Part 6 (1/2)
”This or, calmness, beauty of person, The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the io and visit him to see--he ise also, He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsohters loved him--all who saw him loved him, They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal love; He drank water only--the blood showed like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face, He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sailed his boat himself--he had a fine one presented to hi-pieces presented to him by randsons to hunt or fish, you would pick hi, You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by hiht touch each other”
All the _motifs_ of his work are the near, the vital, the universal; nothing curious, or subtle, or far-fetched His working ideas are democracy, equality, personality, nativity, health, sexuality, comradeshi+p, self-esteem, the purity of the body, the equality of the sexes, etc Out of them his work radiates They are the eyes hich it sees, the ears hich it hears, the feet upon which it goes The poeuesture, a tone of voice
”The word I myself put primarily for the description of theestiveness”
”Leaves of Grass” requires a large perspective; youto it a nanimity of spirit,--a charity and faith equal to its own Looked at too closely, it often seeless; draw off a little and let the figure come out
The book is from first to last a e, reflective, loving, inative personality, to descend upon the materialism of the nineteenth century, and especially upon a new democratic nation now in full career upon this continent, with such poetic fervor and enthusiass of the spirit and disclose the order of universal nature The poet has taken shelter behind no precedent, or criticisly faced the oceanic amplitude and movement of the life of his times and land, and fused them in his fervid hus One of thefeatures of the book is the adequacy and composure, even joyousness and elation, of the poet in the presence of the huge materialism and prosaic conditions of our democratic era He spreads himself over it all, he accepts and absorbs it all, he rejects no part; and his quality, his individuality, shi+nes through it all, as the sun through vapors The least line, or fragment of a line, is redolent of Walt Whitman It is never so much the theme treated as it is the man exploited and illustrated Walt Whit,--does not take a bit of nature or life or character and chisel and carve it into a beautiful i it in pleasing tropes and pictures His purpose is rather to show a towering, loving, co theestions in the hi hints and clues right and left, provoking and stiination of his reader, but finishi+ng nothing for hi much to be desired, much to be completed by hiet at the spirit andof ”Leaves of Grass”
principle, from first to last, is Democracy,--that it is a work conceived and carried forward in the spirit of the genius of humanity that is now in full career in the New World,--and that all things characteristically American (trades, tools, occupations, productions, characters, scenes) therefore have their places in it It is intended to be a complete mirror of the times in which the life of the poet fell, and to show onesuperior to it,--namely, the poet himself Yet it is never Whith him He personifies the spirit of universal brotherhood, and in this character launches forth his ”ootism, shameless confessions, or unworthy affiliations with low, rude persons, ould seeood and bad, virtue and vice, etc, in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the boundless co power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal Des are made plain and easy in the works of this le poeht upon his aims and methods, and the demand he makes upon his reader, is in ”Cala ive you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you suppos'd, but far different
”Who is he that would becon himself a candidate for my affections?
”The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard, Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon'd, Therefore release o your hand from my shoulders, Put me down and depart on your way
”Or else by stealth in some wood for trial, Or back of a rock in the open air, (For in any roof'd rooe not, nor in coawk, or unborn, or dead,) But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person forat sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island, Here to put your lips uponkiss or the new husband's kiss, For I am the new husband and I a , Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip, Carry o forth over land or sea; For thusyou would I silently sleep and be carried eternally
”But these leaves conning you con at peril, For these leaves and me you will not understand, They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you, Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you
”For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, Nor do those know ly praise me, Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at ood only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps uess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at, Therefore release me and depart on your way”
When one has fully ood hold upon Whit and elusive character of his work, the extraordinary de effects upon life, its direct cognizance of evil as a necessary part of the good (there was a huaret Fuller) its unbookish spirit and affiliations, its indirect and suggestive h our acquaintance with life and real things at first hand, etc,--all this and more is in the poem
HIS SELF-RELIANCE
I
It is over sixty years since Goethe said that to be a Gers have changed in Germany since those times, and that the Goethe of to-day does not encounter the jealousy and hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth In Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author as an American martyr in a reat German More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moliere, or Byron, was Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and tie, tolerant, and self-sufficing that his htly upon him His unpopularity was rather a tonic to him than otherwise It was of a kind that tries a s out his heroic traits if he has any
One almost envies hireatest ones have experienced, and that attests so extraordinary in the recipient of it He said he was more resolute because all had denied him than he ever could have been had all accepted, and he added:--
”I heed not and have never heeded either cautions, majorities, nor ridicule”
There are no es in history than the records of men who have faced unpopularity, odium, hatred, ridicule, detraction, in obedience to an inward voice, and never lost courage or good-nature
Whit case in our literary annals,--probably the ion The inward voice alone was the oracle he obeyed: ”My co”
The bitter-sweet cup of unpopularity he drained to its dregs, and drained it cheerfully, as one knowing beforehand that it is preparing for him and cannot be avoided
”Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you? and stood aside for you?