Whitman Part 11

and much more to the same effect.

"I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain: If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it."

Whitman is a formalist, just as every man who has a way of his own of saying 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 form; its rules are inflexible; it is something cut and shaped and fitted together after a predetermined pattern, and to this extent is artificial. If Whitman's irregularity was equally studied; if it gave us the same sense of something cunningly planned and wrought 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 claim to have, the architectonic power of the great constructive poets. He did not build the lofty rhyme. He did not build anything, strictly speaking. He let himself go. He named his book after the gra.s.s, which makes a carpet over the earth, and which is a sign and a presence rather than a form.

XXII

Whitman's defects flow out of his great qualities. What we might expect from his size, his sense of ma.s.s and mult.i.tude, would be an occasional c.u.mbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his pa.s.sion for country, a little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy; from his tremendous practical democracy, a bias at times toward too low an average; from his purpose "to effuse egotism and show it underlying all,"

may arise a little too much self-a.s.sertion, etc. The price paid for his strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination to glorify the human body, as G.o.d made it, will bring him in collision with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice"

with which he seeks to prove the s.e.xual organs and acts "ill.u.s.trious,"

will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity"

will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-s.h.i.+ver; his healthful coa.r.s.eness and G.o.dlike 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 impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the right word--for just the right word--than did Whitman. He would wait for days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not consciously challenge 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 ornament,--nothing 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 measure misleading to compare language 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 improve the expression is to improve the thought. In the most vital writing, the thought is nude; the mind of the reader touches something alive and real. When we begin to hear the rustle of a pompous or highly wrought vocabulary, when the man begins to dress his commonplace ideas up in fine phrases, we have enough of him.

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

XXIV

I see that a plausible criticism might be made against Whitman, perhaps has been made, that in him we find the big merely,--strength without power, size without quality. A hasty reader might carry away this impression from his work, because undoubtedly one of the most obvious things about him is his great size. It is impossible not to feel that here is a large body of some sort. We have come upon a great river, a great lake, an immense plain, a rugged mountain. We feel that this mind requires a large s.p.a.ce to turn in. The page nearly always gives a sense of ma.s.s and mult.i.tude. All attempts at the playful or humorous seem ungainly. The style is processional and agglomerative. Out of these vast, rolling, cloud-like ma.s.ses does there leap forth the true lightning? It seems to me there can be no doubt about that. The spirit easily triumphs. There is not only ma.s.s, 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 Whitman, and, despairing of conveying an adequate notion of him by any process of literary a.n.a.lysis, 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 Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or buffalo, trampling the gra.s.s of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the world;" "he is the circ.u.mambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself,--all seas, lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, suns.h.i.+nes, rains of universal earth."

Colonel Ingersoll said there was something in him akin to mountains and plains, and to the globe itself.

But Whitman is something more than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no impression of greatness in art without something that is a.n.a.logous to size,--breadth, depth, height. The sense of vastness is never the gift of a minor poet. You cannot paint Niagara on the thumb-nail. Great artists are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions.

Whitman's air is continental. He implies a big country, vast ma.s.ses of humanity, sweeping and stirring times, the triumphs of science and the industrial age. He is the poet of ma.s.s and mult.i.tude. In his pages things are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys, sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere the effect of a man overlooking great s.p.a.ces and calling off the significant 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 acc.u.mulative. It is typified by this pa.s.sage in his first poem:--

"Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.

"I tramp a perpetual journey, My signs are a rain-proof coat, good 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 man to a dinner table, library, or exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public road."

He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts and images, with races, eras, mult.i.tudes, 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 from which many shades and differences disappear. He sees things in ma.s.s. Many of our cherished conventions disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.

His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness in the earth. His rapture springs, 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:--

"It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its...o...b..t forever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second, I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house."

In old age he sees "the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the sea." He looks upon all things at a certain remove.

These are typical lines:--

"A thousand perfect men and women appear, Around each gathers a cl.u.s.ter of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings."

"Women sit, or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young."

"The Runner," "A Farm Picture," and scores of others, are to the same effect. Always wholes, total impressions,--always a view as of a "strong bird on pinion free." Few details, but panoramic effects; not the flower, but the landscape; not a tree, but a forest; not a street corner, but a city. The t.i.tle of one of his poems, "A Song of the Rolling Earth," might stand as the t.i.tle of the book. When he gathers details and special features he ma.s.ses them like a bouquet of herbs and flowers. No cameo carving, but large, bold, rough, heroic sculpturing. The poetry is always in the totals, the breadth, the sweep of conception. The part that is local, specific, genre, near at hand, is Whitman himself; his personality is the background across which it all flits.

We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects, rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon he sees a spirit kindred to his own.

He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coa.r.s.eness, and what he calls the s.e.xuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and equilibrium.

"The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:--

"The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either, They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.

They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"

"The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.

Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."

He says the best of life

"Is not what you antic.i.p.ated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"

and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--

"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth, No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless it compares with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rect.i.tude, of the earth."

No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with these and kindred pa.s.sages:--

"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race.

The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets, The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer, (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.)

"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems, The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer, The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems; They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else.

They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the s.e.xes; They do not seek beauty, they are sought, Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.

They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset, They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full, Whom they take they take into s.p.a.ce to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.