ing superior. What the "push of reading" or the push of argument could not start is often started and clinched by his mere authoritative "I say." "I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out of liberty, "I say the human shape or face is so great it must never be made ridiculous; I say for ornaments nothing outré can be allowed, And that anything is most beautiful without ornament, And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology and in other persons' physiologies also. "Think of the past; I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times. Think of spiritual results. ... Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results. Think of manhood, and you to be a man; Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing? Think of womanhood and you to be a woman; The Creation is womanhood; Have I not said that womanhood involves all? Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?" Egotism is usually intolerant, but Whitman was one of the most tolerant of men. A craving for sympathy and personal affection he certainly had; to be valued as a human being was more to him than to be valued as a poet. His strongest attachments were probably for persons who, had no opinion, good or bad, of his poetry at all. VI Under close scrutiny his egotism turns out to be a kind of altru-egotism, which is vicarious and allinclusive of his fellows. It is one phase of his democracy, and is vital and radical in his pages. It is a high, imperturbable pride in his manhood and in the humanity which he shares with all. It is the exultant and sometimes almost arrogant expression of the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world - the feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws, institutions, conventions, bibles, religions that the divinity of kings, and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to the humblest person. It was a passion that united him to his fellows rather than separated him from them. His pride was not that of a man who sets himself up above others, or who claims some special advantage or privilege, but that godlike quality that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and follies of his fellow men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate the virtues of humility and self-denial. The great lesson of the "Leaves," flowing curiously out of its pride and egotism, is the lesson of charity, of self-surrender, and the free bestowal of yourself upon all hands. The law of life of great art is the law of life in ethics, and was long ago announced. He that would lose his life shall find it; he who gives himself the most freely shall the most freely receive. Whitman made himself the brother and equal of all, not in word, but in very deed; he was in himself a compend of the people for which he spoke, and this breadth of sympathy and free giving of himself has resulted in an unexpected accession of power. HIS RELATION TO ART AND LITERATURE W I HITMAN protests against his "Leaves " being judged merely as literature; but at the same time, if they are not good literature, that of course ends the matter. Still, while the questions of art, of form, of taste, are paramount in most other poets, certainly in all third and fourth rate poets, -in Whitman they are swallowed up in other questions and values. In numerous passages, by various figures and allegories, Whitman indicates that he would not have his book classed with the order of mere literary productions. "Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,” he says in one of the "Inscriptions," "For that which was lacking in all yet needed most, I bring. your well-fill'd shelves, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, intellect, But you, ye untold latencies will thrill to every page." |
