The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
absolute social equality.
It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
is good and sound in all its parts.
It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
friend and not the enemy of life.
It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
as the cement of future states and republics.
It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.
It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.
It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.
It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
the heroes of land and sea.
Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and
concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore,
the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man.
Its purpose is to stimulate and arouse, rather than to soothe and satisfy.
It addresses the character, the intuitions, the ego, more than the
intellect or the purely æsthetic faculties. Its end is not taste, but
growth in the manly virtues and powers.
Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
It aspires to a candor and a directness like that of Nature herself.
It aims to let Nature speak without check, with original energy. The only
checks are those which health and wholeness demand.
Its standards are those of the natural universal.
Its method is egocentric. The poet never goes out of himself, but draws
everything into himself and makes it all serve to illustrate his
personality.
Its form is not what is called artistic. Its suggestion is to be found in
organic nature, in trees, clouds, and in the vital and flowing currents.
In its composition the author was doubtless greatly influenced by the
opera and the great singers, and the music of the great composers. He
would let himself go in the same manner and seek his effects through
multitude and the quality of the living voice.
Finally, "Leaves of Grass" is an utterance out of the depths of
primordial, aboriginal human nature. It embodies and exploits a character
not rendered anæmic by civilization, but preserving a sweet and sane
savagery, indebted to culture only as a means to escape culture, reaching
back always, through books, art, civilization, to fresh, unsophisticated
nature, and drawing his strength thence.
Another of the ideas that master Whitman and rule him is the idea of
identity,--that you are you and I am I, and that we are henceforth secure
whatever comes or goes. He revels in this idea; it is fruitful with him;
it begets in him the ego-enthusiasm, and is at the bottom of his
unshakable faith in immortality. It leavens all his work. It cannot be too
often said that the book is not merely a collection of pretty poems,
themes elaborated and followed out at long removes from the personality of
the poet, but a series of _sorties_ into the world of materials, the
American world, piercing through the ostensible shows of things to the
interior meanings, and illustrating in a free and large way the genesis
and growth of a man, his free use of the world about him, appropriating it
to himself, seeking his spiritual identity through its various objects and
experiences, and giving in many direct and indirect ways the meaning and
satisfaction of life. There is much in it that is not poetical in the
popular sense, much that is neutral and negative, and yet is an integral
part of the whole, as is the case in the world we inhabit. If it offends,
it is in a wholesome way, like objects in the open air.