In the domain of Literature loftily consider'd (an accomplish'd and
veteran critic in his just out work[44] now says,) 'the kingdom of the
Father has pass'd; the kingdom of the Son is passing; the kingdom of the
Spirit begins.' Leaving the reader to chew on and extract the juice and
meaning of this, I will proceed to say in melanged form what I have had
brought out by the English author's essay (he discusses the poetic art
mostly) on my own, real, or by him supposed, views and purports. If I
give any answers to him, or explanations of what my books intend, they
will be not direct but indirect and derivative. Of course this brief
jotting is personal. Something very like querulous egotism and growling
may break through the narrative (for I have been and am rejected by all
the great magazines, carry now my 72d annual burden, and have been a
paralytic for 18 years.)
No great poem or other literary or artistic work of any scope, old
or new, can be essentially consider'd without weighing first the age,
politics (or want of politics) and aim, visible forms, unseen soul, and
current times, out of the midst of which it rises and is formulated:
as the Biblic canticles and their days and spirit--as the Homeric, or
Dante's utterance, or Shakspere's, or the old Scotch or Irish ballads,
or Ossian, or Omar Khayyam. So I have conceiv'd and launch'd, and work'd
for years at, my 'Leaves of Grass'--personal emanations only at best,
but with specialty of emergence and background--the ripening of the
nineteenth century, the thought and fact and radiation of individuality,
of America, the secession war, and showing the democratic conditions
supplanting everything that insults them or impedes their aggregate way.
Doubtless my poems illustrate (one of novel thousands to come for a long
period) those conditions; but "democratic art" will have to wait long
before it is satisfactorily formulated and defined--if it ever is.
I will now for one indicative moment lock horns with what many Think
the greatest thing, the question of _art_, so-call'd. I have not seen
without learning something therefrom, how, with hardly an exception,
the poets of this age devote themselves, always mainly, sometimes
altogether, to fine rhyme, spicy verbalism, the fabric and cut of the
garment, jewelry, _concetti_, style, art. To-day these adjuncts
are certainly the effort, beyond all else, yet the lesson of Nature
undoubtedly is, to proceed with single purpose toward the result
necessitated, and for which the time has arrived, utterly regardless of
the outputs of shape, appearance or criticism, which are always left to
settle themselves. I have not only not bother'd much about style,
form, art, etc., but confess to more or less apathy (I believe I have
sometimes caught myself in decided aversion) toward them throughout,
asking nothing of them but negative advantages--that they should never
impede me, and never under any circumstances, or for their own purposes
only, assume any mastery over me.
From the beginning I have watch'd the sharp and sometimes heavy and
deep-penetrating objections and reviews against my work, and I hope
entertain'd and audited them; (for I have probably had an advantage in
constructing from a central and unitary principle since the first, but
at long intervals and stages--sometimes lapses of five or six years, or
peace or war.) Ruskin, the Englishman, charges as a fearful and serious
lack that my poems have no humor. A profound German critic complains
that, compared with the luxuriant and well-accepted songs of the world,
there is about my verse a certain coldness, severity, absence of spice,
polish, or of consecutive meaning and plot. (The book is autobiographic
at bottom, and may-be I do not exhibit and make ado about the stock
passions: I am partly of Quaker stock.) Then E.C. Stedman finds (or
found) mark'd fault with me because while celebrating the common people
_en masse_, I do not allow enough heroism and moral merit and good
intentions to the choicer classes, the college-bred, the _état-major_.
It is quite probable that S. is right in the matter. In the main I
myself look, and have from the first look'd, to the bulky democratic
_torso_ of the United States even for esthetic and moral attributes
of serious account--and refused to aim at or accept anything less. If
America is only for the rule and fashion and small typicality of other
lands (the rule of the _état-major_) it is not the land I take it for,
and should to-day feel that my literary aim and theory had been blanks
and misdirections. Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger
or smaller lumps of sugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake--even the
banqueters dwelling on those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish.
Which perhaps leads to something: to have great heroic poetry we need
great readers--a heroic appetite and audience. Have we at present any
such?
Then the thought at the centre, never too often repeated. Boundless
material wealth, free political organization, immense geographic
area, and unprecedented "business" and products--even the most active
intellect and "culture"--will not place this Commonwealth of ours on the
topmost range of history and humanity--or any eminence of "democratic
art"--to say nothing of its pinnacle. Only the production (and on the
most copious scale) of loftiest moral, spiritual and heroic personal
illustrations--a great native Literature headed with a Poetry stronger
and sweeter than any yet. If there can be any such thing as a kosmic
modern and original song, America needs it, and is worthy of it.
In my opinion to-day (bitter as it is to say so) the outputs through
civilized nations everywhere from the great words Literature, Art,
Religion, &c., with their conventional administerers, stand squarely in
the way of what the vitalities of those great words signify, more than
they really prepare the soil for them--or plant the seeds, or cultivate
or garner the crop. My own opinion has long been, that for New World
service our ideas of beauty (inherited from the Greeks, and so on to
Shakspere--_query_--perverted from them?) need to be radically changed,
and made anew for to-day's purposes and finer standards. But if so,
it will all come in due time--the real change will be an autochthonic,
interior, constitutional, even local one, from which our notions of
beauty (lines and colors are wondrous lovely, but character is lovelier)
will branch or offshoot.
So much have I now rattled off (old age's garrulity,) that there is not
space for explaining the most important and pregnant principle of all,
viz., that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times and forms
and sorts--is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or
occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the
impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller
who said, "I never bother myself what road the folks come--I only want
good wheat and rye."
The font is about the same forever. Democratic art results of democratic
development, from tinge, true nationality, belief, in the one setting up
from it.
Note:
[44] Two new volumes, "Essays Speculative and Suggestive," by John
Addington Symonds. One of the Essays is on "Democratic Art," in which I
and my books are largely alluded to and cited and dissected. It is
this part of the vols. that has caused the off-hand lines above--(first
thanking Mr. S. for his invariable courtesy of personal treatment).