For making another addition to the growing Whitman literature, I have no
apology to offer. I know well enough that "writing and talk" cannot
"prove" a poet; that he must be his own proof or be forgotten; and my main
purpose in writing about Whitman, as in writing about nature, is to tell
readers what I have found there, with the hope of inducing them to look
for themselves. At the same time, I may say that I think no modern poet so
much needs to be surrounded by an atmosphere of comment and
interpretation, through which readers may approach him, as does Whitman.
His work sprang from a habit or attitude of mind quite foreign to that
with which current literature makes us familiar,--so germinal is it, and
so little is it beholden to the formal art we so assiduously cultivate.
The poet says his work "connects lovingly with precedents," but it does
not connect lovingly with any body of poetry of this century. "Leaves of
Grass" is bound to be a shock to the timid and pampered taste of the
majority of current readers. I would fain lessen this shock by interposing
my own pages of comment between the book and the public. The critic can
say so many things the poet cannot. He can explain and qualify and
analyze, whereas the creative artist can only hint or project. The poet
must hasten on, he must infold and bind together, he must be direct and
synthetic in every act. Reflection and qualification are not for him, but
action, emotion, volition, the procreant blending and surrender. He works
as Nature does, and gives us reality in every line.