Rambles With John Burroughs Part 6

"Whitman is confessedly the poet of the body. His book is not upward. He grovels in the earthly and disgusting parts of human life and experience. His egotism is remarkable.

"All the great poets have looked away from their disgusting surroundings and fleshly fetters, into a world of their creation that was bright and ethereal, but Whitman cries: 'I am satisfied with the perishable and the casual.' This alone would debar him from the company of the great masters of song."

Professor Newcomer of Stanford University, divides honors by offending and defending:

First: "It deliberately violates the rules of art, and unless we admit that our rules are idle, we must admit Whitman's defects."

Second: "It is diffuse, prolix."

Third: "This is perhaps the most that can be charged--he was needlessly gross."

Fourth: "The innovations in his vocabulary are inexcusable."

In the following, he as faithfully defends the poet.

First: Of the charged egotism: "It was not to parade himself as an exceptional being, but rather as an average man to hold the mirror up to other men and declare his kinship with them."

Second: "Taking Whitman simply at his own valuation we get much. The joys of free fellowship, the love of comrades, none has sung more heartily or worthily. And his courage and optimism are as deep as Emerson's."

Third: "He became the truest laureate of the war, and of Lincoln the idol of the people."

Fourth: "Comerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man! As such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song, but a cry vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it."

Professor Newcomer closes his estimate by the declaration that Whitman stands for the American people, but not in the sense that Washington or Lincoln or Lowell does, and that his office was somewhat like one who stands by and cheers while the procession goes by. He thinks that Whitman did not sit in the seats of the mighty.

Charles W. Hubner is much more charitable and in fact just, with our poet of the body. He says: "Proclaiming the sanct.i.ty of manhood and womanhood, the power and eminence of G.o.d within us and without us; the divine relationship of body and soul; the eternalness of spirit and matter, he aims to teach us that all of these are manifestations of the Almighty spirit, present within and without all things, and out of whom all created things have come." How far this critic removes Whitman from the cla.s.s of those who stood by and cheered while the procession moved on! Hubner makes him a _real teacher_ and revealer of divine laws and eternal truth.

Joel Chandler Harris has also given a vivid picture and a most wholesome interpretation of Whitman: "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose, it is necessary to possess the intuition that enables the mind to grasp in instant and express admiration, the vast group of facts that make man--that make liberty--that make America. There is no poetry in the details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive a.s.similation of the mighty forces behind them--the inevitable, unaccountable, irresistible forward movement of man in the making of the republic." These estimates pro and con could be multiplied indefinitely.

How much more beautiful it is to face this new force in American poetry and deal with it justly, than to stand off and bark like some of our lesser critics have done and are doing! A recent comment upon Whitman says he has come to stay, and we must make up our minds to study him and to dispose of him by getting in sympathy with him, rather than by decrying him. This seems the just way, and the only safe way to deal with any great original force in literature.

John Burroughs has undoubtedly interpreted Whitman better than any other critic, and unquestionably owes Whitman more than any one else. He has found in the poet what so many others have found in Burroughs. "Whitman does not to me suggest the wild and unkempt, as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the elemental.... He cherished the hope that he had put into his 'Leaves', some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more grand and primitive aspects." From Whitman, I am constrained to believe, Burroughs has drawn much of his primitive strength as a writer. Whitman opened the book of Nature to him, and led him into a certain wilderness of beauty. At twenty, Burroughs began to read Whitman's poems, and says of them: "I was attracted by the new poet's work from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found in the current poetry.... Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the earth and the orbs." He knew that he had found in Whitman a very strong and imposing figure, but he was doubly rea.s.sured when he came upon the statement from the English critic, John Addington Symonds, that Whitman had influenced him more than any other book except the Bible,--more than Plato, more than Goethe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PILE OF STONES MARKING THE SITE OF Th.o.r.eAU'S CABIN, BY WALDEN POND]

It was about the year 1858, when Burroughs first began reading Whitman and five years after that, in 1863, when Burroughs moved to Washington, the two men began to cultivate each other and were frequent companions till Whitman moved to Camden in 1873.

The friendship of the two men became so beautiful and grew so sacred, till Mr. Burroughs visited him every year in Camden, from 1873 till 1891, when he saw the poet for the last time. Whitman also visited Mr.

Burroughs, who had gone back up the Hudson in 1873, and built his home at West Park, New York.

The peculiar mountain wilderness around Slabsides induced the Naturalist to name the woods about his home, Whitman Land, and now you will hear him speak of the border of "Whitman Land," when he approaches Slabsides.

I have sometimes thought that Whitman's influence on him, more than Th.o.r.eau's, induced him to retreat to the woods and build Slabsides, where he could "follow out these lessons of the earth and air." So much of this elemental power or force has he seen in Whitman, that he honestly, and probably justly, thinks him "the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beat in America, or perhaps in Modern times." A study of the poet is to him an application of the laws of Nature to higher matters, and he pleads guilty to a "loving interest in Whitman and his work, which may indeed amount to one-sided enthusiasm." But this is honest, real, and not affected.

After a long study of the art of poetry and the artists, together with a thorough appreciation of form and beauty in all art, Burroughs declares there is once in a great while "born to a race or people, men who are like an eruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who bring other standards, and sow the seeds of new and larger types; who are not the organs of the culture or modes of their time and whom their times for the most part decry and disown--the primal, original, elemental men. It is here in my opinion that we must place Whitman; not among the minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He is nearer the sources of things than the popular poets--nearer the founder and discoverer, closer akin to the large, fervent, prophetic, patriarchal men, who figure in the early heroic ages. His work ranks with the great primitive books. He is of the type of the skald, the bard, the seer, the prophet." In another place, Burroughs thinks that one can better read Whitman after reading the Greeks, than after reading our finer artists, and I have found this true.

We cannot wonder that he finds Whitman "the one mountain in our literary landscape," though, as he appropriately says there are many beautiful hills. Tall and large, he grew more beautiful in his declining years, and "the full beauty of his face and head did not appear till he was past sixty." However he was dressed, and wherever he was, one could not fail to be impressed "with the clean, fresh quality of the man." To me, his poems have this same clean, fresh quality, and I never read one of them that I don't feel far more satisfied with my lot.

Whitman says: "I do not call one greater and one smaller. That which fills its place is equal to any." To him, as to any prophet of the soul, greatness is filling one's place, and the poor get as much consolation out of this almost, as they do from Christ's beat.i.tude: "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the earth." To make a world, it takes many kinds of individuals, and Whitman did not rank them severally according to money, culture and social position. If a man filled his place, he was equal to any one else, for that is the whole duty of man.

He did not grovel in the earthly and disgusting, as one of our "artistic" critics has said above. He alluded to many things that the over-nice could call disgusting, but he saw and painted only the beautiful in it all. For an instance that happens to come to my mind, he alludes to the battle of Alamo, but overlooks the military display, the common part of the slaughter. This may be found in any battle, and why Alamo and Goliad, if only to picture an army! Certainly there were more imposing dress parades than that. But after Fannin had surrendered and had accepted honorable terms that were offered by the Mexican General Urrea, Santa Anna orders the entire body of United States Soldiers executed, and on that bright and beautiful sunshiny Palm Sunday, they were marched out upon the neighboring prairie and shot down in cold blood, and their bodies committed to the flames! Such a horrible picture has not been recorded elsewhere in the history of this republic. What then does Whitman say?

"Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.

Retreating, they formed in a hollow square, with their baggage for breastworks; Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number was the price they took in advance; Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone; They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their arms, and marched back prisoners of war.

They were the glory of the race of rangers; Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, Not a single one over thirty years of age.

The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and ma.s.sacred--it was beautiful early summer; The work commenced about five o'clock, and was over by eight.

None obeyed the command to kneel; Some made a mad and helpless rush--some stood stark and straight; A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart--the living and dead lay together; The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt--the newcomers saw them there; Some, half-killed, attempted to crawl away; These were despatched with bayonets, or battered with the blunts of muskets; A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his a.s.sa.s.sin till two more came to release him; The three were all torn, and covered with the boy's blood.

At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies: That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men."

After reading this picture of the horrible battle or slaughter at Goliad, who wonders that the battle cry at San Jacinto was, "Remember the Alamo!" or "Remember Goliad!" And still less do we wonder that the Mexicans, while scattered after the battle could be heard on all sides, "Me no Alamo!" "Me no Goliad!" Our poet has given the best picture we shall ever get of the Alamo and Goliad. The burden of his big, warm heart was to portray in vivid colors, the tragedy of the four hundred and twelve young men, and how manly they suffered.

John Burroughs has observed from the notes of Mr. Charles W. Eldridge, that Emerson was not only an admirer of Whitman, but that every year from 1855 to 1860, he sought Whitman in his Brooklyn home. The two men were together much, but Walt never sought Emerson. When he was invited by Emerson to Concord, he refused to go, perhaps because he feared that he would see too much of that "literary coterie that then cl.u.s.tered there, chiefly around Emerson."

Burroughs is also responsible for the suggestion that Whitman burst into full glory at one bound, and his work from the first line is Mature. At the age of thirty-five, a great change came over the man and his habits were different thereafter. His first poem, "Starting from Paumanook,"

outlines his work, observes Burroughs, and he fulfills every promise made.

"I conned old times; I sat studying at the feet of the great Masters, Now, if eligible, O that the great Masters might return and study me!

The Soul: Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than water ebbs and flows.

I will mate the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems-- And I will mate the poems of my body and mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my Soul, and of immortality."

And so he did. As perfect as the last or any part of his work is the first. But the poet is true to himself and to the great undertaking.

In what particular qualities does Whitman differ from the other poets?

Especially the poets who conform to the traditions of the past.

"When Tennyson sends out a poem," observes Burroughs, "it is perfect, like an apple or a peach; slowly wrought out and dismissed, it drops from his boughs, holding a conception or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. It is completed, distinct and separate--might be his, or might be any man's. It carries his quality, but it is a thing of itself, and centers and depends upon itself. Whether or not the world will hereafter consent, as in the past, to call only beautiful creations of this sort, _poems_, remains to be seen. But this is certainly not what Walt Whitman does, or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes no poems apart from himself. His lines or pulsations, thrills, waves of force, indefinite dynamic, formless, constantly emanating from the living centre, and they carry the quality of the Author's personal presence with them in a way that is unprecedented in literature."

The more I read Whitman the more I am drawn to him, and feel the greatness of the man. His poems have meant to me recently, what Emerson's Essays meant to me as a younger man. In about the same way they affect me now, only my love for the poems grows with each reading.

It is well to recall that so much was John Burroughs inspired by his early contact with Whitman that his first book was, _Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person_, which was printed in 1867. A little later, in 1877, he renewed his study of the poet, in his last essay in _Birds and Poets_. The t.i.tle of the essay is "The Flight of the Eagle," and is one of Burroughs' best papers. Still later, in about 1895, he wrote his final word on Whitman, in his volume, _Whitman: A Study_. This last volume is a complete interpretation of the poet. The poems of the man are given full treatment, and it is perhaps the best defense of Whitman in print.

The publishers of these books have long expected to get John Burroughs to write a biography of Whitman, but his many other literary activities, have combined to banish their hopes, and in his stead, Mr. Bliss Perry, in 1905, was asked to write the biography, which was published in 1906.

In recent years, Whitman has been gaining pretty general acceptance, and most of the papers in current literature expose his merits. His enemies are growing fewer and fewer, and those who still survive are not so bold. They are on the defensive instead of the offensive. He is such a potent factor in the present day literature of America, that our only conclusion is that he is with us to stay, and the sooner we learn to 'Walk the open road' with him, the better will we be prepared for the future critic of American literature.

Bliss Perry thinks that on account "of the amplitude of his imagination," and "the majesty with which he confronts the eternal realities," instead of the absolute perfection of his poems, he is bound to a place somewhere among the immortals.

Mr. Perry has made a critical study of Whitman, and his judgment and conclusions are charitable and will stand. No critic can ever give an adequate conception of Whitman's poems. As he, himself said, "They will elude you." In order to understand in any degree his eccentricities and his poetic freedom, one must go to the poems and read them as a whole.

One will either turn away from them for a breath of air, or he will be forever won by them.

I happened to be among the latter cla.s.s, and I must agree with his most enthusiastic critics, that he is a real poet, and one of the few that make you think and feel. Most of our other American poets have said some pretty things in verse but are not elemental. They lack the "high seriousness," the all-essential quality of a real poet. This quality we cannot fail to recognize in Whitman, from the beginning to the end, if we tolerate him.

Mr. Stedman's paper on Whitman, though less readable than Burroughs', and far more labored than Mr. Perry's, contains many excellent estimates of Whitman's democracy, and a lover of Whitman cannot afford to be ignorant of his fine judgments. He thinks that Whitman is well equipped as a poet--having had such genuine intercourse "With Nature in her broadest and minutest forms."