Part 11 (1/2)

and reat intellect, a great brain: If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it”

Whitman is a for and doing things, no matter how natural, is a formalist; but he is not a stickler for form of any sort He has his own proper form, of course, which he rarely departs from At one extreme of artificiality Mr

Stedman apparently places the sonnet This is an arbitrary for cut and shaped and fitted together after a predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial If Whitave us the saht to a particular end, clipped here, curbed there, folded back in this line, drawn out in that, and attaining to a certain mechanical proportion and balance as a whole,--then there would be good ground for the critic's charge But such is not the case

Whitman did not have, nor claireat constructive poets He did not build the lofty rhy He let hirass, which n and a presence rather than a forreat qualities What we ht expect from his size, his sense of mass and idity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: e ht expect frorossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; froleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself hat is coar and unworthy; from his tremendous practical dee; fro all,”

may arise a little too much self-assertion, etc The price paid for his strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of hulorify the hu him in collision with our notions of the decent, the proper; the ”courageous, clear voice”

hich he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts ”illustrious,”

will result in his being excluded froood society; his ”heroic nudity”

will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shi+ver; his healthful coarseness and Godlike candor will put all the respectable folk to flight

XXIII

To say that Whitman is a poet in undress is true within certain limits If it conveys the ie, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does hiht word--for just the right word--than did Whitman He would wait for days and weeks for the one ultie for so call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language never obtrudes itself It has never stood before the e your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is never on dress parade His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to _stumble_ upon them His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial adjuncts of poetry,--no finery or stuck-on orna obtrusively beautiful or poetic; and because it bears itself with the freedom and nonchalance of a man in his every-day attire

But it is always in a e with dress, to say that a poet clothes his thought, etc The language is the thought; it is an incarnation, not an outside tailoring To iht In the ht is nude; thealive and real When we begin to hear the rustle of a poins to dress his coh of him

Indeed, it is only the mechanical writer who may be said to ”clothe” his ideas ords; the real poet thinks through words

XXIV

I see that a plausible criticisainst Whit th without power, size without quality A hasty reader ht carry away this impression fros about hireat size It is ie body of soreat lake, an ied e space to turn in The page nearly always gives a sense of mass and ainly The style is processional and agglo, cloud-like ? It seems to me there can be no doubt about that The spirit easily triumphs There is not only mass, there is penetration; not only vastness, there is sublimity; not only breadth, there is quality and charm He is both Dantesque and Darwinian, as has been said

Mr Symonds was impressed with this quality of vastness in Whit an adequate notion of him by any process of literary analysis, resorts to the use of a succession of metaphors,--the symbolic use of objects that convey the idea of size and power Thus, ”he is Beheantic elk or buffalo, trarass of the wilderness;” ”he is an i its roots deep down into the bowels of the world;” ”he is the circue-towers and pallobe itself,--all seas, lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshi+nes, rains of universal earth”

Colonel Ingersoll said there was solobe itself

But Whitmy honors Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size and power go together The large bodies rule the sreatness in art without soht The sense of vastness is never the gift of a ara on the thuuished from small by the majesty of their conceptions

Whit country, vasttie He is the poet of rouped and on the run, as it were Little detail, little or no elaboration, little or no development of a theli movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere the effect of a nificant and interesting points He never stops to paint; he is contented to suggest His ”Leaves” are a rapid, joyous survey of the forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and personality, and next with reference to America and democracy His method of treatment is wholesale and accue in his first poem:--

”Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old sh new prizes

”I traood shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, I lead no e, But each man and each wo you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public road”

He deals with the e effects ”Lover of populous pavees, with races, eras, multitudes, processions His salute is to the world He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world He views life as from some eminence fros in mass Many of our cherished conventions disappear from his point of view He sees the funda and final He tries himself by the orbs

His standards of poetry and art are astronos, not so much from the contemplation of bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole There is a breadth of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars He says:--