Part 8 (1/2)

Unless the poetic perception is fundas, actions, characters, multitudes, heroisms, we shall read Whitman with very poor results Unless Ae, life, nature, are poetical to us, Whiter poetry of forces, masses, persons, enthusiasms, rather than at the poetry of the specially rare and fine He kindles in ht I have in space, freedoreat personal qualities of self-reliance, courage, candor, charity

Always in the literary poets are we i distinct froets hiuage of the poet, as the priest assue of devotion In Whitets himself up for the occasion Our pleasure in him is rarely or never our pleasure in the well-dressed, the well-drilled, the cultivated, the refined, the orderly, but it is s, in human qualities and powers, in freedom, health, develop struck afresh with its pictural quality, its grasp of the concrete, its vivid realiss, persons, truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such as we can never get in e, as personal as a handshake, and yet withal how mystical, how elusive, how incos to the fraternity of great artists, the shapers and moulders of the ideal,--those who breathe the breath of life into the clay or stone of cos plastic and the vehicles of great and human emotions,--is to read hiet at Walt Whit with nature; you are to bring the saination You are not to be balked by what appears to be the coarse and the familiar, or his rank contemporaneity; after a time you will surely see the lambent spiritual flames that play about it all

”Prophetic spirit ofabout me,”

and his cosmic splendor, depth, and power It is not the denial of art, it is a new affirmation of life It is one phase of his deical conclusion of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself that appeared in the first edition of his poeive us more of the man, a fuller measure of personal, concrete, human qualities, than any poet before his and illusions usual in poetry, and relies entirely upon the native and intrinsic He will have no curtains, he says,--not the finest,--between hiht with in of all poeood of the earth and sun (there are s at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through s from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself”

This is a hint of his democracy as applied to literature,--more direct and immediate contact with the pris of art and inal character and of nature

III

It seeainst the narrow and dogmatic spirit that so often crops out in current criticis this uarded,” says a recent authority, as if art had boundaries like a state or province that had been accurately surveyed and fixed,--as if art was a fact and not a spirit

Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that art is in any sense an ”enclosure,”--a province fenced off and set apart froh so many people would like to make it so Art is commensurate with the human spirit I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics Art has but one principle, one aim,--to produce an impression, a powerful i all the canons of taste and criticisenius shall be born ill produce his effects in defiance of it, or by appearing to reverse it Such a ht, to set at defiance all correct notions of art The saner in music, the same with Whitman in poetry The new man is impossible till he appears, and, when he appears, in proportion to his originality and power does it take the world a longer or shorter time to adjust its critical standards to hi final in art: its principles follow and do not lead the creator; they are deductions from his work, not its inspiration We demand of the new ,--has he authentic inspiration and power? If he has not, his pretensions are soon exploded

If he has, we cannot put him down, any more than we can put down a law of nature, and we very soon find some principle of art that fits his case Is there no room for the new man? But the new man makes rooely makes the taste by which he is appreciated, and the rules of art by which he is to be judged

IV

The trouble with most of us is that we found our taste for poetry upon particular authors, instead of upon literature as a whole, or, better yet, upon life and reality Hence we form standards instead of principles

Standards are li, while principles are flexible, expansive, creative If we are wedded to the Miltonic standard of poetry, the classic standards, we shall have great difficulties with Whitman; but if we have founded our taste upon natural principles--if we have learned to approach literature through reality, instead of reality through literature--we shall not be the victims of any one style or model; we shall be made free of all The real test of art, of any art, as Burke long ago said, and as quoted by Mr Howells in his trenchant little voluht outside of art, na while I measure it by no other standard than itself The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation of the ive the truest lights” It is thought that the preeminence of the Greek standards is settled e say they are natural Yes, but Nature is not Greek She is Asiatic, Gerlish, as well

V

In poetry, in art, a man must sustain a certain vital relation to his work, and that work must sustain a certain vital relation to the laws of mind and of life That is all, and that leaves the doors very wide We are not to ask, Is it like this or like that? but, Is it vital, is it real, is it a consistent, well-organized whole?

The poet must always interpret himself and nature after his own fashi+on

Is his fashi+on adequate? Is the interpretation vivid and real? Do his lines cut to the quick, and beget heat and joy in the soul? If we cannothis enthusiasm for it, the trouble is as likely to be in ourselves as in him In any case he must be a law unto himself

The creative artist differs from the mere writer or thinker in this: he sustains a direct personal relation to his subject through emotion, intuition, will The indirect, impersonal relation which works by reflection, comparison, and analysis is that of the critic and philosopher The ives us a concrete and iet the thing itself; fro The poet does not merely say the world is beautiful; he shows it as beautiful: he does not describe the flower; he places it before us What are the eneid, the obscure A poet with a thesis to sustain is more or less barred from the freedom of pure art It is by direct and unconsidered expression, says Scherer, that art cos that , intuition, sentis,--in fact, all that makes for life, health, and wholeness Goethe is more truly an artist in the first part of Faust than in the second; Arnold has a more truly artistic mind than Lowell

The principles of art are always the same in the respect I have indicated, just as the principles of life are always the saevity are always the same No writer is an artist who is related to his subject sirip alone: he must have a certain emotional affiliation and identity with it; he does not so much convey to us ideas and principles as pictures, parables, is When we put Whits here; we enerative,--that he paints instead of interprets, that he gives us reasons instead of iive a little charity,” he says; ”when I give, I give myself” This the artist always does, not his mind merely, but his soul, his personality

”Leaves of Grass” is as direct an emanation from a central personal force as any book in literature, and always carries its own test and its own proof It never hardens into a system, it never ceases to be penetrated ill and emotion, it never declines frohts All is ress, evolution, picture, parable, irounds that Whitman, first of all, is an artist He has the artist temperament His whole life was that of a man who lives to ideal ends,--who lived to bestow hi and its joy

VI

Whito, and trusted hiree unprecedented His course required a self-reliance of the highest order; it required an innate cohesion and hoeneity, a firmness and consistency of individual outline, that few men have It would seem to be much easier to face the poet's problem in the old, orn forms--forms that are so winsome and authoritative in themselves--than, to stand upon a basis so individual and intrinsic as Whitoes to the quick at once How much of a ift? Can it go alone? Can it face us in undress?