Part 17 (1/2)
”Not for an embroiderer, (There will always be plenty of es, and for inherent men and women
”Not to chisel ornaments, But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supre and talking”
His whole work is a radiation fro better than to be an artist or a poet,--nas not merely from the contemplation of the beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; fromen, soldiers, sailors, his own body, death, sex, s We are to look for the clews to him in the open air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forain mention love or death inside of a house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay with hio to the heights or water-shore; The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key: The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words
”No shuttered roohs and little children better than they
”The young mechanic is closest to me--he knowswith hi in the field, feels good at the sound of o with fishermen and seamen, and love them
”My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket; The driver, thinking ofirl and the wife rest the needle a et where they are: They and all would resume what I have told them”
VI
So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few, its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness of th; so far as it expresses a shrinking froe in sentimentalis and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and retful and re of the moon as in Shelley, or the outcome of mere scholarly and technical acquireer poets,--so far as literature or poetry, I say, stand for these things, there is little of either in Whitman Whitman stands for the primary and essential; he stands for that which makes the body as well as the mind, whichthat tends to depletion, satiety, the abnormal, the erotic and exotic, that induces the stress and fever of life, is foreign to his spirit He is less beautiful than the popular poets, yet more beautiful He will have to do only with the inevitable beauty, the beauty that cos and affiliations,--the beauty that dare turn its back upon the beautiful
Whitman has escaped entirely the literary disease, the characteristic sy to Renan, is that people love less things themselves than the literary effects which they produce He has escaped the art disease which ious disease, which runs toearth; the beauty disease, which would s heroic remedies for our ical conditions brought about by our excess of refinement, and the dyspeptic depletions of our indoor artificial lives Whitman withstood the aesthetic temptation, as Amiel calls it, to which most of our poets fall a victim,--the lust for the merely beautiful, the epicureanism of the literary faculties We can make little of him if we are in quest of aesthetic pleasures alone ”In order to establish those literary authorities which are called classic centuries,” says Renan, ”so healthy and solid is necessary Common household bread is of more value here than pastry” But the vast majority of literary producers ai especially delightful and titivating to the taste No doubt Renan hi of a literary epicure, but then he ie and serious tasks, and his work as a whole is solid and nourishi+ng; his charm of style does not blind and seduce us It makes all the difference in the world whether we seek the beautiful through the true, or the true through the beautiful Seek ye the kingdos shall be added The novice aims to write beautifully, but the master aims to see truly and to feel vitally Beauty follows him, and is never followed by hi else first, yes, and last, too, and all the while Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuye
VII
Whiter--much more racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current literature, and upon which our culture is largely based He applies the de all the old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, ends, etc,--but he applies it to the for rhyme and measure and all the conventional verse architecture His work stands or it falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or pohich it holds This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest, nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated His influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or extra-cultured huets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, netic, tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple, healthful, open-air humanity He opposes culture and refinement only as he opposes that which weakens, drains, e, hypercritical class The culture of life, of nature, and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and affections, is the culture implied by ”Leaves of Grass” The democratic spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature
The people look askance atof them, who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with unlettered humanity Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit, and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Suht be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned His work is launched at a farther rees, civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into our lives, than that of any other man Absolute candor, absolute pride, absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature It is not conditioned by e deeh or low, ood and evil, by our notions of the refined and the select, by e call good taste and bad taste It is the voice of absolutehimself boldly, joyously, upon unconditioned nature We are all engaged in upholding the correct and the conventional, and drawing the line sharply between good and evil, the high and the low, and it is well that we should; but here is a round, and to look at the world as God hi,--it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection in the universe and can be none:--
”Openperfection, Natural life offorever the triuainst evil, in the usual way, he does not take sides with the good except as nature herself does He celebrates the All
Can we accept the world as science reveals it to us, as all significant, as all in ceaseless trans to be , without end, without failure or ie ahead of us, not behind us?
VIII
Because of Whitoised that the noble, the cultured, the self-denying, have no place in his system What place have they in the antique bards?--in Homer, in Job, in Isaiah, in Dante? They have the same place in Whitman, yet it is to be kept in mind that Whitman does not stand for the specially social virtues, nor for culture, nor for the refinements which it induces, nor for art, nor for any conventionality There are flowers of human life which we are not to look for in Walt Whitet in Eospel of hero-worshi+p of Carlyle; the gracious scholarshi+p of our New England poets, etc,--we do not get in Walt Whits, but he is concerned with more primal and eles
What are the questions or purposes, then, in which his work has root?
Sier, saner, more normal, more robust types of ure and help develop the new democratic man,--to project him into literature on a scale and with a distinctness that cannot be e, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and influences that e, and for the perpetuity of the race We cannot refine the elements,--the air, the water, the soil, the sunshi+ne,--and the more we pervert or shut out these from our lives the worse for us In the sareat natural iious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny and belittle our bodies, the further we are from the spirit of Walt Whitman, and frolorification of pride, self-esteem, self-reliance, etc, the final lesson of his life and work is service, self-denial,--the free, lavish giving of yourself to others Of the innate and essential nobility that we associate with unworldliness, the sharing of what you possess with the unfortunate around you, sympathy with all forms of life and conditions ofup for those who for self which others may not have upon the same terms,--of such nobility and fine manners, I say, you shall find an abundance in the life and works of Walt Whit; the letter, little or nothing