It is curious that the influence of Poe upon Baudelaire, Verlaine, and
Mallarmé, and through them upon English poets, and then through these
last upon Americans, comes back to us in this round-about and indirect
way. We have here an instance of what Whitman calls a "perfect return."
We have denied Poe, we do not give him his full meed of appreciation
even today, and yet we accept him through the disciples who have
followed or have assimilated his tradition. And now that young
Englishmen are beginning to feel the influence of Whitman upon French
poetry, it may be that he too, through the imitation of _vers libre_ in
America, will begin to experience a "perfect return."
Must we always accept American genius in this round-about fashion? Have
we no true perspective that we applaud mediocrity at home, and look
abroad for genius, only to find that it is of American origin?
* * * * *
This bit of marginalia, extracted from a note-book of 1909, was relieved
of the necessity of further elaboration by supplementary evidence
received in one day from two correspondents. One, a brief sentence from
Mr. Allen Upward: "It is much to be wished that America should learn to
honor her sons without waiting for the literary cliques of London."
The other, the following "news note" from Mr. Paul Scott Mowrer in
Paris. The date of Léon Bazalgette's translation, however, is hardly so
epochal as it would seem, since Whitman has been known for many years in
France, having been partly translated during the nineties.
Mr. Mowrer writes:
"It is significant of American tardiness in the development of a
national literary tradition that the name of Walt Whitman is today a
greater influence with the young writers of the continent than with our
own. Not since France discovered Poe has literary Europe been so moved
by anything American. The suggestion has even been made that
'Whitmanism' is rapidly to supersede 'Nietzscheism' as the dominant
factor in modern thought. Léon Bazalgette translated _Leaves of Grass_
into French in 1908. A school of followers of the Whitman philosophy and
style was an almost immediate consequence. Such of the leading reviews
as sympathize at all with the strong 'young' movement to break the
shackles of classicism which have so long bound French prosody to the
heroic couplet, the sonnet, and the alexandrine, are publishing not only
articles on 'Whitmanism' as a movement, but numbers of poems in the new
flexible chanting rhythms. In this regard _La Nouvelle Revue Francaise_,
_La Renaissance Contemporaine_, and _L'Effort Libre_ have been
preëminently hospitable.
"The new poems are not so much imitations of Whitman as inspirations
from him. Those who have achieved most success in the mode thus far are
perhaps Georges Duhamel, a leader of the 'Jeunes,' whose plays are at
present attracting national notice; André Spire, who writes with
something of the apostolic fervor of his Jewish ancestry; Henri Franck,
who died recently, shortly after the publication of his volume, _La
Danse Devant l'Arche_; Charles Vildrac, with _Le Livre d'Amour_; Philéas
Lebesgue, the appearance in collected form of whose _Les Servitudes_ is
awaited with keen interest; and finally, Jean Richard Bloch, editor of
_L'Effort Libre_, whose prose, for example in his book of tales entitled
_Levy_, is said to be directly rooted in Whitmanism.
"In Germany, too, the rolling intonations of the singer of democracy
have awakened echoes. The _Moderne Weltdichtung_ has announced itself,
with Whitman as guide, and such apostles as Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, in
_Lobegesang des Lebens_, and Ernst Lissauer in _Der Acker_ and _Der
Strom_.
"What is it about Whitman that Europe finds so inspiriting? First, his
acceptance of the universe as he found it, his magnificently shouted
comradeship with all nature and all men. Such a doctrine makes an
instant though hardly logical appeal in nations where socialism is the
political order of the day. And next, his disregard of literary
tradition. Out of books more books, and out of them still more, with the
fecundity of generations. But in this process of literary propagation
thought, unfortunately, instead of arising like a child ever fresh and
vigorous as in the beginning, grows more and more attenuated, paler,
more sickly. The acclaim of Whitman is nothing less than the inevitable
revolt against the modern flood of book-inspired books. Write from
nature directly, from the people directly, from the political meeting,
and the hayfield, and the factory--that is what the august American
seems to his young disciples across the seas to be crying to them.
"Perhaps it is because America already holds as commonplaces these
fundamentals seeming so new to Europe that the Whitman schools have
sprung up stronger on the eastern side of the Atlantic than on the
western."
It is not that America holds as commonplaces the fundamentals expressed
in Whitman that there have been more followers of the Whitman method in
Europe than in America, but that American poets, approaching poetry
usually through terms of feeling, and apparently loath to apply an
intellectual whip to themselves or others, have made no definite
analysis of the rhythmic units of Whitman. We have been content to
accept the English conception of the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman. The
curious mingling of the concrete and the spiritual, which is what
certain modern painters, perhaps under the Whitman suggestion, are
trying to achieve, was so novel as to be disconcerting, and the vehicle
so original as to appear uncouth--uncadenced, unmusical. The
hide-bound, antiquated conception of English prosody is responsible for
a great deal of dead timber. It is a significant fact that the English
first accepted the spirit of Whitman, the French his method. The
rhythmic measure of Whitman has yet to be correctly estimated by English
and American poets. It has been sifted and weighed by the French poets,
and though Whitman's influence upon modern French poetry has been
questioned by English critics, the connection between his varied
rhythmic units and modern _vers libre_ is too obvious to be discounted.
There may be an innate necessity sufficient to cause a breaking-up of
forms in a poetic language, but there is no reason to believe that
Paris, the great clearing-house of all the arts, would not be quick to
adopt a suggestion from without. English poets, certainly, have not been
loath to accept suggestions from Paris.
At any rate this international acceptance of the two greatest American
poets, and the realization of their international influence upon us, may
awaken us to a new sense of responsibility. It would be a valuable
lesson, if only we could learn to turn the international eye, in
private, upon ourselves. If the American poet can learn to be less
parochial, to apply the intellectual whip, to visualize his art, to
separate it and see it apart from himself; we may learn then to
appreciate the great poet when he is "in our midst." and not wait for
the approval of English or French critics.
_A. C. H._