Whitman threw himself with love and enthusiasm upon this great, crude,
seething, materialistic American world. The question is, Did he master it?
Is he adequate to absorb and digest it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is
it plastic in his hands? Does he stamp it with his own image? I do not
ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make
it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because
evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it. He is content if he
present America and the modern to us as they are inwrought into his own
personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character,
passion, will, motive, conviction. He would show them subjectively and as
living impulses in himself. Of course a great constructive, dramatic poet
like Shakespeare would have solved his problem in a different manner, or
through the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters. But the
poet and prophet of democracy and of egotism shows us all things in and
through himself.
His egotism, or egocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work.
It colors all and determines all. The poems are the direct outgrowth of
the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it
were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon
the trunk. His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most
poets. He never leads us away from himself into pleasant paths with
enticing flowers of fancy or forms of art. He carves or shapes nothing for
its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent
grounds as pure art. His work is not material made precious by elaboration
and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life.
X
Whitman was compelled to this negation of extrinsic art by the problem he
had set before himself,--first, to arouse, to suggest, rather than to
finish or elaborate, less to display any theme or thought than "to bring
the reader into the atmosphere of the theme or thought;" secondly, to make
his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that
the dominant impression should always be that of the living, breathing
man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see
him and feel him in books or art,--the man in the form and garb of actual,
concrete life, not as poet or artist, but simply as man. This is doubtless
the meaning of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to
the first issue of the "Leaves," to which I have referred. This portrait
is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task. It was a
hint that we must take this poet with very little literary tailoring; it
was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and
spoke in their spirit.
It is never the theme treated, but always the character exploited; never
the structure finished, but always the plan suggested; never the work
accomplished, but always the impulse imparted,--freedom, power, growth.
"Allons! we must not stop here.
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling,
we cannot remain here,
However sheltered this port, or however calm these waters, we must not
anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
receive it but a little while.
"Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formulas!
From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!"
This magnificent poem, "The Song of the Open Road," is one of the most
significant in Whitman's work. He takes the open road as his type,--not an
end in itself, not a fulfillment, but a start, a journey, a progression.
It teaches him the profound lesson of reception, "no preference nor
denial," and the profounder lesson of liberty and truth:--
"From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list--my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
"I inhale great draughts of air,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine."
He will not rest with art, he will not rest with books, he will press his
way steadily toward the largest freedom.
"Only the kernel of every object nourishes.
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he who undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?"
Whitman was not a builder. If he had the architectural power which the
great poets have shown, he gave little proof of it. It was not required by
the task he set before himself. His book is not a temple: it is a wood, a
field, a highway; vista, vista, everywhere,--vanishing lights and shades,
truths half disclosed, successions of objects, hints, suggestions, brief
pictures, groups, voices, contrasts, blendings, and, above all, the tonic
quality of the open air. The shorter poems are like bunches of herbs or
leaves, or a handful of sprays gathered in a walk; never a thought
carefully carved, and appealing to our sense of artistic form.
The main poem of the book, "The Song of Myself," is a series of
utterances, ejaculations, apostrophes, enumerations, associations,
pictures, parables, incidents, suggestions, with little or no structural
or logical connection, but all emanating from a personality whose presence
dominates the page, and whose eye is ever upon us. Without this vivid and
intimate sense of the man back of all, of a sane and powerful spirit
sustaining ours, the piece would be wild and inchoate.