It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more
melancholy one to write about it. Perhaps since the day of Mr. Tupper's
_Philosophy_ there has been no more difficult reading of the poetic
sort. It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift
itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry. Like hundreds of
other good patriots, during the last four years, Mr. Walt Whitman has
imagined that a certain amount of violent sympathy with the great deeds
and sufferings of our soldiers, and of admiration for our national
energy, together with a ready command of picturesque language, are
sufficient inspiration for a poet. If this were the case, we had been a
nation of poets. The constant developments of the war moved us
continually to strong feeling and to strong expression of it. But in
those cases in which these expressions were written out and printed with
all due regard to prosody, they failed to make poetry, as any one may
see by consulting now in cold blood the back volumes of the _Rebellion
Record_.
_Of course_ the city of Manhattan, as Mr. Whitman delights to call it,
when regiments poured through it in the first months of the war, and its
own sole god, to borrow the words of a real poet, ceased for a while to
be the millionaire, was a noble spectacle, and a poetical statement to
this effect is possible. _Of course_ the tumult of a battle is grand,
the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a
theme for elegies. But he is not a poet who merely reiterates these
plain facts _ore rotundo_. He only sings them worthily who views them
from a height. Every tragic event collects about it a number of persons
who delight to dwell upon its superficial points--of minds which are
bullied by the _accidents_ of the affair. The temper of such minds seems
to us to be the reverse of the poetic temper; for the poet, although he
incidentally masters, grasps, and uses the superficial traits of his
theme, is really a poet only in so far as he extracts its latent meaning
and holds it up to common eyes. And yet from such minds most of our
war-verses have come, and Mr. Whitman's utterances, much as the
assertion may surprise his friends, are in this respect no exception to
general fashion. They are an exception, however, in that they openly
pretend to be something better; and this it is that makes them
melancholy reading.
Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his own trumpet, and he has made
very explicit claims for his books. "Shut not your doors," he exclaims
at the outset--
"Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect;
But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm'd Libertad!
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,
With joy with you, O soul of man."
These are great pretensions, but it seems to us that the following are
even greater:
"From Paumanok starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada, 'till I absorb Kanada in myself--to Michigan then,
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs (they are
inimitable);
Then to Ohio and Indiana, to sing theirs--to Missouri and Kansas
and Arkansas to sing theirs,
To Tennessee and Kentucky--to the Carolinas and Georgia, to sing theirs,
To Texas, and so along up toward California, to roam accepted
everywhere;
To sing first (to the tap of the war-drum, if need be)
The idea of all--of the western world, one and inseparable,
And then the song of each member of these States."
Mr. Whitman's primary purpose is to celebrate the greatness of our
armies; his secondary purpose is to celebrate the greatness of the city
of New York. He pursues these objects through a hundred pages of matter
which remind us irresistibly of the story of the college professor who,
on a venturesome youth bringing him a theme done in blank verse,
reminded him that it was not customary in writing prose to begin each
line with a capital. The frequent capitals are the only marks of verse
in Mr. Whitman's writings. There is, fortunately, but one attempt at
rhyme. We say fortunately, for if the inequality of Mr. Whitman's lines
were self-registering, as it would be in the case of an anticipated
syllable at their close, the effect would be painful in the extreme. As
the case stands, each line stands off by itself, in resolute
independence of its companions, without a visible goal.
But if Mr. Whitman does not write verse, he does not write ordinary
prose. The reader has seen that liberty is "libertad." In like manner,
comrade is "camerado"; Americans are "Americanos"; a pavement is a
"trottoir," and Mr. Whitman himself is a "chansonnier." If there is one
thing that Mr. Whitman is not, it is this, for Beranger was a
_chansonnier_. To appreciate the force of our conjunction, the reader
should compare his military lyrics with Mr. Whitman's declamations. Our
author's novelty, however, is not in his words, but in the form of his
writing. As we have said, it begins for all the world like verse and
turns out to be arrant prose. It is more like Mr. Tupper's proverbs than
anything we have met.
But what if, in form, it _is_ prose? it may be asked. Very good poetry
has come out of prose before this. To this we would reply that it must
first have gone into it. Prose, in order to be good poetry, must first
be good prose. As a general principle, we know of no circumstance more
likely to impugn a writer's earnestness than the adoption of an
anomalous style. He must have something very original to say if none of
the old vehicles will carry his thoughts. Of course he _may_ be
surprisingly original. Still, presumption is against him. If on
examination the matter of his discourse proves very valuable, it
justifies, or at any rate excuses, his literary innovation.
But if, on the other hand, it is of a common quality, with nothing new
about it but its manners, the public will judge the writer harshly. The
most that can be said of Mr. Whitman's vaticinations is, that, cast in a
fluent and familiar manner, the average substance of them might escape
unchallenged. But we have seen that Mr. Whitman prides himself
especially on the substance--the life--of his poetry. It may be rough,
it may be grim, it may be clumsy--such we take to be the author's
argument--but it is sincere, it is sublime, it appeals to the soul of
man, it is the voice of a people. He tells us, in the lines quoted, that
the words of his book are nothing. To our perception they are
everything, and very little at that.
A great deal of verse that is nothing but words has, during the war,
been sympathetically sighed over and cut out of newspaper corners,
because it has possessed a certain simple melody. But Mr. Whitman's
verse, we are confident, would have failed even of this triumph, for the
simple reason that no triumph, however small, is won but through the
exercise of art, and that this volume is an offence against art. It is
not enough to be grim and rough and careless; common sense is also
necessary, for it is by common sense that we are judged. There exists in
even the commonest minds, in literary matters, a certain precise
instinct of conservatism, which is very shrewd in detecting wanton
eccentricities.
To this instinct Mr. Whitman's attitude seems monstrous. It is monstrous
because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the
intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages
the taste. The point is that it does this _on theory_, wilfully,
consciously, arrogantly. It is the little nursery game of "open your
mouth and shut your eyes." Our hearts are often touched through a
compromise with the artistic sense, but never in direct violation of it.
Mr. Whitman sits down at the outset and counts out the intelligence.
This were indeed a wise precaution on his part if the intelligence were
only submissive! But when she is deliberately insulted, she takes her
revenge by simply standing erect and open-eyed. This is assuredly the
best she can do. And if she could find a voice she would probably
address Mr. Whitman as follows:--
"You came to woo my sister, the human soul. Instead of giving me a kick
as you approach, you should either greet me courteously, or, at least,
steal in unobserved. But now you have me on your hands. Your chances are
poor. What the human heart desires above all is sincerity, and you do
not appear to me sincere. For a lover you talk entirely too much about
yourself. In one place you threaten to absorb Kanada. In another you
call upon the city of New York to incarnate you, as you have incarnated
it. In another you inform us that neither youth pertains to you nor
'delicatesse,' that you are awkward in the parlour, that you do not
dance, and that you have neither bearing, beauty, knowledge, nor
fortune. In another place, by an allusion to your 'little songs,' you
seem to identify yourself with the third person of the Trinity.
"For a poet who claims to sing 'the idea of all,' this is tolerably
egotistical. We look in vain, however, through your book for a single
idea. We find nothing but flashy imitations of ideas. We find a medley
of extravagances and commonplaces. We find art, measure, grace, sense
sneered at on every page, and nothing positive given us in their stead.
To be positive one must have something to say; to be positive requires
reason, labour, and art; and art requires, above all things, a
suppression of one's self, a subordination of one's self to an idea.
This will never do for you, whose plan is to adapt the scheme of the
universe to your own limitations. You cannot entertain and exhibit
ideas; but, as we have seen, you are prepared to incarnate them. It is
for this reason, doubtless, that when once you have planted yourself
squarely before the public, and in view of the great service you have
done to the ideal, have become, as you say, 'accepted everywhere,' you
can afford to deal exclusively in words. What would be bald nonsense and
dreary platitudes in any one else becomes sublimity in you.
"But all this is a mistake. To become adopted as a national poet, it is
not enough to discard everything in particular and to accept everything
in general, to amass crudity upon crudity, to discharge the undigested
contents of your blotting-book into the lap of the public. You must
respect the public which you address; for it has taste, if you have not.
It delights in the grand, the heroic, and the masculine; but it delights
to see these conceptions cast into worthy form. It is indifferent to
brute sublimity. It will never do for you to thrust your hands into your
pockets and cry out that, as the research of form is an intolerable
bore, the shortest and most economical way for the public to embrace its
idols--for the nation to realise its genius--is in your own person.
"This democratic, liberty-loving, American populace, this stern and
war-tried people, is a great civiliser. It is devoted to refinement. If
it has sustained a monstrous war, and practised human nature's best in
so many ways for the last five years, it is not to put up with spurious
poetry afterwards. To sing aright our battles and our glories it is not
enough to have served in a hospital (however praiseworthy the task in
itself), to be aggressively careless, inelegant, and ignorant, and to be
constantly preoccupied with yourself. It is not enough to be rude,
lugubrious, and grim. You must also be serious. You must forget yourself
in your ideas. Your personal qualities--the vigour of your temperament,
the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your
heart--these facts are impertinent. You must be _possessed_, and you
must thrive to possess your possession. If in your striving you break
into divine eloquence, then you are a poet. If the idea which possesses
you is the idea of your country's greatness, then you are a national
poet; and not otherwise."