One of the gentlemen at that lecture who, as I understand, is one of your Classicists, highly respectable and very much of the old order, repudiated Whitman as confused and vulgar and assured the audience that in England those who like Swinburne first gloried in Whitman, soon would have none of him because of his vulgarity.Īmong other things, this critic of Whitman said “Fancy saying to the King of England: ‘Hello George’ and to the Prime Minister: ‘Hello Stanley.’“ Such familiarity is artificial, false, unreal.” Whitman was therefore unlike other poets, a pioneer unique both in form of his art and in the ideas and feeling his poetry conveys. Unlike European poets with their roots in a decaying civilization, Walt Whitman was the singer of a new world-a culture in the making-America, a giant, savage, seeking expression. “Leaves of Grass” is a child of nature, carried sky-ward by its strong wings, giving forth out of its pure lungs the song of freedom, the song of the ecstasy of love, the delight of passion-the song of humanity which embraced all and understood all. Walt Whitman is hewn from the rocks of gigantic mountains, of the depth of the Arizona canyons, the rush of the Niagara, the freshness of the open air. Europe is old, firmly set in the groove of traditions, hemmed and hedged in by parchments, by learning derived in grey institutions, taught by grey decrepit gentlemen. The difference between Walt Whitman and the Europeans is the difference between youth and old age. I even think some of his biographers have rendered the poet of Leaves of Grass scant services when they proclaimed him greater than Homer and Socrates. Not that Whitman was the greatest of all times or all nations.
I was struck by what seem to me a futile attempt on the part of some of the men who participated in the discussion to contrast Walt Whitman with some European poets. Last summer I listened to the reading of a very fine paper on Walt Whitman, at the Public Library of the city.