the choice of certain words, phrases, images, and topics, and the
rejection of certain others. Lowell was conservative by nature and
thoroughly steeped in the tradition of letters. Perhaps he was too
tightly bound by these fetters of convention to relish their sudden
loosening. I wonder what he would have thought of his kinswoman Amy's
free verses if he had lived to read them.
If a large, good-natured, clean, healthy animal could write poetry, it
would write much such poetry as the "Leaves of Grass." It would tell how
good it is to lie and bask in the warm sun; to stand in cool, flowing
water, to be naked in the fresh air; to troop with friendly companions
and embrace one's mate. "Leaves of Grass" is the poetry of pure
sensation, and mainly, though not wholly, of physical sensation. In a
famous passage the poet says that he wants to go away and live with the
animals. Not one of them is respectable or sorry or conscientious or
worried about its sins.
But his poetry, though animal to a degree, is not unhuman. We do not
know enough about the psychology of the animals to be sure whether, or
not, they have any sense of the world as a whole. Does an elephant or an
eagle perhaps, viewing some immense landscape, catch any glimpse of the
universe, as an object of contemplation, apart from the satisfaction of
his own sensual needs? Probably not. But Whitman, as has been said a
hundred times, was "cosmic." He had an unequalled sense of the bigness
of creation and of "these States." He owned a panoramic eye and a large
passive imagination, and did well to loaf and let the tides of sensation
flow over his soul, drawing out what music was in him without much care
for arrangement or selection.
I once heard an admirer of Walt challenged to name a single masterpiece
of his production. Where was his perfect poem, his gem of flawless
workmanship? He answered, in effect, that he didn't make masterpieces.
His poetry was diffused, like the grass blades that symbolized for him
our democratic masses.
Of course, the man in the street thinks that Walt Whitman's stuff is not
poetry at all, but just bad prose. He acknowledges that there are
splendid lines, phrases, and whole passages. There is that one
beginning, "I open my scuttle at night," and that glorious apostrophe to
the summer night, "Night of south winds, night of the large, few stars."
But, as a whole, his work is tiresome and without art. It is alive, to
be sure, but so is protoplasm. Life is the first thing and form is
secondary; yet form, too, is important. The musician, too lazy or too
impatient to master his instrument, breaks it, and seizes a megaphone.
Shall we call that originality or failure?
It is also a commonplace that the democratic masses of America have
never accepted Walt Whitman as their spokesman. They do not read him, do
not understand or care for him. They like Longfellow, Whittier, and
James Whitcomb Riley, poets of sentiment and domestic life, truly poets
of the people. No man can be a spokesman for America who lacks a sense
of humor, and Whitman was utterly devoid of it, took himself most
seriously, posed as a prophet. I do not say that humor is a desirable
quality. The thesis may even be maintained that it is a disease of the
mind, a false way of looking at things. Many great poets have been
without it--Milton for example. Shelley used to speak of "the withering
and perverting power of comedy." But Shelley was slightly mad. At all
events, our really democratic writers have been such as Mark Twain and
James Whitcomb Riley. I do not know what Mark Twain thought of Walt, but
I know what Riley thought of him. He thought him a grand humbug.
Certainly if he had had any sense of humor he would not have peppered
his poems so naïvely with foreign words, calling out "Camerado!" ever
and anon, and speaking of a perfectly good American sidewalk as a
"trottoir" _quasi Lutetia Parisii_. And if he had not had a streak of
humbug in him, he would hardly have written anonymous puffs of his own
poetry.
But I am far from thinking Walt Whitman a humbug. He was a man of genius
whose work had a very solid core of genuine meaning. It is good to read
him in spots--he is so big and friendly and wholesome; he feels so good,
like a man who has just had a cold bath and tingles with the joy of
existence.
Whitman was no humbug, but there is surely some humbug about the Whitman
_culte_. The Whitmanites deify him. They speak of him constantly as a
seer, a man of exalted intellect. I do not believe that he was a great
thinker, but only a great feeler. Was he the great poet of America, or
even a great poet at all? A great poet includes a great artist, and
"Leaves of Grass," as has been pointed out times without number, is the
raw material of poetry rather than the finished product.
A friend of mine once wrote an article about Whitman, favorable on the
whole, but with qualifications. He got back a copy of it through the
mail, with the word "Jackass!" pencilled on the margin by some outraged
Whitmaniac. I know what has been said and written in praise of old Walt
by critics of high authority, and I go along with them a part of the
way, but only a part. And I do not stand in terror of any critics,
however authoritative; remembering how even the great Goethe was taken
in by Macpherson's "Ossian." A very interesting paper might be written
on what illustrious authors have said of each other: what Carlyle said
of Newman, for instance; or what Walter Scott said of Joanna Baillie and
the like.
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