Whitman showed just enough intention, or premeditation in his life, dress,
manners, attitudes in his pictures, self-portrayals in his poems, etc., to
give rise to the charge that he was a _poseur_. He was a _poseur_ in the
sense, and to the extent, that any man is a _poseur_ who tries to live up
to a certain ideal and to realize it in his outward daily life. It is
clear that he early formed the habit of self-contemplation and of standing
apart and looking upon himself as another person. Hence his extraordinary
self-knowledge, and, we may also say, his extraordinary self-appreciation,
or to use his own words, "the quite changed attitude of the ego, the one
chanting or talking, towards himself." Of course there is danger in this
attitude, but Whitman was large enough and strong enough to escape it. He
saw himself to be the typical inevitable democrat that others have seen
him to be, and with perfect candor and without ever forcing the note, he
portrays himself as such. As his work is confessedly the poem of himself,
himself magnified and projected, as it were, upon the canvas of a great
age and country, all his traits and qualities stand out in heroic
proportions, his pride and egotism as well as his love and tolerance.
"How beautiful is candor," he says. "All faults may be forgiven of him who
has perfect candor." The last thing that could ever be charged of Whitman
is that he lacked openness, or was guilty of any deceit or concealments in
his life or works.
From the studies, notes, and scrap-books which Whitman left, it appears
that he was long preparing and disciplining himself for the work he had in
view. "The long foreground," to which Emerson referred in his letter, was
of course a reality. But this self-consciousness and self-adjustment to a
given end is an element of strength and not of weakness.
In the famous vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the
first "Leaves of Grass" he assumes an attitude and is in a sense a
_poseur_; but the reader comes finally to wonder at the marvelous
self-knowledge the picture displays, and how strictly typical it is of the
poet's mental and spiritual attitude towards the world,--independent,
unconventional, audacious, yet inquiring and sympathetic in a wonderful
degree. In the same way he posed in other portraits. A favorite with him
is the one in which he sits contemplating a butterfly upon his
forefinger--typical of a man "preoccupied of his own soul." In another he
peers out curiously as from behind a mask. In an earlier one he stands,
hat in hand, in marked _negligé_ costume,--a little too intentional, one
feels. The contempt of the polished ones is probably very strong within
him at this time. I say contempt, though I doubt if Whitman ever felt
contempt for any human being.
V
Then Whitman had a curious habit of standing apart, as it were, and
looking upon himself and his career as of some other person. He was
interested in his own cause, and took a hand in the discussion. From first
to last he had the habit of regarding himself objectively. On his deathbed
he seemed to be a spectator of his own last moments, and was seen to feel
his pulse a few minutes before he breathed his last.