I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps
has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without
power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this
impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious
things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here
is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great
lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires
a large space to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and
multitude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The
style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling,
cloud-like masses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me
there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not
only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity;
not only breadth, there is quality and charm. He is both Dantesque and
Darwinian, as has been said.
Mr. Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whitman, and,
despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of
literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the
symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power. Thus, "he
is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or
buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a
kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the
world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise
mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas,
lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal
earth."
Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and
plains, and to the globe itself.
But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only
claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size
and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no
impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to
size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of
a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists
are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.
Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast masses of
humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the
industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
in his first poem:--
"Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.
"I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
road."
He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--
"It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
untruth of a single second,
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor
ten billions of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and
builds a house."
In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.
These are typical lines:--
"A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths,
with offerings."
"Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young,
The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."
"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same
effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong
bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower,
but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a
city. The title of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might
stand as the title of the book. When he gathers details and special
features he masses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo
carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always
in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is
local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality
is the background across which it all flits.
We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give
us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects,
rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we
inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He
tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and
processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the
orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon
he sees a spirit kindred to his own.
He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and
what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and
equilibrium.
"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--
"The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed
either,
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"
* * * * *
"The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."