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These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure or shall we say our delay? if it were not for two or three of our literary performances. It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare say no novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifold diversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of Walt Whitman's catalogues.
There was something large and generous and untrammelled in the scene, recalling one of Walt Whitman's rhapsodies: "Earth of departed sunsets! Earth of the mountains misty-topped! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!" All the next day we went down with the current.
This imperfect transfusion of his material is a far more significant defect in Whitman's poetry than the relatively few passages of unashamed sexuality which shocked the American public in 1855. The gospel or burden of "Leaves of Grass" is no more difficult of comprehension than the general drift of Emerson's essays, which helped to inspire it.
There is a paste bottle and brush on the table and a pair of scissors, much used by the poet, who writes, for the most part, on small bits of paper and parts of old envelopes and pastes them together in patchwork fashion. In spite of a careful examination, I could find nothing in the parlor at all reminiscent of Whitman's tenancy, except the hole for the stovepipe under the mantel. One of Mrs.
What is the reason why these fictitious characters should seem, for nearly every reader, more worth while than the very same sort of people in actual life? =Typical Traits.= The reason is that great fictitious characters are typical of their class, to an extent rarely to be noticed in any actual member of the class they typify. They "contain multitudes," to borrow Whitman's phrase.
We are as heartily persuaded of the identity of those we love as of our own identity. And so sympathy pairs with self-assertion, the two gerents of human life on earth; and Whitman's ideal man must not only be strong, free, and self-reliant in himself, but his freedom must be bounded and his strength perfected by the most intimate, eager, and long-suffering love for others.
"He'll let you stay here until the case is called." "Is he the judge before whom the case is to be tried?" asked Honora. "He surely is," answered the Honourable Dave. "Whitman's a good friend of mine. In fact, I may say, without exaggeration, I had something to do with his election. Now you mustn't get flustered," he added. "It isn't anything like as bad as goin' to the dentist.
It would be no hardship to me to take an axe and go off to labour on the Pacific coast; nay, a year so spent would do me a vast amount of good. 'I wonder whether you have read any of the twaddle that is written about Whitman's grossness, his materialism, and so forth? If so, read his poems now, and tell me how they impress you. Is he not all spirit, rightly understood?
Ignorance, with sound instincts and the quality which converse with real things imparts to men, was more acceptable to him than so much of our sophisticated knowledge, or our studied wit, or our artificial poetry. At the time of Whitman's death, one of our leading literary journals charged him with having brought on premature decay by leading a riotous and debauched life.
"Leaves of Grass" is not the poetry of culture, but it is to be said in the same breath that it is not such a work as an uncultured man produces, or is capable of producing. The uncultured man does not think Whitman's thoughts, or propose Whitman's problems to himself, or understand or appreciate them at all.
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