Yesterday 100 years elapsed since the birth of lalt Ihitman. e/is today

la It ^hitman
Yesterday 100 years elapsed since the birth of lalt Ihitman.
e/is today as important a
figure in American literature as he was when he died, in 1892. His Recognition is not based
therefore on personal or literary eccentricity; but on solid worth. ^In any study of his persnality one is met at the outset with most amazing contrad&tions of opinion in regard to him.
Some have seen in him the full case"o? insanity, while others have hailed him as a 19th centuy
divinity. Some have seen in him only a colloquial charicature of the lower classes, onearho
revelled in uncouthness and dissipation; while others see in him the inspired poet, the Shakes­
peare of Democracy. John Burroughs tells us that America has produced five fundamental demo^^rats: Jefferson, Lincoln, Emerson, Thoreau, and ^hitman. And Havelock Fllis says "America has
^produced three men of worldwide significance--Emerson, Thoreau, and ^hitman. In fact "Whitman
has achieved the rarest of all distinctions in that he was placed while yet alive by the side
of the world's great st metal teachers, beside Jesus and Socrates; and his biographer records
his conviction that this man was "p rhaps the most advanced nature the world has yet produced.
Yeb...the facts of his life are few and simple, He was born ICO years ago on the shores of
Long Island. As a boy he showed the out-of -doors habit which was characteristic of the family,
and explored the whole of Long Island while he let the atmosphere of the woods and the fields
envelop and color his imagination. He was then a loiterer; a habit of mind and body which
disposed him to regard loafing as a dignified profession. And in his sense it is. The trouble
with most loafing is that it is not accompanied with an invitation to invite the soul, to recall
Whitmans phrase. There
was some attendace on the public schools; but most of his education wa
received out of doors. At 13 he wenii into a lawyers office; then turned his attention to medi­
cine; became a printer, taught country schools; wrote for the country newpapers, established a
journal of his own; spent the years from 1840 to 1848 in New York in printing offices, spending
his summers in the country and working on the farm, writing essays and tales. This stage of
his life closed with two years editorial work on the Brooklyn Eagle. In 1848 he made a long
^^purney thru the middle, southern and western states; and then returned to journalism in Brook­
lyn, and finally enaged
for a time inbuilding and selling housed in that city. In 1855 he
published his first volume "Leaves of Grass" and his life entered on an entirely different carer
Hp bo this time co stittues the educational period of his life; and while he was familiar
with a few^reatbooScs and greatly TnTluend ed'hythem .he was t-ained for his work out of doors.
Few men have known so many different kinds of people and been so much at home with men simply
as men. He h^d a passion for humanity, without reference to character, education, occupation,
or condition. The streets, ferryboats, tops of stages, loafing places were dear to him because
they gave him a chance to see men and women in the whole range of their lives. He drew no lines
and made no distinctions; the saint and the sinner; the nun and the prostitute; the hero and the
"hitman 2
criminal, were alike to him in their appeal to his interest. Wo went to the churches, the
reform meetings, the theaters; and he went also to hospitals, poor houses and prisons.. He had
friends among cultivated people, but he foved the native qualities of humanity, and wamnost at
home with working people--pilots, masons, teamsters, deckhands, mechanics of all sorts; men
who toil with the hands. He went wherever people were to be found, and spent most of his time
in the streets and popular resotts. Me made himself fami iar with all kinds of employment, h
not by reading trade reports and statistics, but by stopping and watching the work^^n at their
work for hours at a time. j!e visited the ^foundries, shops, rol ing mills, slaughterhouses,
woolen and cotten factories, shipyards and carriage shops--went to clambakes, races, auctions,
Reddings, sailing and bathing parties, christening and all kinr%of merry makings. He knew
nsvery New York bus driver, and found them good comrades. Indeed he tells us that the influence
of these rough good hearted fellows were largely the cause of Leaves of Grass.
So far Whitman had seen life chiefly in its fundamental occupations, in its si%hplest
form. i!e^as^ho%/'to see it on its tragic side, and to be profoundly touched and influenced by
it. In the 2nd year ff the civil war he went to Washington and became a nurse in the army
hospitals, supporting himself by writing letters to the New York Times. During this period of
three years, while broket^ by an attack of hospital malaria, he visited and tended 100,000 men.
His mere presence, we are told, with his inexhaustible love and sympathy, was worth twmuoh as
the services of a dozen physicians. From this axpaxiexaa period a deep tenderness, a/divine
compassion for all things human, is never absent from ^hitmans work; and it is this element in
his large emotional nature, brought to full maturity by these war experiences, which so many
persons have felt thrilling thru the mans whole personality, and which explains in some measure
the devotion he has inspired.
*.thitman w^qt ...^o Taahingt op young, in the perfection of virile physical energy; he came
away ol^*an(Tenfeebled, having touched the height of life,to walk henceforth a downward path,
j^hya iealIv however he was always
incoln chanced to see him thru a window once
and remarked Well, he looks like a man". He is described as six feet in height, weighing
nearly 200 pounds, with eyebrows highly arched; eyes light blue, rather small dull and heavy;
full sized mouth, with large lips; large handsome ears, and a ns^s exceptionally acute. The
complexion of his face was a bright markon tint, while that of his body *wa s a well-marked rose
color; his gait an elephantine roll. "Hn, description" says his biographer "can give aay idea
of the extraordinary physical attractiveness of the man" even upon those who ame in contact
with him for a moment.
At the close of the war he became connected with the government, in the capacity of a
clerk first in the int<?rior an<T" than in the Ir**nxury dpoart*sont.' 'In 1873 he w-'ts partial ly die*
abled by a stroke of paralysis.
a then moved to Hamden, where he had a modest home and saw
'hitman 3
many fkiends. H^s means were very limited, but they were supplemented by the devotion of his
friends. His health #as much impaired^but his cheerfulness was uqclouded. There on the 26th
of March he died, and lies buried in a Camden cemetery.
I have thus suggested an outline of his life. If you desire to understand his work, you
must msCke"lJ"careful stud^T^Fhis life. It is not possible to apprehend this mans work unless
his personality is understood. Every great book contains the precious lifeblood of a master­
spirit, and no book throbs with a more vivid personal life than "Leaves of Grass". Itas the
whole outcome of a whole man, audacious and unrepentant, who has here set down the emwtional
reverberations of a manifold life. "For only" according to his own large waxotx saying,
J*For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and
P
nakedness; after treading ground, and breasting river and lake;
After a loosened throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom,
crimes; After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations and removing obstructions; After
these and more, tkaxsxix it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman, the divine power
to speak words."
Now it is exceedingly diff^cuIt to speak in so short a time of this multiplex man, this
man who knew and wrote about every side of life, this man who thrills us with his portrayal of
the elemental passions of humanity. He is supremely Jjhe poet of democracy^, the expression of
American life. Other poets had divined what was in the American spirit, but '"hitman was the
first poet to get into his verse the continental volume of American life, its vast flow thru
the channels of a thousand occupations, its passionate practise of equality, its resolute
assertion of the sanctity of the individual, its insistence upon the supreme value of the
instinctive as against the acquired traits and qualities.
was the first poet to express
this American life with the virility which becomes it. America for him means hardihood and
strength and vigor and independence; and his ideal American people is a race of stalwart sons
Mtnd atheletic daughters vitalized by great free souls. Perhaps he has most powerfully express­
ed this in a most sweeping poem, translated into many languages and by many Europeans accepted
as the index to Whitman's American poetry:
"0 you youths, you "7est3rn youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship.
Plain I s ?e you, Yestern youths, s ^e you trampling with the foremost,
Pioneers I 0 pioneers!
All the past we leave behind;
Ye debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
04<rnrmin*a.
f) PifirtaarjR_____________ _________
Thitman 4
Not being able to treat him in his varied aspects, I can perhaps do no better service
tha& give y<pu a method whereby you may come to an understanding of the man and his works; and
to this end I shall not so much talk about him, or attempt any estimate of him--for whioh one
would need be far better acquainted with literature in general than I am--as let him speak.
My office shall be to set some of his thoughts in order, so that you may get at the meat of his
gospel. And as it is thoughts I am intent upon, I shall exouse myself from commenting on his
style, and wilt not discuss the moot'd question as to whether bis poetry is poetry or not. I
acknowledge the ntzvaxiixaxz awkwardness, and even slovenliness, of his lines at times, the
slang, the amusing little affe^ionst^a^ in which he somatic s indulges--tho when inspiration
^jkomes to him he leaves all this behind. To me poetry,to be enjoyed as poetry musthave rymth
and music, so that the joy I get from Yhitman lies not
in
the character ofhis poetry,buti
its content, and this in spite of its character.
Jie of oqurse^re^ected the formal methqd of verse making, with its rhyme and its meter;
but his poems nave a kinS of deep underswell of rythmic motion all their own. They resemble
the great oriental poems, tho their style is unique. You know some of the greatest poetry in
the world is not in verse, for instance the unapproachable poetry of the Old Testament.
It is
a curious fact that
akespeare in his highest tragedy departed from verse, as if it were incap
able of the austere grandeur of effect at which he aimed, '"hitman seemed to aim at a poetic
prose, and while seemingly careless of v rhal beauty, he is a great literary artist.
e has a
luscious richness of language.
is words are chosen with an exquisite sense of their color,
tdne, and effect upon the ear and the eye, and his chanting periods show the fine choice of
a master of expression. Some of his work is exquisite in its word wueic and grand as the roll
of breakers. 3till I do not believe that he will Lave many followers or imitators.
*6
J.Q the substance of his message we find it saturated with what I would call
religion, religion in its larger phases.
<* exclaims "I too, following many and followed by
M^any? inaugurate a religion . And
if we w uld understand ?alt "hitman we mushhave some
concep
tion ofthis religion. Ye shall find that one great principle dominates hiswork; a principle
which forma a center about which everything else
he says revolves; a principle, in the light of
which everything he says r
^e understood; and
the most complete utterance
ofhis one great
principle of life is found in the "Sorg of Myself"
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul:
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is."
H.r. i. th. a.ntr.i thought, th. gr.-t unifying thought, of ^hitm.nHth. .ignifia.no., th*
worth, th. ...r.dn... of iddi.idu.l .xt.t.na. "ind nothltg, not ;od, i. gr.it«r to o n . M i t h M
one s self is .
But even tho he waits for you, you will never find him unless you are willing to launch
out into deep and uncharted seas, for hecries to hi selB
Away 0 Soul! hoist instantly the anchor 1
Cut the hawsers--haul out— shake out every sail!
Sail forth— steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, 0 Soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet hared to go,
And we will risk the ship ourselves and all.
0
0
0
0
my brave soul!
farther farther sail!
daring joy* but safe! are they not all theseas
farther, farther, farther sail.
of God?
Simplicity And Self-Respect
This is What you shall do:
Leva the earth, and sun, and the animals;
Despise riches;
&ive alms to every one that it will help;
Stand up for the stupid and crazy;
Devote your Income and labour to others;
Bate tyrants;
Argue not concerning God:
Have patience and indulgence towards the people;
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, save the ideal
of goodness, nor to any man or number of men, except in so far as
they are good;
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young,
and with the mothers of families;
Re-examine all you have been taught at school, or church, or in
any book;
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
Then your very fles^ shall be a great poem.
It shall have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in
the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of
your eves, and in every motion and joint of your body.