Chapter 15

I must not close this paper without some reference to Walt Whitman's prose writings, which are scarcely less important than his poems. Never has Patriotism, never has the antique Love of Country, with even doubled passion and strength, been more fully expressed than in these contributions. They comprise two thin volumes,--now included in "Two Rivulets,"--called "Democratic Vistas" and "Memoranda during the War;" the former exhibiting the personality of the poet in more vehement and sweeping action even than do the poems, and affording specimens of soaring vaticination and impassioned appeal impossible to match in the literature of our time. The only living author suggested is Carlyle; but so much is added, the _presence_ is so much more vascular and human, and the whole page so saturated with faith and love and democracy, that even the great Scotchman is overborne. Whitman, too, radiates belief, while at the core of Carlyle's utterances is despair. The style here is eruptive and complex, or what Jeremy Taylor calls _agglomerative,_ and puts the Addisonian models utterly to rout,--a style such as only the largest and most Titanic workman could effectively use. A sensitive lady of my acquaintance says reading the "Vistas" is like being exposed to a pouring hailstorm,--the words fairly bruise her mind. In its literary construction the book is indeed a shower, or a succession of showers, multitudinous, wide-stretching, down-pouring,--the wrathful bolt and the quick veins of poetic fire lighting up the page from time to time. I can easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed and bent by some of these long, involved, but firm and vehement passages. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is referring to the great literary relics of past times:--

"For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand,--those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flames of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creating eternal shapes of physical and aesthetic proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the sword, and the codex,--of the figures, some far off and veiled, others near and visible; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and the great painters, architects, musicians; rich Shakespeare, luxuriant as the sun, artist and singer of Feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colors, owner thereof, and using them at will;--and so to such as German Kant and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to our favorite figure, and view them as orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the cosmic intellect, the Soul?

"Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the Feudal and the old--while our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New World's nostrils--not to enslave us as now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own--perhaps (dare we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy what you yourselves have left! On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, will I mete and measure for our wants to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional, uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic despots of the west!"

Here is another passage of a political cast, but showing the same great pinions and lofty flight:--

"It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with lines of blood, and many a deep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection,--saying, Lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long, and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting the history of Old World dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no account,--making a new history, the history of Democracy, making old history a dwarf,--I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your Soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Behold the anguish of suspense, existence itself wavering in the balance, uncertain whether to rise or fall; already, close behind you and around you, thick winrows of corpses on battlefields, countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative departments, schemers, thieves everywhere,--cant, credulity, make-believe everywhere. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,--must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections, and invigorations of ideas and men."

The "Memoranda during the War" is mainly a record of personal experiences, nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals: most of it is in a low key, simple, unwrought, like a diary kept for one's self; but it reveals the large, tender, sympathetic soul of the poet even more than his elaborate works, and puts in practical form that unprecedented and fervid comradeship which is his leading element. It is printed almost verbatim, just as the notes were jotted down at the time and on the spot. It is impossible to read it without the feeling of tears, while there is elsewhere no such portrayal of the common soldier, and such appreciation of him, as is contained in its pages. It is heart's blood, every word of it, and along with "Drum-Taps" is the only literature of the war thus far entirely characteristic and worthy of serious mention. There are in particular two passages in the "Memoranda" that have amazing dramatic power, vividness, and rapid action, like some quick painter covering a large canvas. I refer to the account of the assassination of President Lincoln, and to that of the scenes in Washington after the first battle of Bull Run. What may be called the mass-movement of Whitman's prose style--the rapid marshaling and grouping together of many facts and details, gathering up, and recruiting, and expanding as the sentences move along, till the force and momentum become like a rolling flood, or an army in echelon on the charge--is here displayed with wonderful effect.

Noting and studying what forces move the world, the only sane explanation that comes to me of the fact that such writing as these little volumes contain has not, in this country especially, met with its due recognition and approval, is that, like all Whitman's works, they have really never yet been published at all in the true sense,--have never entered the arena where the great laurels are won. They have been printed by the author, and a few readers have found them out, but to all intents and purposes they are unknown.

I have not dwelt on Whitman's personal circumstances, his age (he is now, 1877, entering his fifty-ninth year), paralysis, seclusion, and the treatment of him by certain portions of the literary classes, although these have all been made the subjects of wide discussion of late, both in America and Great Britain, and have, I think, a bearing under the circumstances on his character and genius. It is an unwritten tragedy that will doubtless always remain unwritten. I will but mention an eloquent appeal of the Scotch poet, Robert Buchanan, published in London in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending the American bard, in his old age, illness, and poverty, from the swarms of maligners who still continue to assail him. The appeal has this fine passage:--

"He who wanders through the solitudes of far-off Uist or lonely Donegal may often behold the Golden Eagle sick to death, worn with age or famine, or with both, passing with weary waft of wing from promontory to promontory, from peak to peak, pursued by a crowd of rooks and crows, which fall back screaming whenever the noble bird turns his indignant head, and which follow frantically once more, hooting behind him, whenever he wends again upon his way."

Skipping many things I should yet like to touch upon,--for this paper is already too long,--I will say in conclusion that, if any reader of mine is moved by what I have here written to undertake the perusal of "Leaves of Grass," or the later volume, "Two Rivulets," let me yet warn him that he little suspects what is before him. Poetry in the Virgilian, Tennysonian, or Lowellian sense it certainly is not. Just as the living form of man in its ordinary garb is less beautiful (yet more beautiful) than the marble statue; just as the living woman and child that may have sat for the model is less beautiful (yet more so) than one of Raphael's finest Madonnas, or just as a forest of trees addresses itself less directly to the feeling of what is called art and form than the house or other edifice built from them; just as you, and the whole spirit of our current times, have been trained to feed on and enjoy, not Nature or Man, or the aboriginal forces, or the actual, but pictures, books, art, and the selected and refined,--just so these poems will doubtless first shock and disappoint you. Your admiration for the beautiful is never the feeling directly and chiefly addressed in them, but your love for the breathing flesh, the concrete reality, the moving forms and shows of the universe. A man reaches and moves you, not an artist. Doubtless, too, a certain withholding and repugnance has first to be overcome, analogous to a cold sea plunge; and it is not till you experience the reaction, the after-glow, and feel the swing and surge of the strong waves, that you know what Walt Whitman's pages really are. They don't give themselves at first,--like the real landscape and the sea, they are all indirections. You may have to try them many times; there is something of Nature's rudeness and forbiddingness, not only at the first, but probably always. But after you have mastered them by resigning yourself to them, there is nothing like them anywhere in literature for vital help and meaning. The poet says:--

"The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, That scorn the best I can do to relate them."

And the press of your mind to these pages will certainly start new and countless problems that poetry and art have never before touched, and that afford a perpetual stimulus and delight.

It has been said that the object of poetry and the higher forms of literature is to escape from the tyranny of the real into the freedom of the ideal; but what is the ideal unless ballasted and weighted with the real? All these poems have a lofty ideal background; the great laws and harmonies stretch unerringly above them, and give their vista and perspective. It is because Whitman's ideal is clothed with rank materiality, as the soul is clothed with the carnal body, that his poems beget such warmth and desire in the mind, and are the reservoirs of so much power. No one can feel more than I how absolutely necessary it is that the facts of nature and experience be born again in the heart of the bard, and receive the baptism of the true fire before they be counted poetical; and I have no trouble on this score with the author of "Leaves of Grass." He never fails to ascend into spiritual meanings. Indeed, the spirituality of Walt Whitman is the chief fact after all, and dominates every page he has written.

Observe that this singer and artist makes no _direct_ attempt to be poetical, any more than he does to be melodious or rhythmical. He approaches these qualities and results as it were from beneath, and always indirectly; they are drawn to him, not he to them; and if they appear absent from his page at first, it is because we have been looking for them in the customary places on the outside, where he never puts them, and have not yet penetrated the interiors. As many of the fowls hide their eggs by a sort of intuitive prudery and secretiveness, Whitman always half hides, or more than half hides, his thought, his glow, his magnetism, his most golden and orbic treasures.

Finally, as those men and women respect and love Walt Whitman best who have known him longest and closest personally, the same rule will apply to "Leaves of Grass" and the later volume, "Two Rivulets." It is indeed neither the first surface reading of those books, nor perhaps even the second or third, that will any more than prepare the student for the full assimilation of the poems. Like Nature, and like the Sciences, they suggest endless suites of chambers opening and expanding more and more and continually.

INDEX

[Transcribist's note: Index has been shortened to names of authors and to birds, with scientific names.]

Aeschylus Akers, Elizabeth. Apuleius. Audubon, John Jaines.

Bacon, Francis. Benton, Myron. Bible. Bittern, American (_Botaurus lentiginosus_). Bjoernson, Bjoernstjerne. Blackbird, cow, or cowbird (_Molothrus ater_). Blackbird, European. Bluebird (_Sialia sialis_). Bobolink (_Dolichonyx oryzivorus_). Bryant, William Cullen. Buchanan, Robert. Bunting, snow, or snowflake (_Passerina nivalis_). Burke, Edmund. Burns, Robert. Byron, Lord.

Cardinal. See Grosbeak, cardinal. Carlyle, Thomas. Cedar-bird, or cedar waxwing (_Ampelis cedrorum_). Chat, yellow-breasted (_Icteria virens_). Chewink, or towhee (_Pipilo erythrophthalmus_). Chickadee (_Parus atricapillus_). Cicada. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Cowper, William. Crow, American (_Corvis brachyrhynchos_). Cuckoo, American. Cuckoo, European. Dante. Darwin, Charles. Dove, mourning (_Zenaidura macroura_).

Eagle. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Everett, Edward.

Flagg, Wilson. Flicker. See High-hole. Flycatcher, great crested (_Myiarchus crinitus_). Frogs. See Hyla.

Gilder, Richard Watson. Grasshopper of Greek poetry. Grosbeak, cardinal, or cardinal (_Cardinalis cardinalis_). Grosbeak, pine (_Pinicola enucleator leucura_). Grouse, ruffed (_Bonasa umbellus_).

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert. Hawk. High-hole, or yellow-hammer, or golden-shafted woodpecker, or flicker (_Colaptes auratus luteus_). Hogg, James. Homer. Hood, Thomas. Hornets, black. Hudson River valley. Hummingbird, ruby-throated (_Trochilus colubris_). Hyla, green. Hyla, Pickering's.

Ingelow, Jean.

Jefferson, Thomas. Jonson, Ben.

Keats, John. Kingbird (_Tyrannus tyrannus_).

Lamb, Charles. Lark. See Skylark. Lark, shore or horned (_Otocoris alpestris_). Lathrop, George Parson. Lincoln, Abraham. Lizard. Locust. Logan, John. Loon (_Gavia imber_). Lowell, James Russell. Lyly, John.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington. Meadowlark (_Sturnella magna_). Michael Angelo. Milton, John. Mockingbird (_Mimus polyglottos_).

Oriole, Baltimore (_Icterus galbula_). Oven-bird, or golden-crowned thrush (_Seiurus aurocapillus_). Owl.

Partridge. See Grouse, ruffed. Pewee, wood (_Contopus virens_). Phaedrus. Phoebe-bird (_Sayornis phoebe_). Pigeon, passenger (_Ectopistes migratorius_). Pipit, American, or titlark (_Anthus pensilvanicus_). Pipit, Sprague's (_Anthus spragueii_). Pope, Alexander.

Quail, or bob-white (_Colinus virginianus_).

Redpoll (_Acanthis linaria_). Robin, American (_Merula migratoria_).

Sandpiper, spotted, or "tip-up" (_Actitis macularia_). Sandpipers. Shelley, Percy Bysshe.

Snake. Snake, garter. Socrates. Solomon. Sparrow, social or chipping (_Spizella socialis_). Sparrow, song (_Melospiza cinerea melodia_). Sparrow, tree or Canada (_Spizella monticola_). Sparrow, vesper (_Pooecetes gramineus_). Sparrow, white-crowned (_Zonotrichia leucophrys_). Sparrow, white-throated (_Zonotrichia albicollis_). Spenser. Strawberry. Sugar-berry. Swallow, barn (_Hirundo erythrogastra_). Swallow, chimney, or chimney swift (_Chaetura pelagica_). Swallow, cliff (Petrochellidon lunifrons). Swift, chimney. See Swallow.

Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe. Tennyson, Alfred. Thaxter, Celia. Thomson, James. Thoreau, Henry D.. Thrasher, brown, or long-tailed thrush (_Toxostoma rufum_). Thrush, golden-crowned. See Ovenbird. Thrush, hermit (_Hylocichla guttata pallasii_). Thrush, wood (_Hylocichla mustelina_). Tip-up. See Sandpiper, spotted. Titlark. See Pipit, American. Townee. See Chewink. Trowbridge, John T. Turgenieff. Turner, J. M. W. Turtles.

Warbler, pine (_Dendroica vigorsii_). Water-thrush. Whip-poor-will (_Antrostomus vociferous_). Whitman, Walt. Whittier, John Greenleaf. Wilde, Richard Henry. Wilson, Alexander. Woodchuck. Woodpecker, downy (_Dryobates pubescens medianus_). Woodpecker, golden-shafted. See High-hole. Woodpecker, hairy (_Dryobates villosus_). Woodpecker, red-headed (_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_). Wordsworth, William. Wren, house (_Troglodytes aedon_).

Yellow-hammer. See High-hole. Yellow-throat, Maryland, or northern yellow-throat (_Geothlypis trichas brachidactyla_).