Letters: The Wound-Dresser [ May 7, 1898 ]
Walt Whitman, then occupying at Washington an obscure administrative post, became, under strong, simple pressure of personal charity, a constant, a permitted and encouraged familiar of the great hospitals rapidly instituted, profusely, and in some cases erratically, extemporized, as the whole scale of ministration widened, and the pages published by Dr. Bucke give out to such readers as can bear it the very breath of the terrible conditions. I know not what is more vivid, the dreadful back of the tapestry, the price paid on the spot, the immediate heritage of woe, or Whitman’s own admirable, original gift of sympathy, his homey, racy, yet extraordinarily delicate gift of sympathy, exercised wholly at his own cost and risk.
He affects us all the more that these pages, quite woefully, almost abjectly familiar and undressed, contain not a single bid for publicity. His correspondent, his obscure, laborious mother, was indeed, it is easy to see, a bountiful, worthy recipient, but the letters were meant for humble hands, hands quite unconscious of the light thus thrown, as it happened, on the interesting question of the heredity of the strong originals. It had plainly taken a solid stock, a family circle, to produce Walt Whitman, and “The Wound Dresser,’ ‘documentary’ in so many ways, is like “Calamus,” of which I lately spoke – particularly so on the general democratic head.
It hold up, for us today, its jagged morsel of spotted looking-glass to the innumerable nameless of the troubled years, the poor and obscure, the suffering and sacrifice of the American people. The good Walt, without unhappy verbiage or luckless barbarism here, sounds a note of native feeling, pity and horror and helplessness, that is like the wail of a mother for her mangled young; and in so [thus] far the little volume may doubtless take its place on the much-mixed shelf of the literature of patriotism.
Letters: Calamus [April 16, 1898]
What sense shall I speak of as affected by the series of letters published, under the title of ‘Calamus” by Dr. R. M. Bucke, one of the literary executors of Walt Whitman? The democratic would be doubtless a prompt and simple answer, and as an illustration of democratic social conditions their interest is lively. The person to whom, from 1869 to 1880, they were addressed was a young laboring man, employed in rough railway work, whom Whitman met by accident – the account of their meeting, in his correspondent’s own words, is the most charming passage in the volume – and constituted for the rest of life of a subject of a friendship of the regular ‘eternal’, the legendary sort.
The little book appeals, I dare say, mainly to the Whitmanite already made, but I should be surprised if it has actually failed of power to make a few more. I mean by the Whitmanite those for whom the author of “Leaves of Grass is, with all his rags and tatters, an upright figure, a successful original. It has in a singular way something of the same relation to poetry that may be made out of the luckiest – few, but fine –of the writer’s other pages; I call the way singular because it squeezes through the narrowest, humblest gate of prose.
There is not even by accident a line with a hint of style – it is all flat, familiar, affectionate, illiterate colloquy. If the absolute natural be, when the writer is interesting, the supreme merit of letters, these, accordingly, should stand high on the list( I am taking for granted, of course, the interest of Whitman.) The beauty of the natural is, here, the beauty of the particular nature, the man’s overflow in the deadly dry setting, the personal passion, the love of life plucked like a flower in a desert of innocent, unconscious ugliness. To call the whole thing American is to challenge, doubtless, plenty of dissent – on the ground presumably, that the figure in evidence was no less queer a figure of Camden, New Jersey, than it would have been of South Kensington. That may perfectly be; but a thousand images of patient, homey, American life, else undistinguishable, are what its queerness – however startling – happened to express.
In this little book is an audible New Jersey voice, charged thick with such impressions, and the reader will miss a chance who does not find in it many odd and pleasant human harmonies. Whitman wrote to his friend of what they both saw and touched, enormities of the common, sordid occupations, dreary amusements, undesirable food; and the record remains, by a mysterious marvel, a thing positively delightful. If we ever find out why, it must be another time. The riddle meanwhile is a neat one for the sphinx of democracy to offer.
Drum-Taps
[November 16, 1865]
It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more melancholy one to write about it. It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry. Like hundreds of other good patriots, during the last four years, Mr. Walt Whitman has imagined that a certain amount of violent sympathy with the great deeds and sufferings of our soldiers, and an admiration for our national energy, together with a ready command of picturesque language, are sufficient inspiration for a poets. The constant developments of the war moved us continually to strong feeling and to strong expression of it. But in those cases in which these expressions were written out and with due regard o prosody, they failed to make poetry, as any one may see by consulting now in cold blood the back volumes of the ‘Rebellion Record.’
Of course the city of Manhattan, as Mr. Whitman delights to all it, when regiments poured through it in the first months of the war, and its own sole god, to borrow the words of a real poet, ceased for awhile to be the millionaire, was a noble spectacle, and a poetic statement to this effect is possible. Of course the tumult of a battle is grand, the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a theme for elegies. But he is not a poet who merely reiterates these plain facts ore rotundo. He only sings them worthily who views them from a height.
Every tragic event collects about it a number of persons who delight to dwell upon its superficial points – of minds which are bullied by the accidents of the affair. The temper of such minds seems to us to be the reverse of the proper poetic temper; for the poet, although he incidentally masters, grasps, and uses the superficial traits of his theme, is really a poet only in so far as he extracts its latent meaning and holds it up to common eyes. And yet from such minds most of our war-verses have come, and Mr. Whitman’s utterance, much as the assertion my surprise his friends, are in this respect to general fashion .They are an exception, however, in that they openly pretend to be something better; and this is what makes them melancholy reading. Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his trumpet, and he has made very explicit claims for his book-
It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more melancholy one to write about it. It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry. Like hundreds of other good patriots, during the last four years, Mr. Walt Whitman has imagined that a certain amount of violent sympathy with the great deeds and sufferings of our soldiers, and an admiration for our national energy, together with a ready command of picturesque language, are sufficient inspiration for a poets. The constant developments of the war moved us continually to strong feeling and to strong expression of it. But in those cases in which these expressions were written out and with due regard o prosody, they failed to make poetry, as any one may see by consulting now in cold blood the back volumes of the ‘Rebellion Record.’
Of course the city of Manhattan, as Mr. Whitman delights to all it, when regiments poured through it in the first months of the war, and its own sole god, to borrow the words of a real poet, ceased for awhile to be the millionaire, was a noble spectacle, and a poetic statement to this effect is possible. Of course the tumult of a battle is grand, the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a theme for elegies. But he is not a poet who merely reiterates these plain facts ore rotundo. He only sings them worthily who views them from a height.
Every tragic event collects about it a number of persons who delight to dwell upon its superficial points – of minds which are bullied by the accidents of the affair. The temper of such minds seems to us to be the reverse of the proper poetic temper; for the poet, although he incidentally masters, grasps, and uses the superficial traits of his theme, is really a poet only in so far as he extracts its latent meaning and holds it up to common eyes. And yet from such minds most of our war-verses have come, and Mr. Whitman’s utterance, much as the assertion my surprise his friends, are in this respect to general fashion .They are an exception, however, in that they openly pretend to be something better; and this is what makes them melancholy reading. Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his trumpet, and he has made very explicit claims for his book-
‘Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, ye needed
most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by the intellect . . .’
These are great pretensions . . .
The most that can be said of Mr. Whitman’s vaticinations is, that cast in a fluent and familiar manner, the average substance of them might escape unchallenged. But we have seen that Mr. Whitman prides himself especially on the substance- the life- of his poetry. It may be rough, it may be grim, it may be clumsy – such we take to be the author’s argument – but it is sincere, it is sublime, it appeals to the soul of man, it is the voice of the people.
He tells us that the words of his book are nothing. To our perception, however, they are everything, and very little at that. A great deal of verse that is nothing but words has, during the war, been sympathetically sighed over and cut out of newspaper corners, because it has possessed a certain simple melody. But Mr. Whitman’s verse, we are confident, would have failed even of this triumph, for the simple reason that no triumph, however small, is won but through the exercise of art, and that this volume is an offense against art. It is not enough to be grim and rough and careless; common sense is also necessary, for it is by common sense that we are judged.
There exists even in the commonest minds, in literary matters, a certain precise instinct of conservatism, which is very shrewd in detecting eccentricities. To this instinct, Mr. Whitman’s attitude seems monstrous. It is monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste. The point is that it does this on theory, willfully, consciously, arrogantly. It is the little nursery game of ‘open your mouth and shut your eyes’.
Our hearts are often touched through a compromise with the artistic sense, but never in direct violation of it. Mr. Whitman sits down at the outset and counts out the intelligence. This were indeed a wise precaution on his part if the intelligence were only submissive! But when she is deliberately insulted, she takes her revenge by simply standing erect and open-eyed. This is assuredly the best she can do. And if she could find a voice she would probably address Mr. Whitman as follows:
{Intelligence addresses Mr. Whitman}
“You came to woo my sister, the human soul. Instead of giving me a kick as you approach, you should either greet me courteously or, a least, steal in unobserved. But now you have me on your hands. Your chances are poor. What the human heart desires above all is sincerity, and you do not appear to me sincere. For a lover you talk entirely too much about yourself. In one place you threaten to absorb Kanada. In another you call upon the city of New York to incarnate you, as you incarnated it. In another you inform us thy\at neither youth pertains to you nor ‘delicatesse,’ that you are awkward in the parlor, that you do not danced, and that you have neither bearing, beauty, knowledge, nor fortune. In another pace, by allusion to your ‘little songs, you seem to identify yourself with the third person of the Trinity. For a poet who claims to sing ‘the idea of all’, this is tolerably egotistical. We look in vain, however, through your book for a single idea. We find nothing but flashy imitations of of ideas. We find merely extravagances and commonplaces. We find art, measure, grace, sense sneered at on every page, and noting given us in their stead. To be positive one must have something to say; to be positive requires reason, labor, and art; and art requires, above all things, a suppression of one’s self, a subordination of one’s self to an idea. This will never do for you, whose plan is to adapt to the scheme of the universe to your own limitations. You cannot entertain and exhibit ideas; but, as we have seen, you are prepared to incarnate them. It is for this reason, doubtless, that when once you have planted yourself squarely before the pubic, and in view of the great service you have done to the ideal, have become, as you say ‘accepted everywhere,’ you can afford to deal exclusively in words. What would bald nonsense and dreary platitudes in any one else becomes sublimity in you. But all this is a mistake.”
“To become adopted as a national poet, it is not enough to discard everything in particular and to accept everything in general, to amass crudity upon crudity, to discharge the undigested contents of your blotting-book into the lap of the public. You must respect the public which you address; for it has taste, if you have not. It delights in the grand, the heroic, and the masculine; but it delights to see these conceptions cast in a worthy form. It is indifferent to brute sublimity. It will never do for you to thrust your hands into your pockets and cry out that, as the research of form is intolerable bore, the shortest and most economical way for the public to embrace its idols – for the nation to realize its genius – is in your own person.”
“This democratic, liberty-loving, American people, this stern and war-tried people, is a great civilizer. It is devoted to refinement. If it has sustained a monstrous war, and practiced human nature’s best in so many ways for the last five years, it is not to put up with spurious poetry afterwards. To sing aright our battles and our glories it is not enough to have served in a hospital (however praiseworthy the task itself), to be aggressively careless, inelegant, and ignorant, and to be constantly preoccupied with yourself. It is not enough to be rude, lugubrious, and grim. You must also be serious. You must forget yourself in your ideas. Your personal qualities – the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart –these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must try to possess your possession. If in your striving you break into divine eloquence, then you are a poet. If the idea which possesses you is the idea of your country’s greatness, then you are a national poet; and not otherwise.”
Henry James: Essays of Literature; American Writers, English Writers: Library of America; 1984
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by the intellect . . .’
These are great pretensions . . .
The most that can be said of Mr. Whitman’s vaticinations is, that cast in a fluent and familiar manner, the average substance of them might escape unchallenged. But we have seen that Mr. Whitman prides himself especially on the substance- the life- of his poetry. It may be rough, it may be grim, it may be clumsy – such we take to be the author’s argument – but it is sincere, it is sublime, it appeals to the soul of man, it is the voice of the people.
He tells us that the words of his book are nothing. To our perception, however, they are everything, and very little at that. A great deal of verse that is nothing but words has, during the war, been sympathetically sighed over and cut out of newspaper corners, because it has possessed a certain simple melody. But Mr. Whitman’s verse, we are confident, would have failed even of this triumph, for the simple reason that no triumph, however small, is won but through the exercise of art, and that this volume is an offense against art. It is not enough to be grim and rough and careless; common sense is also necessary, for it is by common sense that we are judged.
There exists even in the commonest minds, in literary matters, a certain precise instinct of conservatism, which is very shrewd in detecting eccentricities. To this instinct, Mr. Whitman’s attitude seems monstrous. It is monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste. The point is that it does this on theory, willfully, consciously, arrogantly. It is the little nursery game of ‘open your mouth and shut your eyes’.
Our hearts are often touched through a compromise with the artistic sense, but never in direct violation of it. Mr. Whitman sits down at the outset and counts out the intelligence. This were indeed a wise precaution on his part if the intelligence were only submissive! But when she is deliberately insulted, she takes her revenge by simply standing erect and open-eyed. This is assuredly the best she can do. And if she could find a voice she would probably address Mr. Whitman as follows:
{Intelligence addresses Mr. Whitman}
“You came to woo my sister, the human soul. Instead of giving me a kick as you approach, you should either greet me courteously or, a least, steal in unobserved. But now you have me on your hands. Your chances are poor. What the human heart desires above all is sincerity, and you do not appear to me sincere. For a lover you talk entirely too much about yourself. In one place you threaten to absorb Kanada. In another you call upon the city of New York to incarnate you, as you incarnated it. In another you inform us thy\at neither youth pertains to you nor ‘delicatesse,’ that you are awkward in the parlor, that you do not danced, and that you have neither bearing, beauty, knowledge, nor fortune. In another pace, by allusion to your ‘little songs, you seem to identify yourself with the third person of the Trinity. For a poet who claims to sing ‘the idea of all’, this is tolerably egotistical. We look in vain, however, through your book for a single idea. We find nothing but flashy imitations of of ideas. We find merely extravagances and commonplaces. We find art, measure, grace, sense sneered at on every page, and noting given us in their stead. To be positive one must have something to say; to be positive requires reason, labor, and art; and art requires, above all things, a suppression of one’s self, a subordination of one’s self to an idea. This will never do for you, whose plan is to adapt to the scheme of the universe to your own limitations. You cannot entertain and exhibit ideas; but, as we have seen, you are prepared to incarnate them. It is for this reason, doubtless, that when once you have planted yourself squarely before the pubic, and in view of the great service you have done to the ideal, have become, as you say ‘accepted everywhere,’ you can afford to deal exclusively in words. What would bald nonsense and dreary platitudes in any one else becomes sublimity in you. But all this is a mistake.”
“To become adopted as a national poet, it is not enough to discard everything in particular and to accept everything in general, to amass crudity upon crudity, to discharge the undigested contents of your blotting-book into the lap of the public. You must respect the public which you address; for it has taste, if you have not. It delights in the grand, the heroic, and the masculine; but it delights to see these conceptions cast in a worthy form. It is indifferent to brute sublimity. It will never do for you to thrust your hands into your pockets and cry out that, as the research of form is intolerable bore, the shortest and most economical way for the public to embrace its idols – for the nation to realize its genius – is in your own person.”
“This democratic, liberty-loving, American people, this stern and war-tried people, is a great civilizer. It is devoted to refinement. If it has sustained a monstrous war, and practiced human nature’s best in so many ways for the last five years, it is not to put up with spurious poetry afterwards. To sing aright our battles and our glories it is not enough to have served in a hospital (however praiseworthy the task itself), to be aggressively careless, inelegant, and ignorant, and to be constantly preoccupied with yourself. It is not enough to be rude, lugubrious, and grim. You must also be serious. You must forget yourself in your ideas. Your personal qualities – the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart –these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must try to possess your possession. If in your striving you break into divine eloquence, then you are a poet. If the idea which possesses you is the idea of your country’s greatness, then you are a national poet; and not otherwise.”
Henry James: Essays of Literature; American Writers, English Writers: Library of America; 1984
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