Part 8 (2/2)

Never did the artist ly conceal himself; never did he so co hi and challenging attention on his own account, denying us e too literally seek hi himself only e have come to him upon his own terms

The form the poet chose favored this self-revelation; there is nothing, no outside conscious art, to stand between himself and his reader ”This is no book,” he says: ”who touches this touches a man” In one sense Whitman is without art,--the impression which he always seeks to ive us reality without the usual literary veils and illusions,--the least possible amount of the artificial, the extrinsic, the put-on, between himself and his reader He banishes from his work, as far as possible, what others are so intent upon,--all atmosphere of books and culture, all air of literary intention and decoration,--and puts his spirit frankly and immediately to his readers

The verse does not seerown: it takes no apparent heed of externals, but flows on like a brook, irregular, rhythmical, and always fluid and real A cry will always be raised against the producer in any field who discards the authority of the models and falls back upon si, and Wagner inideas, the principles that inspired him, are all directly related to life and the problems of life; they are deion: while the ideas from which our poets in the main draw their inspiration are related to art,--they are literary ideas, such as lucidity, forht is thrown upon Whitman's literary methods and aims by a remark which he once made in conversation with Dr Bucke:--

”I have aimed to make the book simple,--tasteless, or with little taste,--with very little or no perfume The usual way is for the poet or writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is not the way of nature, which I take for model Nature presents us her productions--her air, earth, waters, even her flowers, grains, rance, but these in the long run s, constantly ai and selection he deepens and intensifies the scents and hues of flowers, the tastes of fruits, and so on He pursues the saht or shade, for high color, perfureatest i he leaves the true way, the way of Nature, and, in the long run, coht of the sae from the preface to the first edition of his poems in 1855

”To speak in literature,” he says, ”with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unirass by the roadside, is the flawless triureat poet has less a s without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself He swears to his art, I will not be ance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way betweenin the way, not the richest curtains What I tell, I tell for precisely what it is Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purpose, as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me”

VIII

But in view of the profound impression Whitman's work has made upon widely different types of mind on both sides of the Atlantic, and in view of the persistent vitality of his fame, the question whether he is inside or outside the pale of art aree with the late Mrs Gilchrist, that, when ”greatpower, literature has done its best, call it what you please”

That Whitreat emotions with adequate power, even his unfriendly critics admit Thus Professor Wendell, in an adh Whitree artistic form, yet for all that he canfroments of God's eternities” In the same way Mr William Clark, his British critic and expounder, says that he is wanting in discris his ideas at us in a heap,” etc, and yet that the effect of his work is ”to stir our emotions, widen our interests, and rally the forces of our h the printed page, can do these things, h his impassioned treatment of a prosy, conify and exalt it, and so fill it with the s of the spirit, that it seems like a part of God's eternities, hisinto

The truth is, Whitman's art, in its lack of extrinsic form and finish, is Oriental rather than Occidental, and is an offense to a taste founded upon the precision and finish of a htly rude coin of the Greeks compared with the exact, machine-cut dies of our own day, or like the unfinished look of japanese pottery beside the less beautiful but more perfect specimens of modern ceramic art

For present purposes, we may say there are two phases of art,--formal art and creative art By formal art I mean that which makes a direct appeal to our sense of forht, the deftly planned; and by creative art Ipower of the masters, that heat and passion thatwith newwith new life

For--forion, formal this and that--always counts for inal It is easier, it can be put off and on

Forift of the minor poet, and often of the major poet also In such a poet as Swinburne, forreat way The content of his verse,--what is it? In Tennyson as well I should say formal art is in the ascendant Creative art is his also; Tennyson reaches and moves the spirit, yet his skill is more noteworthy than his power In Wordsworth, on the other hand, I should say creative art led: the content of his verse is reater than his literary and artistic The saain, is much more as an artist than as a man or a personality

I hardly need say that in Whitman formal art, the ostensibly artistic, counts for but very little The intentional artist, the professional poet, is kept entirely in abeyance, or is coed and hidden in the man, more so undoubtedly than in any poet this side the old Oriental bards We call him formless, chaotic, ahly stimulated sense of art or artificial form We must discriminate this from our sense of power, our sense of life, our sense of beauty, of the sublime, of the all, which clearly Whitman would reach and move Whitman certainly has a form of his oould a poet, or any writer or worker in the ideal, do without some kind of form?

some consistent and adequate vehicle of expression? But Whitman's forht within the rules of the prosodical system, and does not appeal to our sense of the consciously shaped and cultivated It is essentially the prose for, lyric and prophetic note

The bonds and shackles of regular verse-form Whitman threw off This course seemed to be demanded by the spirit to which he had dedicated himself,--the spirit of absolute unconstraint The restrictions and has of the scholastic forms did not seem to be consistent with this spirit, which he identified with democracy and the New World A poet who sets out to let down the bars everywhere, to remove veils and obstructions, to emulate the freedom of the elerowths and objects, to be as ”regardless of observation” as the processes of nature, etc, will not be apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression The essentially prose for with the spirit and aim of his work than any conventional ht solely as a conscious artist, ai at the effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have chosen a different medium

IX

Whitreat, crude, seething, materialistic American world The question is, Did he est it? Does he make man-stuff of it? Is it plastic in his hands? Does he stae? I do not ask, Does he work it up into what are called artistic forms? Does he make it the quarry from which he carves statues or builds temples? because evidently he does not do this, or assume to do it He is content if he present Aht into his own personality, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, or as character, passion, will, motive, conviction He would show the ireat constructive, dramatic poet like Shakespeare would have solved his probleh the objective, artistic portrayal of types and characters But the poet and prophet of deh hiocentric method, is the fundamental fact about his work

It colors all and deterrowth of the personality of the poet; they are born directly upon the ego, as it were, like the fruit of that tropical tree which grows immediately upon the trunk His work is nearer his radical, primary self than that of most poets He never leads us away fro flowers of fancy or for for its own sake; there is little in the work that can stand on independent grounds as pure art His work is not material made precious by elaboration and finish, but by its relation to himself and to the sources of life

X

Whitation of extrinsic art by the probleest, rather than to finish or elaborate, less to display any the the reader into the atht;” secondly, to make his own personality the chief factor in the volume, or present it so that the do, breathing man as we meet him and see him and feel him in life, and never as we see hiarb of actual, concrete life, not as poet or artist, but si of the vestless and coatless portrait of himself prefixed to the first issue of the ”Leaves,” to which I have referred This portrait is symbolical of the whole attitude of the poet toward his task It was a hint that we ; it was a hint that he belonged to the open air, and came of the people and spoke in their spirit