Part 1 (1/2)

Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today.

by Henry Eduard Legler.

I

On a day about mid-year in 1855, the conventional literary world was startled into indecorous behavior by the unannounced appearance of a thin quarto sheaf of poems, in form and in tone unlike anything of precedent issue. It was called Leaves of Gra.s.s, and there were but twelve poems in the volume. No author's name appeared upon the t.i.tle page, the separate poems bore no captions, there was no imprint of publisher. A steel engraving of a man presumably between thirty and forty years of age, coatless, s.h.i.+rt flaringly open at the neck, and a copyright notice identifying Walter Whitman with the publication, furnished the only clues. Uncouth in size, atrociously printed, and shockingly frank in the language employed, the volume evoked such a tirade of rancorous condemnation as perhaps bears no parallel in the history of letters. From contemporary criticisms might be compiled an Anthology of Anathema comparable to Wagner's Schimpf-Lexicon, or the Dictionary of Abuse suggested by William Archer for Henrik Ibsen. Some of the striking adjectives and phrases employed in print would include the following, as applied either to the verses or their author:

The slop-bucket of Walt Whitman.

A belief in the preciousness of filth.

Entirely b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

Nastiness and animal insensibility to shame.

Noxious weeds.

Impious and obscene.

Disgusting burlesque.

Broken out of Bedlam.

Libidinousness and swell of self-applause.

Defilement.

Crazy outbreak of conceit and vulgarity.

Ithyphallic audacity.

Gross indecency.

Sunken sensualist.

Rotten garbage of licentious thoughts.

Roots like a pig.

Rowdy Knight Errant.

A poet whose indecencies stink in the nostrils.

Its liberty is the wildest license; its love the essence of the lowest l.u.s.t!

Priapus--wors.h.i.+pping obscenity.

Rant and rubbish.

Linguistic silliness.

Inhumanly insolent.

Apotheosis of Sweat.

Mouthings of a mountebank.

Venomously malignant.

Pretentious twaddle.

Degraded helot of literature.

His work, like a maniac's robe, bedizened with fluttering tags of a thousand colors.