found in any battle, and why
Alamo and Goliad, if only to picture an army! Certainly there were more
imposing dress parades than that. But after Fannin had surrendered and
had accepted honorable terms that were offered by the Mexican General
Urrea, Santa Anna orders the entire body of United States Soldiers
executed, and on that bright and beautiful sunshiny Palm Sunday, they
were marched out upon the neighboring prairie and shot down in cold
blood, and their bodies committed to the flames! Such a horrible picture
has not been recorded elsewhere in the history of this republic. What
then does Whitman say?
"Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve
young men.
Retreating, they formed in a hollow square, with their baggage for
breastworks;
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their
number was the price they took in advance;
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone;
They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and
seal, gave up their arms, and marched back prisoners of war.
They were the glory of the race of rangers;
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,
Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and
massacred--it was beautiful early summer;
The work commenced about five o'clock, and was over by eight.
None obeyed the command to kneel;
Some made a mad and helpless rush--some stood stark and straight;
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart--the living and dead
lay together;
The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt--the newcomers saw them there;
Some, half-killed, attempted to crawl away;
These were despatched with bayonets, or battered with the blunts of
muskets;
A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more
came to release him;
The three were all torn, and covered with the boy's blood.
At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies:
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young
men."
After reading this picture of the horrible battle or slaughter at
Goliad, who wonders that the battle cry at San Jacinto was, "Remember
the Alamo!" or "Remember Goliad!" And still less do we wonder that the
Mexicans, while scattered after the battle could be heard on all sides,
"Me no Alamo!" "Me no Goliad!" Our poet has given the best picture we
shall ever get of the Alamo and Goliad. The burden of his big, warm
heart was to portray in vivid colors, the tragedy of the four hundred
and twelve young men, and how manly they suffered.
John Burroughs has observed from the notes of Mr. Charles W. Eldridge,
that Emerson was not only an admirer of Whitman, but that every year
from 1855 to 1860, he sought Whitman in his Brooklyn home. The two men
were together much, but Walt never sought Emerson. When he was invited
by Emerson to Concord, he refused to go, perhaps because he feared that
he would see too much of that "literary coterie that then clustered
there, chiefly around Emerson."
Burroughs is also responsible for the suggestion that Whitman burst into
full glory at one bound, and his work from the first line is Mature. At
the age of thirty-five, a great change came over the man and his habits
were different thereafter. His first poem, "Starting from Paumanook,"
outlines his work, observes Burroughs, and he fulfills every promise
made.
"I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great Masters,
Now, if eligible, O that the great Masters might return and study me!
The Soul:
Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
water ebbs and flows.
I will mate the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the
most spiritual poems--
And I will mate the poems of my body and mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my Soul,
and of immortality."
And so he did. As perfect as the last or any part of his work is the
first. But the poet is true to himself and to the great undertaking.
In what particular qualities does Whitman differ from the other poets?
Especially the poets who conform to the traditions of the past.
"When Tennyson sends out a poem," observes Burroughs, "it is perfect,
like an apple or a peach; slowly wrought out and dismissed, it drops
from his boughs, holding a conception or an idea that spheres it and
makes it whole. It is completed, distinct and separate--might be his, or
might be any man's. It carries his quality, but it is a thing of itself,
and centers and depends upon itself. Whether or not the world will
hereafter consent, as in the past, to call only beautiful creations of
this sort, _poems_, remains to be seen. But this is certainly not what
Walt Whitman does, or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes no
poems apart from himself. His lines or pulsations, thrills, waves of
force, indefinite dynamic, formless, constantly emanating from the
living centre, and they carry the quality of the Author's personal
presence with them in a way that is unprecedented in literature."
The more I read Whitman the more I am drawn to him, and feel the
greatness of the man. His poems have meant to me recently, what
Emerson's Essays meant to me as a younger man. In about the same way
they affect me now, only my love for the poems grows with each reading.
It is well to recall that so much was John Burroughs inspired by his
early contact with Whitman that his first book was, _Notes on Walt
Whitman, as Poet and Person_, which was printed in 1867. A little later,
in 1877, he renewed his study of the poet, in his last essay in _Birds
and Poets_. The title of the essay is "The Flight of the Eagle," and is
one of Burroughs' best papers. Still later, in about 1895, he wrote his
final word on Whitman, in his volume, _Whitman: A Study_. This last
volume is a complete interpretation of the poet. The poems of the man
are given full treatment, and it is perhaps the best defense of Whitman
in print.
The publishers of these books have long expected to get John Burroughs
to write a biography of Whitman, but his many other literary activities,
have combined to banish their hopes, and in his stead, Mr. Bliss Perry,
in 1905, was asked to write the biography, which was published in 1906.
In recent years, Whitman has been gaining pretty general acceptance, and
most of the papers in current literature expose his merits. His enemies
are growing fewer and fewer, and those who still survive are not so
bold. They are on the defensive instead of the offensive. He is such a
potent factor in the present day literature of America, that our only
conclusion is that he is with us to stay, and the sooner we learn to
'Walk the open road' with him, the better will we be prepared for the
future critic of American literature.
Bliss Perry thinks that on account "of the amplitude of his
imagination," and "the majesty with which he confronts the eternal
realities," instead of the absolute perfection of his poems, he is bound
to a place somewhere among the immortals.
Mr. Perry has made a critical study of Whitman, and his judgment and
conclusions are charitable and will stand. No critic can ever give an
adequate conception of Whitman's poems. As he, himself said, "They will
elude you." In order to understand in any degree his eccentricities and
his poetic freedom, one must go to the poems and read them as a whole.
One will either turn away from them for a breath of air, or he will be
forever won by them.
I happened to be among the latter class, and I must agree with his most
enthusiastic critics, that he is a real poet, and one of the few that
make you think and feel. Most of our other American poets have said some
pretty things in verse but are not elemental. They lack the "high
seriousness," the all-essential quality of a real poet. This quality we
cannot fail to recognize in Whitman, from the beginning to the end, if
we tolerate him.
Mr. Stedman's paper on Whitman, though less readable than Burroughs',
and far more labored than Mr. Perry's, contains many excellent
estimates of Whitman's democracy, and a lover of Whitman cannot afford
to be ignorant of his fine judgments. He thinks that Whitman is well
equipped as a poet--having had such genuine intercourse "With Nature in
her broadest and minutest forms."