I
Let me here summarize some of the ideas and principles in which "Leaves of
Grass" has its root, and from which it starts. A collection of poems in
the usual sense, a variety of themes artistically treated and appealing to
our æsthetic perceptibilities alone, it is not. It has, strictly speaking,
but one theme,--personality, the personality of the poet himself. To
exploit this is always the main purpose, and, in doing so, to make the
book both directly and indirectly a large, impassioned utterance upon all
the main problems of life and of nationality. It is primitive, like the
early literature of a race or people, in that its spirit and purpose are
essentially religious. It is like the primitive literatures also in its
prophetic cry and in its bardic simplicity and homeliness, and unlike them
in its faith and joy and its unconquerable optimism.
It has been not inaptly called the bible of democracy. Its biblical
features are obvious enough with the darker negative traits left out. It
is Israel with science and the modern added.
Whitman was swayed by a few great passions,--the passion for country, the
passion for comrades, the cosmic passion, etc. His first concern seems
always to have been for his country. He has touched no theme, named no
man, not related in some way to America. The thought of it possessed him
as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
all-inclusive:--
"My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
earth,
I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
"O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you, O winds,
O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."