In saying or implying that Whitman's aim was not primarily literary or
artistic, I am liable to be misunderstood; and when Whitman himself says,
"No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward
art or æstheticism," he exposes himself to the same misconception. It is
the literary and poetic value of his verses alone that can save them.
Their philosophy, their democracy, their vehement patriotism, their
religious ardor, their spirit of comradeship, or what not, will not alone
suffice. All depends upon the manner in which these things are presented
to us. Do we get the reality, or words about the reality? No matter what
the content of the verse, unless into the whole is breathed the breath of
the true creative artist they will surely perish. Oblivion awaits every
utterance not touched with the life of the spirit. Whitman was as
essentially an artist as was Shakespeare or Dante; his work shows the same
fusion of imagination, will, emotion, personality; it carries the same
quality of real things,--not the same shaping, constructive power, but the
same quickening, stimulating power, the same magic use of words. The
artist in him is less conscious of itself, is less differentiated from the
man, than in the other poets. He objected to having his work estimated for
its literary value alone, but in so doing he used the word in a narrow
sense.
After all these ages of the assiduous cultivation of literature, there has
grown up in men a kind of lust of the mere art of writing, just as, after
so many generations of religious training, there has grown up a passion
for religious forms and observances. "Mere literature" has come to be a
current phrase in criticism, meaning, I suppose, that the production to
which it is applied is notable only for good craftsmanship. In the same
spirit one speaks of mere scholarship, or of a certain type of man as a
mere gentleman. It was mere literature that Whitman was afraid of, the
æsthetic disease, the passion for letters, for poetry, divorced from love
of life and of things. None knew better than he that the ultimate value of
any imaginative and emotional work, even of the Bible, is its literary
value. Its spiritual and religious value is inseparably connected with its
literary value.
"Leaves of Grass" is not bookish; it is always the voice of a man, and not
of a scholar or conventional poet, that addresses us. We all imbue words
more or less with meanings of our own; but, from the point of view I am
now essaying, literature is the largest fact, and embraces all inspired
utterances. The hymn-book seeks to embody or awaken religious emotion
alone; would its religious value be less if its poetic value were more? I
think not. The best of the Psalms of David, from the religious point of
view, are the best from the literary point of view. What reaches and
thrills the soul,--that is great art. What arouses the passions--mirth,
anger, indignation, pity--may or may not be true art. No one, for
instance, can read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" without tears, laughter, anger; but
no one, I fancy, could ever get from it that deep, tranquil pleasure and
edification that the great imaginative works impart. Keble's poetry is
more obviously religious than Wordsworth's or Arnold's, but how
short-lived, because it is not embalmed in the true artistic spirit! In
all the great poems, there is something as deep and calm as the light and
the sky, and as common and universal. I find this something in Whitman. In
saying, therefore, that his aim was ulterior to that of art, that he was
not begotten by the literary spirit, I only mean that his aim was that of
the largest art, and of the most vital and comprehensive literature. We
should have heard the last of his "Leaves" long ago had they not possessed
unmistakably the vitality of true literature, "incomparable things,
incomparably well said," as Emerson remarked.
A scientific or philosophical work lives independently of its literary
merit, but an emotional and imaginative work lives only by virtue of its
literary merit. Different meanings may be attached to these words
"literary merit" by different persons. I use them as meaning that vital
and imaginative use of language which is the characteristic of all true
literature. The most effective way of saying a thing in the region of the
sentiments and emotions,--that is the true literary way.