Leaves of Grass | ||
From the Brooklyn Daily Times. LEAVES OF GRASS. A volume of Poems, just published.
To give judgment on real poems, one needs an account of the poet himself. Very devilish to some, and very divine to some, will appear the poet of these new poems, the "LEAVES OF GRASS," an attempt, as they are, of a naive, masculine, affectionate, contemplative, sensual, imperious person, to cast into literature not only his own grit and arrogance, but his own flesh and form, undraped, regardless of models, regardless of modesty or law, and ignorant or silently scornful, as at first appears, of all except his own presence and experience, and all outside the fiercely loved land of his birth, and the birth of his parents and their parents for several generations before him. Politeness this man has none, and regulation he has none. A rude child of the people! — No imitation — No foreigner — but a growth and idiom of America. No discontented — a careless slouch, enjoying to-day. No dilletant democrat — a man who is art-and-part with the commonalty, and with immediate life — loves the streets — loves the docks — loves the free rasping talk of men — likes to be called by his given name, and nobody at all need Mr him — can laugh with laughers — likes the cheap ways of laborers — is not prejudiced one mite against the Irish — talks readily with them — talks readily with niggers — does not make a stand on being a gentleman, nor on learning or manners — eats cheap fare, likes the strong-flavored coffee of the coffee-stands in the market, at sunrise — likes a supper of oysters fresh from the oyster-smack — likes to make one at the crowded table among sailors and workpeople — would leave a select soiree of elegant people any time to go with tumultuous men,
Other poets celebrate great events, personages, romances, wars, loves, passions, the victories and power of their country, or some real or imagined incident — and polish their work, and come to conclusions, and satisfy the reader. This poet celebrates himself; and that is the way he celebrates all. He comes to no conclusions, and does not satisfy the reader. He certainly leaves him what the serpent left the woman and the man, the taste of the Paradisaic tree of the knowledge of good and evil, never to be erased again.
What good is it to argue about egotism? There can be no two thoughts on Walt Whitman's egotism. That is avowedly what he steps out of the crowd and turns and faces them for. Mark, critics! Otherwise is not used for you the key that leads to the use of the other keys to this well-enveloped man. His whole work, his life, manners, friendships, writings, all have among their leading purposes an evident purpose to stamp a new type of character, namely his own, and indelibly fix it and publish it, not for a model but an illustration, for the present and future of American letters and American young men, for the south the same as the north, and for the Pacific and Mississippi country, and Wisconsin and Texas and Kansas and Canada and Havana and Nicaragua, just as much as New York and Boston. Whatever is needed toward this achievement he puts his hand to, and lets imputations take their time to die.
First be yourself what you would show in your poem — such seems to be this man's example and inferred rebuke to the schools of poets. He makes no allusions to books or writers; their spirits do not seem to have touched him; he has not a word to say for or against them, or their theories or ways. He never offers others; what he continually offers is the man whom our Brooklynites know so well. Of pure American breed, large and lusty — age thirty-six years, (1855,) — never once using medicine — never dressed in black, always dressed freely and clean in strong clothes —
Leaves of Grass | ||