Indeed, it is when we examine Whitman's attitude towards Humanity that we
realize best his strength and courage. For it is here that his qualities
find their fittest artistic expression. Nothing in Whitman's view is
common or unclean. All things in the Universe, rightly considered, are
sweet and good. Carrying this view into social politics, Whitman
declares for absolute social equality. And this is done in no
doctrinaire spirit, but because of Whitman's absolute faith and trust in
man and woman--not the man and woman overridden by the artifices of
convention, but the "powerful uneducated person." Whitman finds his
ideal not in Society (with a capital S), but in artisans and mechanics.
He took to his heart the mean, the vulgar, the coarse, not idealizing
their weaknesses, but imbuing them with his own strength and vigour.
"I am enamoured of growth out of doors,
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builder and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes, and
The drivers of horses.
I can eat and sleep with them week in week out."
Such are his comrades. And well he knows them. For many years of his
life he was roving through country and city, coming into daily contact
with the men and women about whom he has sung. Walt Whitman--farm boy,
school teacher, printer, editor, traveller, mechanic, nurse in the army
hospital, Government clerk. Truly our poet has graduated as few have
done in the school of Life. No writer of our age has better claims to be
considered the Poet of Democracy.
But he was no sentimentalist. More tolerant and passive in disposition
than Victor Hugo, he had the same far-seeing vision when dealing with the
people. He recognized their capacity for good, their unconquerable
faith, their aspirations, their fine instincts; but he recognized also
their brutality and fierceness. He would have agreed with Spencer's
significant words: "There is no alchemy by which you can get golden
conduct out of leaden instincts"; but he would have denied Spencer's
implication that leaden instincts ruled the Democracy. And he was right.
There is more real knowledge of men and women in _Leaves of Grass_ and
_Les Miserables_ than in all the volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy.
Thus Whitman announces his theme:--
"Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action formed under the laws divine.
The modern man I sing."
"Whitman," wrote the late Mr. William Clarke, in his stimulating study of
the Poet, {188} "sings of the Modern Man as workman, friend, citizen,
brother, comrade, as pioneer of a new social order, as both material and
spiritual, final and most subtle, compound of spirit and nature, firmly
planted on this rolling earth, and yet 'moving about in worlds not
realized.' As representative democratic bard Whitman exhibits complete
freedom from unconventionality, a very deep human love for all, faith in
the rationality of the world, courage, energy, and the instincts of
solidarity."
In the introductory essay to this volume some remarks were made about the
affections of the literary Vagabond in general and of Whitman in
particular, which call now for an ampler treatment, especially as on this
point I find myself, apparently, at issue with so many able and
discerning critics of Whitman. I say apparently because a consideration
of the subject may show that the difference, though real, is not so
fundamental as it appears to be.
That Whitman entertained a genuine affection for men and women is, of
course, too obvious to be gainsaid. His noble work in the hospitals, his
tenderness towards criminals and outcasts--made known to us through the
testimony of friends--show him to be a man of comprehensive sympathies.
No man of a chill and calculating nature could have written as he did,
and, although his writings are not free of affectation, the strenuous,
fundamental sincerity of the man impresses every line.
But was it, to quote William Clarke, "a _very deep_ human love"? This
seems to me a point of psychological interest. A man may exhibit
kindliness and tenderness towards his fellow-creatures without showing
any deep personal attachment. In fact, the wider a man's sympathies are
the less room is there for any strong individual feeling. His friend,
Mr. Donaldson, has told us that he never remembers Whitman shedding a
tear of grief over the death of any friend. Tears of joy he shed often;
but no tear of sorrow, of personal regret. It is true that Mr. Donaldson
draws no particular inference from this fact. It seems to me highly
significant. The absence of intense emotion is no argument truly for
insensibility; but to a man of large, sweeping sympathies such as Whitman
the loss of a particular friend did not strike home as it would do in men
of subtler temperaments.
Cosmic emotions leave no room for those special manifestations of
concentrated feeling in individual instances which men with a narrower
range of sympathies frequently show.
For in denying that Whitman was a man capable of "a very deep human
love," no moral censure is implied. If not deep, it was certainly
comprehensive; and rarely, if ever, do the two qualities coexist. Depth
of feeling is not to be found in men of the tolerant, passive type; it is
the intolerant, comparatively narrow-minded man who loves deeply; the man
of few friends, not the man who takes the whole human race to his heart
in one colossal embrace. Narrowness may exist, of course, without
intensity. But intensity of temperament always carries with it a certain
forceful narrowness. Such a man, strongly idiosyncratic, with his
sympathies running in a special groove, is capable of one or two
affections that absorb his entire nature. Those whom he cares for are so
subtly bound up with the peculiarities of his temperament that they
become a part of his very life. And if they go, so interwoven are their
personalities with the fibres of his being, that part of his life goes
with them. To such the death of an intimate friend is a blow that
shatters them beyond recovery. Courage and endurance, indeed, they may
show, and the undiscerning may never note how fell the blow has been.
But though the healing finger of Time will assuage the wound, the scars
they will carry to their dying day.
As a rule, such men, lovable as they may be to the few, are not of the
stuff of which social reformers are made. They feel too keenly, too
sensitively, are guided too much by individual temperamental preferences.
It is of no use for any man who has to deal with coarse-grained humanity,
with all sorts and conditions of men, to be fastidious in his tastes. A
certain bluntness, a certain rude hardiness, a certain evenness of
disposition is absolutely necessary. We are told of Whitman by one of
his most ardent admirers that his life was "a pleased, uninterested
saunter through the world--no hurry, no fever, no strife, hence no
bitterness, no depression, no wasted energies . . . in all his tastes and
attractions always aiming to live thoroughly in the free nonchalant
spirit of the day."
Yes; this is the type of man wanted as a social pioneer, as a poet of the
people. A man who felt more acutely, for whom the world was far too
terrible a place for sauntering, would be quite unfitted for Whitman's
task. It was essential that he should have lacked deep individual
affection. Something had to be sacrificed for the work he had before
him, and we need not lament that he had no predilection for those
intimate personal ties that mean so much to some.
A man who has to speak a word of cheer to so many can ill afford to
linger with the few. He is not even concerned to convert you to his way
of thinking. He throws out a hint, a suggestion, the rest you must do
for yourself.
"I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual
look upon you, and then averts his face. Leaving you to prove and define
it. Expecting the main things from you."
Nowhere are Whitman's qualities more admirably shown than in his attitude
towards the average human being. As a rule the ordinary man is not a
person whom the Poet delights to honour. He is concerned with the
exceptional, the extraordinary type. Whitman's attitude then is of
special interest.
"I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you;
None has understood you, but I understand you;
None has done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself.
None but has found you imperfect; I only find no imperfection in you.
None but would subordinate you; I only am he who will never consent
to subordinate you."
* * * * *
"Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure
of all;
From the head of the centre figure, spreading a nimbus of
gold-coloured light.
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of
gold-coloured light.
From My hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams
effulgently flowing for ever.
O! I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are; you have slumbered upon yourself all
your time. . . ."
And so on, in a vein of courageous cheer, spoken with the big, obtrusive,
genial egotism that always meets us in Whitman's writings. Whitman's
egotism proves very exasperating to some readers, but I do not think it
should trouble us much. After all it is the egotism of a simple,
natural, sincere nature; there is no self-satisfied smirk about it, no
arrogance. He is conscious of his powers, and is quite frank in letting
you know this. Perhaps his boisterous delight in his own prowess may jar
occasionally on the nerves; but how much better than the affected
humility of some writers. And the more you study his writings the less
does this egotism affect even the susceptible. Your ears get attuned to
the pitch of the voice, you realize that the big drum is beaten with a
purpose. For it must be remembered that it is an egotism entirely
emptied of condescension. He is vain certainly, but mainly because he
glories in the common heritage, because he feels he is one of the common
people. He is proud assuredly, but it is pride that exults in traits
that he shares in common with the artist, the soldier, and the sailor.
He is no writer who plays down to the masses, who will prophesy fair
things--like the mere demagogue--in order to win their favour. And it is
a proof of his plain speaking, of his fearless candour, that for the most
part the very men for whom he wrote care little for him.
Conventionality rules every class in the community. Whitman's gospel of
social equality is not altogether welcome to the average man. One
remembers Mr. Barrie's pleasant satire of social distinction in _The
Admirable Crichton_, where the butler resents his radical master's
suggestion that no real difference separates employer and employed. He
thinks it quite in keeping with the eternal fitness of things that his
master should assert the prerogative of "Upper Dog," and points out how
that there are many social grades below stairs, and that an elaborate
hierarchy separates the butler at one end from the "odds and ends" at the
other.
In like manner the ordinary citizen resents Whitman's genuine democratic
spirit, greatly preferring the sentimental Whiggism of Tennyson.
Whitman reminds us by his treatment of the vulgar, the ordinary, the
commonplace, that he signalizes a new departure in literature. Of poets
about the people there have been many, but he is the first genuine Poet
_of_ the People.
Art is in its essence aristocratic, it strives after selectness, eschews
the trivial and the trite. There is, therefore, in literature always a
tendency towards conservatism; the literary artist grows more and more
fastidious in his choice of words; the cheap and vulgar must be
rigorously excluded, and only those words carrying with them stately and
beautiful associations are to be countenanced. Thus Classicism in Art
constantly needs the freshening, broadening influence of Romanticism.
What Conservatism and Liberalism are to Politics Classicism and
Romanticism are to Art. Romantic revolutions have swept over literature
before the nineteenth century, and Shakespeare was the first of our great
Romantics. Then with the reaction Formalism and Conservatism crept in
again. But the Romantic Revival at the beginning of the nineteenth
century went much further than previous ones. Out of the throes of the
Industrial Revolution had been born a lusty, clamorous infant that
demanded recognition--the new Demos. And it claimed not only recognition
in politics, but recognition in literature. Wordsworth and Shelley
essayed to speak for it with varying success; but Wordsworth was too
exclusive, and Shelley--the most sympathetic of all our poets till the
coming of Browning--was too ethereal in his manner. Like his own
skylark, he sang to us poised midway between earth and heaven; a more
emphatically flesh and blood personage was wanted.
Here and there a writer of genuine democratic feeling, like Ebenezer
Elliott, voiced the aspirations of the people, but only on one side.
Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning sounded a deeper note; but the huge,
clamorous populace needed a yet fuller note, a more penetrating insight,
a more forceful utterance. And in America, with its seething
democracy--a democracy more urgent, more insistent than our own--it found
its spokesman. That it did not recognize him, and is only just beginning
to do so, is not remarkable. It did not recognize him, for it had
scarcely recognized itself. Only dimly did it realize its wants and
aspirations. Whitman divined them; he is the Demos made articulate.
And not only did he sweep away the Conservative traditions and
conventions of literature, he endeavoured to overthrow the aristocratic
principle that underlies it. Selectness he would replace with
simplicity. No doubt he went too far. That is of small moment.
Exaggeration and over-emphasis have their place in the scheme of things.
A thunderstorm may be wanted to clear the air, and if it does
incidentally some slight damage to crops and trees it is of no use
grumbling.
But in the main Whitman's theory of Art was very true and finely
suggestive, and is certainly not the view of a man who cares for nothing
but the wild and barbaric.
"The art of Art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the
light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity,
nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To
carry on the heave of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and
give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor
very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude
and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness
of the sentiment of trees in the woods, and grass by the woodside, is
the flawless triumph of Art."
A fitting attitude for a Poet of Democracy, one likely to bring him into
direct contact with the broad, variegated stream of human life.
What perhaps he did not realize so clearly is that Nature, no less than
Art, exercises the selective facility, and corrects her own riotous
extravagance. And thus on occasion he falls into the very
indefiniteness, the very excess he deprecates.
The way in which his Art and democratic spirit correspond suggests
another, though less unconventional poet of the Democracy--William
Morris. The spaciousness the directness, the tolerance that characterise
Whitman's work are to be found to Morris. Morris had no eclectic
preferences either in Art or Nature. A wall paper, a tapestry, an epic
were equally agreeable tasks; and a blade of grass delighted him as fully
as a sunset. So with men. He loved many, but no one especially.
Catholicity rather than intensity characterised his friendships. And,
like Whitman, he could get on cheerfully enough with surprisingly
unpleasant people, provided they were working for the cause in which he
was interested. {197} That is the secret. Whitman and Morris loved the
Cause. They looked at things in the mass, at people in the mass. This
is the true democratic spirit. They had no time, nor must it be
confessed any special interest--in the individual as such. What I have
said about Whitman's affection being comprehensive rather than intense
applies equally to Morris. Why? Because it is the way of the Democrat
and the Social Reformer. To such the individual suggests a whole class,
a class suggests the race. Whitman is always speaking to man as man,
rarely does he touch on individual men. If he does so, it is only to
pass on to some cosmic thoughts suggested by the particular instance.
Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Whitman's attitude towards
humanity is his thorough understanding of the working classes, and his
quick discernment of the healthy naturalism that animates them. He
neither patronizes them nor idealizes them; he sees their faults, which
are obvious enough; but he also sees, what is not so obvious, their fine
independence of spirit, their eager thirst for improvement, for ampler
knowledge, for larger opportunities, and their latent idealism.
No doubt there is more independence, greater vigour, less servility, in
America than in England; but the men he especially delights in, the
artisan or mechanic, represent the best of the working classes in either
country.
In this respect Whitman and Tolstoy, differing in so many ways, join
hands. In the "powerful uneducated person" they see the salvation of
society, the renovation of its anaemic life.