The much that I have said in the following pages about Whitman's radical
differences from other poets--his changed attitude towards the universe,
his unwonted methods and aims, etc.,--might seem to place him upon a
ground so unique and individual as to contradict my claims for his breadth
and universality. The great poets stand upon common ground; they excel
along familiar lines, they touch us, and touch us deeply, at many points.
What always saves Whitman is his enormous endowment of what is "commonest,
nearest, easiest,"--his atmosphere of the common day, the common life, and
his fund of human sympathy and love. He is strange because he gives us the
familiar in such a direct, unexpected manner. His "Leaves" are like some
new fruit that we have never before tasted. It is the product of another
clime, another hemisphere. The same old rains and dews, the same old sun
and soil, nursed it, yet in so many ways how novel and strange! We
certainly have to serve a certain apprenticeship to this poet, familiarize
ourselves with his point of view and with his democratic spirit, before we
can make much of him. The spirit in which we come to him from the other
poets--the poets of art and culture--is for the most part unfriendly to
him. There is something rude, strange, and unpoetic about him at first
sight that is sure to give most readers of poetry a shock. I think one
might come to him from the Greek poets, or the old Hebrew or Oriental
bards, with less shock than from our modern delicate and refined singers;
because the old poets were more simple and elemental, and aimed less at
the distilled dainties of poetry, than the modern. They were full of
action, too, and volition,--of that which begets and sustains life.
Whitman's poetry is almost entirely the expression of will and
personality, and runs very little to intellectual subtleties and
refinements. It fulfills itself in our wills and character, rather than in
our taste.