as eloquent as some things that have been written by Poe's European
admirers, is sound and appreciative. If it be an American tendency to
overrate our national men of genius, we have certainly not displayed
that tendency in relation to the American writer who more than any
other has captured the imagination of Europeans, for undoubtedly the
finest criticism of Poe has come from our brethren overseas. Stoddard
had but a grudging sense of Poe's merits and ends his account with a
remark which contains a partial truth but which, although it is quoted
from Dr. Johnson, is a flat anti-climax: "All that can be told with
certainty is that he was poor." There seems to be a good deal more to
tell than that, and, indeed, the implications of Poe's poverty, as it
affected the artist, are better expressed by Stoddard himself when he
says that Poe "wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too
much above the popular level to be well paid."
American criticism of Poe is thick with moralisms. Thus Lowell wrote:
"As a critic Mr. Poe was aesthetically deficient ... he seemed wanting
in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art." But, we
may well ask, what is "the profounder ethics of art," and who, except
a New England preacher, wants to be bothered with it in lyric poetry?
Poe always focused his attention on beauty, on excellence of
workmanship, both in the work of other craftsmen and in his own. The
Scottish critic, Mr. John M. Robertson, seems to be nearer the truth
than Lowell when he says that Poe "has left a body of widely various
criticism which, as such, will better stand critical examination
to-day than any similar work produced in England or America in his
time." I am glad to see that Professor Smith regards Mr. Robertson's
essay on Poe as "the ablest brief treatment in any language." The only
exception, which Mr. Robertson himself would be the first to make, is
the essay by the French critic Emile Hennequin.
But Professor Smith does not quite escape American moralism in his
effort to accentuate Poe's virtues. He makes too much of Poe's
interest in religion, which was surely nothing but a purely
intellectual and critical interest, and his recurrent emphasis on
Poe's Americanism is too tiresomely patriotic even for a professor in
the United States Naval Academy. Poe was keen for the best interests
of American literature, zealous in searching out any note of promise
in a new poet and in pointing to the weak spots in men of acknowledged
talent. He sometimes exhibits a kind of local Southern patriotism
which does not much interest us now. But on the whole, he was detached
from the issues of politics, an unlocalized, almost disembodied genius
whose apparition in the United States of America is still an endless
wonder to European critics.
One possible influence of Poe's environment on his art Professor Smith
is, so far as I know, the first to point out; and it is a very
valuable suggestion, even if it can not be thoroughly proved. In
Virginia, more than in any other American State, the English and Scots
ballads survive by oral tradition. It is possible that as a child Poe
heard these ballads recited or sung, and from them derived his sense
of refrain and repetition. To the influence of the ballad Professor
Smith adds the possible influence of plantation melodies as
"subsidiary sources of Poe's lyrical technique." He is certainly right
in thinking that Poe's originality consists not in the contribution of
a new form to poetry but in his individual development of forms
already established. His charm resides in the color of his words
rather than in the shape of his stanzas. But of course the two things
are inseparable and whoever tries to analyse them is hopelessly
baffled. Poe's own attempt to explain how the trick is done is far
from explaining it, and if he could not expound in prose the secret of
poetry, nobody can.
For Poe was first and always a critic, inquisitive of methods, and
making his effects with cool calculation. Even if his tales of horror
no longer give us the creeps, they will always give to any one who
cares about writing, that shiver of pleasure which comes when we watch
a dexterous craftsman at work. Professor Smith calls Poe the "father
of the short story," but he came too late to be credited with such
paternity. After all, Boccaccio and whoever made "The Arabian Nights"
lived long before Poe and in Poe's stories are evident traces of old
tales of magic and mystery. What Poe did was to rationalize the short
story so highly, in some cases, as to sacrifice the illusion of
spontaneity which is one of the merits of a tale that seems to tell
itself.
With the purpose of suggesting the range of Poe's intellectual
interest and of classifying some of his miscellaneous work that does
not fall into certain obvious groups, Professor Smith has adopted the
term "frontiersman." The image evoked by that word somehow does not
fit Poe. He was, in a sense, an explorer of ideas, and he had a
genuine gift for philosophy which he did not live to develop. We could
spare many of his short stories rather than lose "Eureka." If it is
not profound philosophy and if it does not solve the riddle of the
universe, it is profound in its beauty, a prose poem. Poe's science is
obsolete, no doubt, and even in the science of his day he was little
more than an amateur. But the mark of a great intellect is on every
page. An amazing mind! He succeeded in all forms of literary art which
he tried. If the poet or the critic or the short-story writer should
be obliterated, there would still remain a man of genius.
Critics and biographers of Poe, like Poe himself, cannot let his drink
alone. They deny or blame or pity without understanding. The question
of Poe and alcohol seems to have been finally answered by a California
physician, John W. Robertson, in a book which I have not seen but
which I know only through reviewers' accounts of it. This physician
finds from the evidence that Poe was a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania is not
drunkenness nor riotous dissipation; it is a disease. Poe, like other
victims of the disease, had to have periodic bouts with the demon, got
fearfully sick, and when he recovered stayed cold sober until his next
attack. This accounts for Poe's written anathemas against alcohol,
which puzzled Remy de Gourmont. De Gourmont says: "_Il ne pouvait
plus travailler que dans l'hallucination de l'ivresse._" Quite the
contrary is the case. Poe could not do a stroke of work under the
inspiration of whiskey; he was not one of those mad geniuses who
conceive masterpieces in a tavern or with a bottle beside the ink-pot.
That is proved, or indicated, by his critical clarity, the almost
passionless rationality of his tales and poems, and even by the
physical perfection of his manuscripts. He worked between his joyless
debauches, and he worked hard. His melancholy and love of terror, his
preoccupation with defects of will and remorse, whatever "morbidity"
there is in his writings, may have some relation to his disease. But
as an artist he achieved his dark effects by sheer force of intellect
in hours of clear-eyed sobriety. Only in a literary sense is he the
author of "MS. Found in a Bottle."
BIOGRAPHIES OF WHITMAN
The one fault that can be found with Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in
Camden" is that there is too much of it. But that is a fault easily
remedied without blotting a line of the record. Books that contain too
little may cheat us of desired knowledge, whereas books that contain
too much can do no harm; every reader has the privilege of not reading
at all or of dipping into a book here and there. Traubel's method is
admirable; it is that of a documentary historian. He set down
Whitman's talk and such impressions and facts as the biographer
recorded at the moment, and he reproduced the letters in the order in
which Whitman gave them to him. He did not presume to select from
Whitman's conversation what now seems most interesting or most to
Whitman's credit, but he gave you all that he had for you to enjoy or
ignore and for other biographers and historians to make use of as they
will.
Traubel made no concessions to the fact that readers have to catch
trains and read other books, and he ignored, perhaps to his personal
disadvantage, certain exigencies of publication, such as the
publisher's obvious need to interest as many people as possible with
the least possible expenditure. Traubel's method is simple from an
artistic point of view, requiring nothing but accuracy, courage and
industry. Yet the method is a great strain on all concerned. Traubel
could stand it. Evidently the publishers thought they could stand it.
The reader can stand it, because, as I have said, he can take as much
or as little as suits him. The real question is whether Whitman can
stand it. And the amazing man _can_ stand it. Consider that in
the years when Traubel knew him Whitman was an invalid, broken by his
services as nurse and brother of soldiers during the war. He was a
garrulous old man talking to men who loved him and who, though no
servile worshippers of him or anyone else, encouraged him to
reminiscence and the utterance of offhand opinion. Now that is a
severe test. Not many old men, even men of great achievement in action
or art, could last for more than a small volume. Whitman is worth
these hundreds and hundreds of pages. For he was a great talker, full
of experience and endowed with the gift of speech. Almost every day,
according to Traubel's record, he hit off an interesting idea and
turned it in a Whitmanese way. He repeats himself. He makes remarks
that do not amount to much. But he is never a bore. Line by line he
and Traubel, egotists both, but honest, thoughtful, artfully
inartistic, have drawn a portrait, the like of which is not to be
found. For once a literary man is as big as his literary work. Traubel
was a very happy biographer, for he had a sort of monopoly of a great
subject, and he had not the slightest temptation to omit or defend.
An admirer has called Traubel's work "the most truthful biography in
the language." To use the informal mode of Walt Whitman and of his
biographer, that ain't exactly so. It ain't the most truthful
biography; it's simply a true biography.
"Lincoln," said Whitman, "don't need adorers, worshippers--he needs
friends.... The great danger with Lincoln for the next fifty years
will be that he will be overdone, over-explained, over-exploited--made
a good deal too much of--gather about himself a rather mythical
aureole." From such danger Traubel did his best to protect Whitman;
the biographer's multitudinous veracity preserves a real man and is a
heavy impediment to the critic and literary historian of the future
who may try to disobey Whitman's injunction not to "prettify" him. If
that impossible and tedious universe, the "whole" truth, is not
comprehended in these prolific pages, the errors and omissions are due
not to the biographer, but to Whitman himself, who had a silent as
well as a loquacious side; he had unexplained depths which probably he
did not understand himself. When he spoke he tried to say what he
thought, but often he did not speak at all, and at least once he said
to Traubel: "I don't care to talk about that."
The writer of fiction may invent substance to fit an artistic scheme.
The compiler of facts may, under certain conditions, disregard
literary form. The biographer or the historian who will have his work
read must play skilfully between the double restriction of substance
and form. He must be at once man of science and artist. Because of its
very great difficulties, because of the high demands it makes upon the
writer, biography is rarely well done. One can name few masterpieces
of biography in English. Perhaps the only masterpiece that everybody
will name is Boswell's Johnson, that extraordinary performance which
heaved literary history out of shape and keeps it in a permanent state
of distortion. For Johnson was not a first-rate man of letters; he
wrote little that is even tolerable to read; his letter to
Chesterfield and the preface to the Dictionary are his most vital
productions. Moreover, Boswell was a foreordained nonentity. Yet he
was a great artist and Johnson was a great person, and the two of them
made a great book; it is a puzzle which makes one fall back,
outwitted, to the last ditch of adjectives.
Whitman's opinion of Johnson is interesting, if only in relation to
his own biographer's methods. Johnson knew that Boswell was making
notes. Traubel, whose word is infallibly good, says that Whitman did
not know that his biographer was keeping a record. Whitman did know
that Traubel would write about him and he selected the letters and
other documents for the "archives." But he was not aware that Traubel
was making a diary. Therefore when he talked he was free at least from
the constraint imposed on a man who knows that his spoken words are to
appear in print.
When Whitman was 69 years old he began to read Boswell; he refers to
him a dozen times in the course of the year, thereby showing that
Boswell interested him, for when Whitman was not interested in a book
he simply forgot it. He thought that Johnson "talked for
effect--seemed rather inclined to bark men down, like the biggest
dog--indeed, a spice of dishonesty palpably possessed him. Johnson
tried rather to impress than to be true." "He was on stilts always--he
belongs to the self-conscious literary class, who live in a house of
rules and never get into the open air." However, note this significant
confession: "I read it through, looked it through, rather--persisted
in spite of fifty temptations to throw it down. I don't know who tried
me most--Johnson or Boswell. The book lasts--it seems to have elements
of life--but I will do nothing to pass it on." There is the comment of
the lion on the bear. No, these zoological metaphors are quite false.
Benevolent and burly male persons are not, even by Whitmanian
identifications, to be named with the brutes.
Some day a biographer with the right talent and in possession of all
Traubel's material, cognizant of social ideals and facts and sensitive
to poetry, will write a good life of Whitman. So far as I know, there
is no satisfactory biography of our one magnificent American poet.
Traubel was not able to do it. He was properly employed in gathering
and publishing the fundamental record. Moreover, his style, perfectly
fitted to short hand notes, is, in continuous composition, abominable.
I loved him with all my Whitmanian heart and read him, because of
every four of his sentences one says something worth while. But ten
sentences of his in a row hurt like a corduroy road. I have to get out
and walk and rub myself.
Several literary men have tried to write Whitman's life and they have
failed. Professor Bliss Perry's book is fatuous. He had no excuse to
write about Whitman at all, except in so far forth as a publisher's
request to an alleged literary man to do a book for an established
series furnishes a practical excuse.
The critical study of Whitman by Mr. Basil De Selincourt is
sympathetic and discerning as regards what may be called the purely
literary side. He understands what Whitman says and takes him for
granted as one of the world's supreme poets. He conceives the
essential unity of Whitman's thought, a unity that should be obvious
but evidently is not to some readers and critics who treat Whitman as
a collection of more or less impressive fragments. Mr. De Selincourt's
analysis of Whitman's form is instructive, appreciative, though a
trifle academic, not wholly emancipated from schoolroom rules of
prosody. If you will read Whitman aloud, pronouncing the words as they
are pronounced in prose, and emphasizing them according to the sense,
the scansion will take care of itself. When a line is bad (and
Whitman, like most of the other great poets, wrote bad lines) it won't
work by any effort of elocution. The good lines, if you have an ear in
your head and a tongue in your mouth, chant themselves, and you can
forget all about iambics and hexameters.
Where Mr. De Selincourt fails is in his account of Whitman's notions
of liberty, democracy, America, the future. Book-people do not
understand these things, especially English book-people, who assume
that America produced Whitman because it was a land of liberty. It was
not. It was, like the rest of the world, a land of plutocracy,
convention, servility. It is complimentary to us but unhappily not
true to say that "America stands for the passionate re-assertion of
certain beliefs which life, to those who look back upon it, seems
always to stultify, but which, to those who can look forward, appears
as the very spirit and power of life itself--'the urge, the ardour,
the unconquerable will'."
As a matter of fact, America does not stand for any such thing and
Whitman does not stand for America. He is a revolutionist in revolt
against the American fact and celebrating a possible American future.
Official America tried to throttle him. Conventional America ignored
him. Literary and revolutionary spirits in England and America
welcomed him, for they are free spirits, intellectually free, under
any economic conditions and in any part of the world. Whitman himself
did not understand why he was acclaimed in England by more men and
better men than in America. It was simply because English thinkers,
writers, poets, with minds capable of appreciating him, outnumbered
their American brothers ten to one.
Two American ladies once called on Tennyson. He asked them whether
they knew Walt Whitman. They confessed that they did not. "Then," said
he, "you do not know the greatest man in America."
GEORGE E. WOODBERRY
A man's place in the generations of mankind is not wholly determined
by the date of his birth. If William James were alive he would be
eighty years old; but he belongs to us, to the living present. Mr.
George Edward Woodberry is only sixty-seven; yet he already seems like
the last figure in a tradition which has come to an end--so far as any
period in literature may truly be said to end. James was aware of
something like this twenty years ago. He gave Mr. Woodberry the praise
that is his due, but expressed at the same time his essential
weakness. Of "The Heart of Man" James wrote in a letter:
The essays are grave and noble in the extreme. I hail another
American author. They can't be popular, and for cause. The respect
of him for the Queen's English, the classic leisureliness and
explicitness, which give so rare a dignity to his style, also take
from it that which our generation seems to need, the sudden word,
the unmeditated transition, the flash of perception that makes
reasonings unnecessary. Poor Woodberry, so high, so true, so good,
so original in his total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you
take him spot-wise--and therefore so ineffective.
Mr. Woodberry is not out of date in a mere journalistic sense or in
the hasty judgment of an irreverent generation which affects a trivial
contemporaneity and regards even the end of the last century as old
fogy. He is out of date because he did not gear with his own times,
but remained aloof and backward-looking and so became the last of the
Lowells instead of the first of the Woodberrys. It could not have been
a conscious or servile emulation on his part, for he has a spirit of
his own. But his surroundings and his education were too strong for
his fine talent. He was brought up in the twilight of the New England
demigods. They handed him the "torch," and he has carried it with
pious devotion. To younger men as docile as himself, he became, almost
officially, the representative in the flesh of the elders over whose
graves he prayed. His publishers announce with pride, with no sense of
the depressing implications of what they are saying, that there is a
Woodberry Society, "probably the only organization in America
dedicated to a living writer." Thus the anachronism is fulfilled. Mr.
Woodberry was old when he was young, and he is an institution before
he is dead. Some books are epoch making; other books, even great and
original books, lie comfortably in their times without being either
innovative or conclusive; Mr. Woodberry's six solid volumes[1] are
epoch closing, a collection of such words as will not be written again
by a man of genuine talent and wisdom.
[1] Collected Essays of George Edward Woodberry. 6 vols. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1921.
The feeling that Mr. Woodberry is a voice from the past that
immediately preceded him comes over me most heavily when I read his
essays on Lowell's Addresses, on Democracy, and on Wendell Phillips.
It may be only the essayist's strict fidelity to Lowell's ideas--no
doubt a merit--which leaves the impression that the essayist knows
only what Lowell knew and no more, that the pupil has not moved a step
beyond the master. It is Lowell over again without the slightest
addition from the lessons of time. The London _Nation_ has said
of Mr. Woodberry's essays that most of them have "a unity and life
that make many of Lowell's seem those of a shrewd but old-fashioned
amateur." Yet Lowell was at least a vivid amateur, who expressed
something that belonged to the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies; and
he had an old gentleman's right to be old in the 'eighties. It is not
to be expected that a critic should begin where Lowell leaves
off--only a thinker of real genius makes such long strides. But the
critic following Lowell in time and not moving half a step ahead of
him seems older than Lowell himself.
The same thing is true of the address on Wendell Phillips, "The Faith
of an American." It is fine, even eloquent, but it is abstract and
curiously old-fashioned. Phillips in his own utterances is more of
to-day and of to-morrow than is his eulogist who was a child in
Beverley when Phillips was in mid-career. The reason, of course, is
that Phillips was a fighter, hot with real issues, and it is not the
critic's business to fight but to examine the ideas of the fighter.
These ideas necessarily become somewhat abstract when a critic quotes
or rephrases them, especially since Phillips was an orator and flung
at his audiences sweeping generalities which in a less inspired man
are mere tall talk. But Mr. Woodberry devitalizes Phillips, especially
the later Phillips who went on from one issue to the next until he
dropped. Mr. Woodberry has not a single clear, plain word about one of
Phillips' last fights, that for the Labor party. Mr. Woodberry stops
with the actual Phillips before Phillips stopped, and the end of the
address fades out in vagueness and platitude. There is something
rather touching about Mr. Woodberry's declaration: "I know that what I
have said to-night is heavy with risk." One looks in vain to discover
the risk. Surely in 1911, when the address was delivered, a man might
talk in Mr. Woodberry's mild way every night in the week and invite no
more severe punishment than a scolding from Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler.
Mr. Woodberry's ideas and his expressions are all gentle, though not
timid nor emasculate. His general faith in "Democracy" is too serenely
above the tumult to disturb anybody or provoke a riot call in the
quietude of Beverley. I do not know what he means by "Democracy,"
whether such actual democracy as existed in America in 1899, or some
beautiful dream of the future. If democracy is a dream, an unrealized
dream, then any beautiful thing a poet says about it is true. But Mr.
Woodberry seems to be talking about something actually existing,
something already realized in considerable part if not completely, for
he says: "Democracy has its great career, for the first time, in our
national being, and exhibits here most purely its formative powers,
and unfolds destiny on the grand scale." That was not true twenty
years ago, and it is certainly not true now. It is the sort of thing
that Emerson and Lowell could say with rousing conviction, but twenty
years ago it was as obsolete as a beaver hat except in newspaper
editorials and political speeches, where it is still going
strong--even if not quite so strong as it used to be.