I make no claim that my essay is a dispassionate, disinterested view of
Whitman. It will doubtless appear to many as a one-sided view, or as
colored by my love for the man himself. And I shall not be disturbed if
such turns out to be the case. A dispassionate view of a man like Whitman
is probably out of the question in our time, or in any near time. His
appeal is so personal and direct that readers are apt to be either
violently for him or violently against, and it will require the
perspective of more than one generation to bring out his true
significance. Still, for any partiality for its subject which my book may
show, let me take shelter behind a dictum of Goethe.
"I am more and more convinced," says the great critic, "that whenever one
has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writings of others, unless
this be done from a certain one-sided enthusiasm, or from a loving
interest in the person and the work, the result is hardly worth gathering
up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is in fact the only reality,
and, from such reality, reality as a natural product follows. All else is
vanity."
To a loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to
one-sided enthusiasm, I plead guilty. This at least is real with me, and
not affected; and, if the reality which Goethe predicts in such cases only
follows, I shall be more than content.