The AP English Language and Composition course is designed to enable students to become skilled readers and writers in diverse genres and modes of composition. As stated in the Advanced Placement Course Description, the purpose of the Language and Composition course is “to enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write papers of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers” (The College Board, May 2007, May 2008, p.6).
Self-Wisdom Quite
simply, Transcendentalism is based on the belief that human beings have
self-wisdom and may gain this knowledge or wisdom by tuning in to the
ebb and flow of nature. Transcendentalism revolves around the self,
specifically the betterment of the self. Where Emerson and his followers
differed from earlier philosophical and religious beliefs was in the
idea that human beings had innate knowledge and could connect with God
directly rather than through an institution such as organized religion.
Transcendentalism celebrated the self, an important step in the
construction of American identity, better understood as the notion of
American individualism—one of the cornerstones of American democracy. Different
writers conceived of the search for self-knowledge in different ways.
Whitman’s response was a grand celebration of the self in all its
complexity and beauty and contradictions. He begins the poem “Song of
Myself” with the bold line, “I celebrate myself.” He offers up to his
readers, “I loafe and invite my Soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease . . .
observing a spear of summer grass.” Leaves of Grass is filled with such celebration. Thoreau took a slightly different path toward self-knowledge. Walden
is a study of solitude. He says, “I find it wholesome to be alone the
greater part of the time. . . . I never found the companion that was so
companionable as solitude.” For him, self-discovery comes as the result
of intense reflection. Self-knowledge has political implications as
well. Once the individual has established a moral code, it becomes his
or her duty to peacefully protest and engage in civil disobedience
against the government should governmental policies violate that code.
Thoreau’s opposition to slavery led to his refusal to pay a poll tax
supporting the Mexican War, an act that landed him in jail for a night.
For Thoreau, self-discovery was not simply an intangible concept, it was
a way of living. Nature and Its Meaning Nature
is the focal point for much transcendentalist thought and writing. As a
theme, it is so central to the movement that Emerson’s cornerstone
essay is entitled Nature and serves as an investigation into
nature and its relationship to the soul. For transcendentalists, nature
and the soul were inextricably linked. In the rhythms and seasons of the
natural world, transcendentalists found comfort and divinity. In the
increasingly industrialized and fragmented world in which they lived,
the search for meaning in nature was of great importance. Emerson,
Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Fuller, Melville, and others saw
possibility, liberation, and beauty in nature. Emerson writes in Nature,
“Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully
around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?” For Emerson, nature
is a direct line to God, and its “meaning” is directly linked to God’s
“meaning.” His definition of God and meaning is clearly different than
that of the conservative Unitarian Church from which he split. A
follower of Emerson, Thoreau took ideas from Emerson’s work and put
them into practice. He saw nature as not just an awe-inspiring force but
a way of life. Thoreau offers up the following advice in Walden:
“Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the
rails.” For Thoreau, nature is pure because it is free from
commercialization and industrialization. It is both a respite and a
teacher. The transcendentalists were not reactionary or opposed to the
modernization of the world; they were, however, concerned that such
modernization could lead to alienation. Nature provided a way to keep
humans in touch with their souls and with their spiritual foundations. Social Reform Regarding
social issues, transcendentalists were considered visionaries in their
attitudes toward such issues as social protest, elimination of slavery,
women’s rights, creative and participatory education for children, and
labor reform. Transcendentalism became a venue for social reform because
it revolved around the idea of liberation. Transcendentalist writers
may have had as their immediate goal the liberation of the soul, but
that goal expanded to social liberation as more and more thinkers joined
the transcendentalist school of thought. Founded
as an alternative to conservative, organized religion,
Transcendentalism had countercultural tendencies from its inception.
From the free flowing, free verse of Whitman to the civil disobedience
of Thoreau to Fuller’s radical notion that men and women were social and
intellectual equals, the movement was engaged in many controversial
social arenas. As the editor of the transcendentalist publication The Dial, Fuller often published controversial pieces. As the author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, she invited debate and controversy. Her essay is a call to action for women and men to change society. She laments:
The
lot of Woman is sad. She is constituted to expect and need happiness
that cannot exist on earth. She must stifle such aspirations within her
secret heart, and fit herself, as well as she can, for a life of
resignations and consolations.
Clearly
this is not an acceptable life to Fuller, just as slavery is
unacceptable to Thoreau. In “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau
states, “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall
we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or
shall we transgress them at once?” Thoreau’s answer was to transgress,
and go to jail if necessary, for as he says, “Under a government which
imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Along
with slavery and gender issues, class issues also came to the forefront
in the nineteenth century, revealing a new kind of slavery—wage
slavery. Transcendentalists experimented with socialist communes, such
as George Ripley’s Brook Farm and Alcott’s Fruitlands. These experiments
were short lived. The legacy of civil disobedience served America and
the world well, as it went on to inspire Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr., to lead peaceful social protests. In addition, Fuller is often read
as a precursor to modern feminism and is seen as a woman ahead of her
time.
Today in class, begin working on your paper. Try to plan out what you will write and aim to create a strong introduction.
Here is the TASK:
"Re-examine All You Have Been Told": Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau
TASK: What are the central themes of American Transcendentalism? After
reading the writings of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau, write a synthesis
essay 5-7 pages that defines and explains the central themes of American Transcendentalism. Support your discussion with evidence from
the texts you have read. What implications can you draw from these
readings that pertain to contemporary society? (i.e. What relevance do these ideas have for the world today?)
1. So, what are the central themes of Transcendentalism? How would you DEFINE the themes of Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau? Include this in your intro.
2. Which theme or possibly two themes can you relate to contemporary society? FOCUS on this and make a CONNECTION between these writers, their ideas, and today's society. Let this become your THESIS STATEMENT.
3. Now, for SUPPORT (and the majority of what you write in the paper), find appropriate QUOTES and EXAMPLES from the works you have studied that relate to your THESIS (and your thesis should be along the lines that these ideas are still RELEVANT today!) Work YOUR OWN IDEAS around the supporting examples from the texts. Remember to consider when these works were written and what America was like at the time (apply your American History here as well). Are there any contemporary writers who echo the thoughts of the Transcendentalists? You could include these contemporary writers as being influenced by the Transcendentalists as well.
4. Use the hand-outs you have received these past weeks (and hopefully, annotated or highlighted). Also,
know that all of these essays, "Song of Myself," and Walden are online. You can cut and paste and make a quote sheet from the internet! Just be sure to also copy the weblink for your MLA citations. YES, this paper needs MLA citation and a Works Cited page.
5. For additional support and ideas, go to Shmoop.com or Spark notes or eNotes or Gradesaver. All
of these Study Guide websites have information about the texts you have studied and may also provide you with more ideas for your paper.
6. Finally, print out your outline, notes, intro (whatever you have written this period)--OR send it to yourself.
Over the weekend, try to make more progress on your paper (yes I know many of you are performing or working on the production, but try!). Monday we will continue writing and conferring in class.
Oh, and break a leg, Hairspray cast! Have a great weekend...
Emerson considers the nature and the
functions of the poet, "the man of Beauty," to whom he ascribes a
superior calling. Unlike the intellectual, who sees no dependence between the
material world and the world of thoughts and ideas, or the theologian, who
relies exclusively on historical evidence for truth, the poet acknowledges an
interdependence between the spiritual and the material worlds. This
relationship between the ideal — that which we aspire to be — and the real —
that which is — is a central issue in the discussion. Continuing the image of
the child from the epigraph, Emerson states that we are "children of the
fire," and the energy and brilliance of this fire is similar to the spirit
in each of us.
Following this introductory paragraph,
Emerson defines the poet as representing all humanity. The poet is "the
complete man" whom Americans can look to as an ideal. Isolated from
society, the poet has a spiritual affinity with nature. We need interpreters of
what nature expresses, Emerson reasons, because too many of us have distanced
ourselves from nature's life-affirming spirit: "Too feeble fall the impressions
of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill." The best
interpreter of nature is the poet, who sees what most of us only dream about.
The poet must act as a conduit, exposing nature's hidden secrets to us.
Likening the poet to one of three
"children" of the universe, Emerson constructs a system of threes:
cause, operation, and effect. Instances of this three-fold structure include
Christianity's Father, Spirit, and Son, and the Knower, the Doer, and the
Sayer. These triads stand for the love of truth, the love of good, and the love
of beauty, respectively, with the poet representing the last element in each
set: He is both the "sayer" and the lover of beauty. Emerson creates
an argument formally known as a syllogism: If, as he maintains, "Beauty is
the creator of the universe"; and if the poet is "the man of
Beauty"; then the poet is the creator of the universe.
Emerson continues his discussion of the
poet as the creator of the universe by arguing that "poetry was all
written before time was . . ." He is not suggesting that every poem was
written long ago, but that the recurring subject matter of poems — namely, our
lives and the reasons for our being — existed since the beginning of time.
Because our basic concerns of survival and our questioning why we exist
influence each age, he can legitimately characterize the poet's writings as
"primal warblings," present at time's beginning and shared by all of
humanity. The person who mines this spiritualism is "the true poet,"
true in the sense of being fundamental and essential to our lives and our
living.
Contrasting the true poet with the mere
versifier, Emerson joins the age-old fray about which is more important, how a
poem is written or what a poem is about, by arguing that content is only
slightly more important than a poem's form for two reasons. If the thought that
the poet is writing about "adorns nature with a new thing," then the
form of the poem will naturally follow the content and will not feel contrived.
Also, a poem's subject matter occurs prior to the form that a poem eventually
takes: We cannot write poetry without first having a subject to write about. A
person may be proficient in meter and rhyme but lack the inspiration and vision
of the true poet, who is not tied to a single age or format, but who writes
about nature's inner truths.
Paragraphs 10–18 - The Poet, Language, and Nature
In this second part of the essay,
Emerson discusses the poet's medium — language — and its relationship to
nature. Central to his thinking is the concept of language as a natural
phenomenon. Original, primitive languages tended to be highly image-based, and
Emerson believes that this characteristic can still be verified through
etymologies, which trace the history of words back to their original meanings,
usually constructed from concrete nouns. For instance, recalling the examples
presented in Nature, the word heart is used today to express emotion,
and we use the term head to
characterize thought. This is all part of what Emerson understands as the
symbolic function of language, which should not surprise us if we recall his
saying, "Things admit of being used as symbols because nature is a symbol,
in the whole, and in every part."
This symbolic language is universal,
but it is obscure to most people. One of the poet's main tasks is to interpret
nature for us. Hence, Emerson calls the poet "Namer" and "Language-maker."
He is not suggesting that a person who is not connected with nature is wholly
oblivious to its wonders, for such a person is "commanded in nature by the
living power which he feels to be there present." However, the "living
power" remains illusive and inexplicable to such a person, and especially
to the city dweller.
In this section, Emerson spends much of
his time reemphasizing his beliefs concerning the language of nature and the nature
of language, and the poet as the intermediary between the two. He also develops
two themes that are interrelated to each other: Every individual object in
nature is a microcosm of the whole, and these microcosms establish order in
nature. For example, most of us take a landscape's objects for granted, ".
. . but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the
beehive or the spider's geometrical web." By interpreting a landscape for
society, the poet infuses each object with a power that makes it new: An object
is re-created into something new that the public has never seen before. Emerson
also touches on a favorite theme — evolution when he assures us that the poet
notes every object's spirit, which compels each object to ascend into a higher
form. Later in the essay, he will expand this theme to include the passage of
the soul into a higher form.
Through a highly elaborate comparison,
Emerson reflects on the relationship between the poet and the poet's work. The
poet is under the care of nature, just as a mushroom is. A mushroom grows wild,
with no one to ensure that it propagates and survives; nature, however, sees to
it that the fungus drops spores, which become new mushrooms. These spores are
comparable to poems leaving the poet's control and going out into the world
like immortal descendants, a process much like the Olympian bards' eternally
young songs from the epigraph. This notion of immortality is furthered by the
image of wings, which allow the true poet's poems to escape the censure of
small-minded critics, whose words are wingless and plodding. These poems,
winged with spiritual beauty, are able to escape mortality.
The poet, who uses nature's language to
interpret the world for society, benefits greatly from imagination, "a
very high sort of seeing." Emerson begins his inquiry into the nature of
imagination by telling the story of a local sculptor. This man was inarticulate
and inexpressive in words, but his statues conveyed a beauty and a meaning
beyond words. In similar fashion, the poet perceives the spiritual essences of
things: Whereas the sculptor shapes marble, the poet patterns language to
create art. A poem may not always have realistic details, but, by using
imagination, the poet depicts an inner reality, a poetic expression that often
seems wild and irrational.
From this idea Emerson moves to the
frequent association of poets with overindulgence, especially with alcohol or narcotics,
which is to be understood, he says, because the poet always seeks contact with
what is below the surface of things, what he terms "the true nectar."
Furthermore, the poet, because he deals in images of physical beauty, is more
attuned to the life of the senses, to appetites and sensations. However, the
true poet, who reaches the highest understanding, takes the greatest care to
ingest only what is pure and most unsullied: "The sublime vision comes to
the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body." This true poet
realizes that imagination itself is the most satisfying and effective
intoxicant.
Emerson now returns to the importance
of the poet to humanity, and this time he stresses that the poet is not only an
interpreter of nature: He is akin to "liberating gods." The poet
releases the liberating power of our imaginations, and those of us whose
imaginations struggle to make sense of the world can find our inspiration in
his words. The image of children signifies the unrestrained and refreshing joy
Emerson says touches those whose imaginations are free from everyday, urban
worries. Note the uncharacteristic buoyancy in this reference: "We seem to
be touched by a wand which makes us dance and run about happily, like
children." Later in this passage, Emerson uses the terms
"liberation" and "emancipation" as equivalents for
"transcendence." Liberation, he says, is similar to the transcendence
he describes in other essays. Here, the transcendent state is presented in such
phrases as "a new sense" and "within their world another world,
or nest of worlds."
If the poet is humanity's liberating
god, what is it that humanity needs liberating of? Emerson answers this
question by using the image of a shepherd lost only a few feet from his cottage
door. This shepherd, who perishes in a snowstorm because he is unable to find
the security of home, is emblematic of the floundering state of humanity, which
is "on the brink of the waters of life and truth . . . miserably
dying." We are so locked into our private thoughts and our selfish
actions, Emerson says, that the greater truths that bind us together have been
lost; we are at the edge of the water that is universal truth, but we do not
realize our thirst and are slowly wasting away in our personal prisons. The poet
is the key to unlock these prisons, the cup that can quench our thirsts,
because he creates new thoughts that liberate us of our own selfish wants.
In discussing this liberating aspect of
poetry, Emerson invokes the name of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish mystic and
philosopher who is mentioned in many of his essays. Swedenborg is an example of
the visionary who sees what others do not, and whose strange and original
images allow us to view our world in a new light. Note Swedenborg's
nationality, and recall Emerson's invocation in "The American
Scholar" for an American literature free from the confines of the European
tradition. At first glance, Emerson seems to be contradicting his own
proclamations concerning this new American vision when he admiringly discusses
Swedenborg. However, Swedenborg represents an ideal that Emerson hopes
Americans will achieve for themselves, which is why Emerson, in the next
section, will launch his characteristic summons for an American literature and
an American poet whose voice celebrates America's rich character — not
Europe's.
Paragraphs 19-29 - The Poet and Imagination
The poet, who uses nature's language to
interpret the world for society, benefits greatly from imagination, "a
very high sort of seeing." Emerson begins his inquiry into the nature of
imagination by telling the story of a local sculptor. This man was inarticulate
and inexpressive in words, but his statues conveyed a beauty and a meaning
beyond words. In similar fashion, the poet perceives the spiritual essences of
things: Whereas the sculptor shapes marble, the poet patterns language to
create art. A poem may not always have realistic details, but, by using imagination,
the poet depicts an inner reality, a poetic expression that often seems wild
and irrational.
From this idea Emerson moves to the
frequent association of poets with overindulgence, especially with alcohol or
narcotics, which is to be understood, he says, because the poet always seeks
contact with what is below the surface of things, what he terms "the true
nectar." Furthermore, the poet, because he deals in images of physical
beauty, is more attuned to the life of the senses, to appetites and sensations.
However, the true poet, who reaches the highest understanding, takes the greatest
care to ingest only what is pure and most unsullied: "The sublime vision
comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body." This true
poet realizes that imagination itself is the most satisfying and effective
intoxicant.
Emerson now returns to the importance
of the poet to humanity, and this time he stresses that the poet is not only an
interpreter of nature: He is akin to "liberating gods." The poet
releases the liberating power of our imaginations, and those of us whose imaginations
struggle to make sense of the world can find our inspiration in his words. The
image of children signifies the unrestrained and refreshing joy Emerson says
touches those whose imaginations are free from everyday, urban worries. Note
the uncharacteristic buoyancy in this reference: "We seem to be touched by
a wand which makes us dance and run about happily, like children." Later
in this passage, Emerson uses the terms "liberation" and
"emancipation" as equivalents for "transcendence."
Liberation, he says, is similar to the transcendence he describes in other
essays. Here, the transcendent state is presented in such phrases as "a
new sense" and "within their world another world, or nest of
worlds."
If the poet is humanity's liberating
god, what is it that humanity needs liberating of? Emerson answers this
question by using the image of a shepherd lost only a few feet from his cottage
door. This shepherd, who perishes in a snowstorm because he is unable to find
the security of home, is emblematic of the floundering state of humanity, which
is "on the brink of the waters of life and truth . . . miserably
dying." We are so locked into our private thoughts and our selfish
actions, Emerson says, that the greater truths that bind us together have been
lost; we are at the edge of the water that is universal truth, but we do not
realize our thirst and are slowly wasting away in our personal prisons. The
poet is the key to unlock these prisons, the cup that can quench our thirsts,
because he creates new thoughts that liberate us of our own selfish wants.
In discussing this liberating aspect of
poetry, Emerson invokes the name of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish mystic and
philosopher who is mentioned in many of his essays. Swedenborg is an example of
the visionary who sees what others do not, and whose strange and original
images allow us to view our world in a new light. Note Swedenborg's
nationality, and recall Emerson's invocation in "The American
Scholar" for an American literature free from the confines of the European
tradition. At first glance, Emerson seems to be contradicting his own proclamations
concerning this new American vision when he admiringly discusses Swedenborg.
However, Swedenborg represents an ideal that Emerson hopes Americans will
achieve for themselves, which is why Emerson, in the next section, will launch
his characteristic summons for an American literature and an American poet
whose voice celebrates America's rich character — not Europe's.
Paragraphs 30–33 - The Poet and America
In this final section, Emerson reflects on the need for a
true poet of the American experience who can be to Americans what Shakespeare
is to the British, and what Dante is to Italians. Such a poet has not yet
emerged. ("The Poet" was published eleven years before the
publication of Leaves of Grass by
Walt Whitman, who is generally recognized as an answer to Emerson's call for an
American poet, just as Robert Frost might be considered a contemporary example
of what Emerson is seeking.) Emerson calls for a new American poetics that
reveals the nature of this new continent, just as in "The American
Scholar" he calls for a new philosophy commensurate with the new world.
The last two paragraphs express an almost ecstatic
invocation of the poet: Always the diligent craftsman, Emerson's invoking the
muse reminds us of Greek mythology and returns us to the essay's epigraphs. He
bids his idealized American poet to rise to new heights of expressiveness and
insight.
"What then is transcendentalism? What is this force of ideology that shaped
America? It begins as a period in history that expressed itself vividly in New
England roughly between 1830-1860 (Wilson 2) with revolutionary changes and
debates in attitudes towards individualism, nature, religion, philosophy, education,
politics, society and culture. Nothing is left untouched and America itself
is not left unchanged. There is no specific definition of transcendentalism.
It is not limited to the literature or the time, but instead penetrates the
American psyche up until today, and is reflected in current writers, poets,
and films, like the one being evaluated here, Dead Poets Society,
released in 1989, roughly 130 years after the transcendental movement gave way
to a new literary period of realism. The transcendentalist writers were rebels
who expressed new ideas and new ways of writing on a whole spectrum of principles.
It was and remains integral to the energy of being American: rebellious and
individualistic. It has also taken on new forms from the original identification
of nature and spirituality to political forces of environmentalism, for example
or the scientific reasoning of ecology"
the major principles of transcendentalism: freethinking,
self reliance and non conformity, growth and renewal of the individual, revolt
against tradition and established institutions, civil disobedience, brotherhood
of man, nature and spiritual unity, and educational reform.
1 AMERICA
does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid
other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions … accepts the
lesson with calmness … is not so impatient as has been supposed that
the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the
life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms … perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating
and sleeping rooms of the house … perceives that it waits a little while
in the door … that it was fittest for its days … that its action has
descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches … and that
he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the
largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not
merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied
from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently
moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates
heroes… . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and
nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the
trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and
groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and
flowing breadth and showers its proflic and splendid extravagance. One
sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need
never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop
apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies … but the
genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or
legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches
or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors … but always most in
the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendship—the
freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of
their carriage … their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to
anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the
citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the
fierceness of their roused resentment—their curiosity and welcome of
novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to
a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to
stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their
delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native
elegance of soul … their good temper and open handedness—the terrible
significance of their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to
them, not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the
gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a
corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen.
Not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous
business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal
of man … nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A
live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority
the cheapest … namely from its own soul. This is the sum of the
profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and
grandeur and of the subjects of poets.—As if it were necessary to trot
back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the
beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the
mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the
opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired
since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the
antique or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages! The pride of
the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all
returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography
or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of full sized men or one
full sized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is
the race of races. of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people.
to him the other continents arrive as contributions … he gives them
reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his
country’s spirit … he incarnates its geography and natural life and
rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes,
Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and St. Lawrence with the Falls and
beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend
themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the
inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and
Maine and over Manhattan Bay and over Champlain and Erie and over
Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and
Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off California
and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more
than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long
Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer
he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also
from east to west and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid
growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live
oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and
cottonwood and tuliptree and caotus and wildvine and tamarind and
persimmon … and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp … and
forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from boughs and
crackling in the wind … and sides and peaks of mountains … and
pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie … with flights
and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and
high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and
red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and Indian-hen and
cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird
and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and nightheron and eagle. to him
the hereditary countenance descends both mother’s and father’s. to him
enter the essences of the real things and past and present events—of the
enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines—the tribes
of red aborigines—the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports or
making landings on rocky coasts—the first settlements north or south—the
rapid stature and muscle—the haughty defiance of ’76, and the war and
peace and formation of the constitution … the Union always surrounded by
blatherers and always calm and impregnable—the perpetual coming of
immigrants—the wharf-hem’d cities and superior marine—the unsurveyed
interior—the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and
trappers … the free commerce—the fisheries and whaling and
gold-digging—the endless gestation of new states—the convening of
Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates
and the uttermost parts … the noble character of the young mechanics and
of all free American workmen and workwomen … the general ardor and
friendliness and enterprise—the perfect equality of the female with the
male … the large amativeness—the fluid movement of the population—the
factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery—the Yankee
swap—the New York firemen and the target excursion—the Southern
plantation life—the character of the northeast and of the northwest and
southwest—slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it,
and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or
the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the
expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to
be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes
through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be
chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the
verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is
creative and has vista. Here comes one among the well beloved
stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and
beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.
of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical
stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them
the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much
as their poets shall. of all mankind the great poet is the equable man.
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail
of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its
place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions
neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the
key. He is the equalizer of his age and land … he supplies what wants
supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out of
him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and
populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and
commerce—lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—federal, state
or municipal government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by
land and sea … nothing too close, nothing too far off … the stars not
too far off. In war he is the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits
him recruits horse and foot … he fetches parks of artillery the best
that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows
how to arouse it … he can make every word he speaks draw blood.
Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he
never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up
out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light … he turns the pivot
with his finger … he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and
easily overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying towards
infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady
faith … he spreads out his dishes … he offers the sweet firmfibred meat
that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no
arguer … he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the
sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest he has the
most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the
talk on the soul and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is
silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement
… he sees eternity in men and women … he does not see men or women as
dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul … it pervades the
common people and preserves them … they never give up believing and
expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and
unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the
power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty
how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the
greatest artist… . The power to destroy or remould is freely used by
him, but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not
expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is
not what is wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers … not
parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that
way see after him! There is not left any vestige of despair or
misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or
color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell … and no man
thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he
breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the
grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer … he is individual … he
is complete in himself … the others are as good as he, only he sees it
and they do not. He is not one of the chorus … he does not stop for any
regulation … he is the president of regulation. What the eyesight does
to the rest he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the
eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed
from any proof but its own and foreruns the identities of the spiritual
world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man and all
the instruments and books of the earth and all reasoning. What is
marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague?
after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit and given
audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter with
electric swiftness softly and duly without confusion or jostling or
jam.
The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of
heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small
themes … but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty
and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects … they expect him
to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women
perceive the beauty well enough … probably as well as he. The passionate
tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and
orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form,
seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open
air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty
and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people. They can never be
assisted by poets to perceive … some may but they never can. The poetic
quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses
to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life
of these and much else and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that
it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity
that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight.
The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of
metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and
roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts
and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to
form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations
or recitations are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from
beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in
conjunction in a man or woman it is enough … the fact will prevail
through the universe … but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will
not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is
lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the
stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or
number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the
young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open
air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have
been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults
your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and 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 eyes and in every motion
and joint of your body… . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded
work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured
… others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the
creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches …
and shall master all attachment.
The known universe has one complete lover and that is the
greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which
chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune
and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What baulks or breaks
others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy.
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his
proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport
with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the
presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or
woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse … he leaves room
ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover … he is sure …
he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not
for nothing. Nothing can jar him … suffering and darkness cannot—death
and fear cannot. to him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses
buried and rotten in the earth … he saw them buried. The sea is not
surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of
his love and of all perfection and beauty.
The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss … it is
inevitable as life … it is as exact and plumb as gravitation. From the
eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another
hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of
the harmony of things with man. to these respond perfections not only in
the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest
themselves just the same. These understand the law of perfection in
masses and floods … that its finish is to each for itself and onward
from itself … that it is profuse and impartial … that there is not a
minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth and sea without
it—nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn
of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of
beauty there is precision and balance … one part does not need to be
thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most
lithe and powerful organ … the pleasure of poems is not in them that
take the hand-somest measure and similes and sound.
Without effort and without exposing in the least how it is
done the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and
passions and scenes and persons some more and some less to bear on your
individual character as you hear or read. to do this well is to compete
with the laws that pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must
surely be there and the clue of it must be there … and the faintest
indication is the indication of the best and then becomes the clearest
indication. Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined.
The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has
been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them
again on their feet … he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I
may realize you. He learns the lesson … he places himself where the
future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays
over character and scenes and passions … he finally ascends and finishes
all … he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for
or what is beyond … he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most
wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown … by that flash of the
moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified
afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make
applications of morals … he knows the soul. The soul has that
measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but
its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride and the one
balances the other and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in
company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain.
The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both and they are vital in his
style and thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of
the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity …
nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. to carry
on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all
subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very
uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and
insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the
sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the
flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved it
you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and
times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the
bay or the mettlesome action of the blood horse or the tall leaning of
sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun journeying
through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with any more
satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a
marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without
increase or diminution and is the free channel of himself. He swears to
his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any
elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the
rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way not the richest
curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt
or startle or fascinate or soothe I will have purposes as health or
heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation. What I experience
or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my
composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will
be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease
through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him
not. of the traits of the brotherhood of writers savans musicians
inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing
from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics,
mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native
grand-opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and for
ever who contributes the greatest original practical example. The
cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and
makes one. The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come
to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better
than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy. Did
you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more
than one eyesight countervails another … and that men can be good or
grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What do
you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments and the deadliest
battles and wrecks and the wildest fury of the elements and the power
of the sea and the motion of nature and the throes of human desires and
dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says,
Rage on, Whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere, Master of the
spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, Master of nature and
passion and death, and of all terror and all pain.
The American bards shall be marked for generosity and
affection and for encouraging competitors… . They shall be kosmos …
without monopoly or secrecy … glad to pass anything to any one … hungry
for equals night and day. They shall not be careful of riches and
privilege … they shall be riches and privilege … they shall perceive who
the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts
all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of
himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one
or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor
the soul most nor the body most … and not be for the eastern states more
than the western or the northern states more than the southern.
Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the
greatest poet but always his encouragement and support. The outset and
remembrance are there … there the arms that lifted him first and brace
him best … there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor
and traveller … the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist,
phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer,
are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their
construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter
what rises or is uttered they sent the seed of the conception of it … of
them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls … always of their
fatherstuff must be begotten the sinewy races of bards. If there shall
be love and content between the father and the son and if the greatness
of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father there shall be
love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty
of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the
investigation of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and
circling here swells the soul of the poet yet is president of itself
always. The depths are fathomless and therefore calm. The innocence and
nakedness are resumed … they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole
theory of the special and supernatural and all that was twined with it
or educed out of it departs as a dream. What has ever happened … what
happens and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all …
they are sufficient for any case and for all cases … none to be hurried
or retarded … any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast
clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass and the frames
and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them are unspeakably
perfect miracles all referring to all and each distinct and in its
place. It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit
that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and
women.
Men and women and the earth and all upon it are simply to be
taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and
future shall be unintermitted and shall be done with perfect candor.
Upon this basis philosophy speculates ever looking towards the poet,
ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness never
inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane
philosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that … whatever is less than
the laws of light and of astronomical motion … or less than the laws
that follow the thief the liar the glutton and the drunkard through this
life and doubtless afterward … or less than vast stretches of time or
the slow formation of density or the patient upheaving of strata—is of
no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as
contending against some being or influence is also of no account. Sanity
and ensemble characterize the great master … spoilt in one principle
all is spoilt. The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees
health for himself in being one of the mass … he sees the hiatus in
singular eminence. to the perfect shape comes common ground. to be under
the general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master
knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great …
that nothing for instance is greater than to conceive children and
bring them up well … that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty
is indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men
and women exist … but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest
more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty.
They out of ages are worthy the grand idea … to them it is confided and
they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it and nothing can warp
or degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and
horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the
motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the
other. Come nigh them awhile and though they neither speak nor advise
you shall learn the faithful American lesson. Liberty is poorly served
by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or
any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude
of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the
bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty
relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness
and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The
battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat …
the enemy triumphs … the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and
anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work … the cause is
asleep … the strong throats are choked with their own blood … the young
men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other …
and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is
not the first to go nor the second or third to go … it awaits for all
the rest to go … it is the last… . When the memories of the old martyrs
are faded utterly away … when the large names of patriots are laughed at
in the public halls from the lips of the orators … when the boys are no
more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and
traitors instead … when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted
and the laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the
people … when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion
at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and
calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight
of slaves … when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night
and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed
that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers
or into any cruel inferiority … when those in all parts of these states
who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—when
the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners
of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state
legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a
response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get
the offices or no … when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in
office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with
his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous
heart … and when servility by town or state or the federal government or
any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without
its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the
smallest chance of escape … or rather when all life and all the souls of
men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—then only shall
the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the
real body and soul and in the pleasure of things they possess the
superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit
themselves facts are showered over with light … the daylight is lit with
more volatile light … also the deep between the setting and rising sun
goes deeper many fold. Each precise object or condition or combination
or process exhibits a beauty … the multiplication table its—old age
its—the carpenter’s trade its—the grand opera its—the hugehulled
cleanshaped New-York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with
unmatched beauty … the American circles and large harmonies of
government gleam with theirs … and the commonest definite intentions and
actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all
interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first
principles. They are of use … they dissolve poverty from its need and
riches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall not
realize or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the library is
not he who holds a legal title to it having bought and paid for it. Any
one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through
all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they
enter with ease and take residence and force toward paternity and
maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large.
These American states strong and healthy and accomplished
shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models and must not
permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
or in the illustrations of books and newspapers, or in any comic or
tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs or anything to
beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or
monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before
the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes or which
creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and
revolt. of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be
made ridiculous. of ornaments to a work nothing outré can be allowed …
but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of
the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work and come
irrepressibly from it and are necessary to the completion of the work.
Most works are most beautiful without ornament … Exaggerations will be
revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are jetted and
conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms
are public every day … Great genius and the people of these states must
never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly told
there is no more need of romances.
The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of
tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. Then folks
echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains: How
beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect
candor. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness
wins the inner and outer world and that there is no single exception,
and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass have deceit or
subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the
faintest tinge of a shade—and that through the enveloping wealth and
rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person
shall be discovered and despised … and that the soul has never once been
fooled and never can be fooled … and thrift without the loving nod of
the soul is only a fœtid puff … and there never grew up in any of the
continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor
upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst
of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition
which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of
life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any
stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process
of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the
truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health,
large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large
alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense
of the oneness of nature and the propriety of the same spirit applied to
human affairs … these are called up of the float of the brain of the
world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his
mother’s womb and from her birth out of her mother’s. Caution seldom
goes far enough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the
citizen who applied himself to solid gains and did well for himself and
for his family and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The
greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies
of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he
gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the
gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it
or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little
sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clapboards around and
shingles overhead on a lot of American soil owned, and the easy dollars
that supply the year’s plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence
of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and
pallor of years of money-making with all their scorching days and icy
nights and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or
infinitesimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve …
and all the loss of the bloom and odor of the earth and of the flowers
and atmosphere and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and
men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing
sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation
or naivete, and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or
majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization and forethought,
blotching the surface and system which civilization undeniably drafts,
and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads
with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul.
Still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence.
The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed
life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and
large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable
for immortality. What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or
seventy or eighty years to wisdom spaced out by ages and coming back at a
certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear
faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction,
running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself … all else has
reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of
consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that effects him or her
in a day or a month or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of
death but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the
indirect lifetime. The indirect is always as great and real as the
direct. The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to
the body. Not one name of word or deed … not of venereal sores or
discolorations … not the privacy of the onanist … not of the putrid
veins of gluttons or rumdrinkers … not peculation or cunning or betrayal
or murder … no serpentine poison of those that seduce women … not the
foolish yielding of women … not prostitution … not of any depravity of
young men … not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means … not
any nastiness of appetite … not any harshness of officers to men or
judges to prisoners or fathers to sons or sons to fathers or of husbands
to wives or bosses to their boys … not of greedy looks or malignant
wishes … nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves … ever
is or ever can be stamped on the programme but it is duly realized and
returned, and that returned in further performances … and they returned
again. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything
else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring argument to hand or
no. No specification is necessary … to add or subtract or divide is in
vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or
illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to
the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is
vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her
in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of
it for ever. If the savage or felon is wise it is well … if the greatest
poet or savan is wise it is simply the same … if the President or chief
justice is wise it is the same … if the young mechanic or farmer is
wise it is no more or less … if the prostitute is wise it is no more nor
less. The interest will come round … all will come round. All the best
actions of war and peace … all help given to relatives and strangers and
the poor and old and sorrowful and young children and widows and the
sick, and to all shunned persons … all furtherance of fugitives and of
the escape of slaves … all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof
on wrecks and saw others take the seats of the boats … all offering of
substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend’s sake or
opinion’s sake … all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors …
all the vast sweet love and precious sufferings of mothers … all honest
men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded … all the grandeur and
good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit …
and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient
nations unknown to us by name or date or location … all that was ever
manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no … all that has at any time
been well suggested out of the divine heart of man or by the divinity of
his mouth or by the shaping of his great hands … and all that is well
thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe … or on
any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here
… or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you whoever you
are, or by any one—these singly and wholly inured at their time and
inure now and will inure always to the identities from which they sprung
or shall spring… . Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The
world does not so exist … no parts palpable or impalpable so exist … no
result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and
that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest
mentionable spot coming a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot… .
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the greatest poet
answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is not contemptuous
of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing,
permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular
sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from the dead or the
righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches
every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness
or deputed atonement … knows that the young man who composedly perilled
his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man
who has not perilled his life and retains to old age in riches and ease
has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning … and that
only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer
real longlived things, and favors body and soul the same, and perceives
the indirect assuredly following the direct, and what evil or good he
does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again—and who in his spirit
in any emergency whatever neither hurries or avoids death.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is
to-day. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast
oceanic tides … and if he does not attract his own land body and soul
to himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his
semitic muscle into its merits and demerits … and if he be not himself
the age transfigured … and if to him is not opened the eternity which
gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate
and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from
its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of
to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the
present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits
itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the
sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run
and wait his development.
Still the final test of poems or any character or work
remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead and judges
performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through
them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style and the
direction of genius to similar points be satisfactory now? Has no new
discovery in science or arrival at superior planes of thought and
judgment and behavior fixed him or his so that either can be looked down
upon? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made
willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he
beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think
often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle
aged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all
degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman
as much as a man and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish
to a man or woman but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could
sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with
explanations and realize and be content and full? to no such terminus
does the greatest poet bring … he brings neither cessation or sheltered
fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he
takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained …
thenceforward is no rest … they see the space and ineffable sheen that
turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him
beholds the birth and progress of stars and learns one of the meanings.
Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos … the elder
encourages the younger and shows him how … they too shall launch off
fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and
looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the
ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They
may wait awhile … perhaps a generation or two … dropping off by degrees.
A superior breed shall take their place … the gangs of kosmos and
prophets en masse shall take their place. A new order shall arise
and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own
priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of
men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and
the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all
events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future… . They shall not deign to
defend immortality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or the
exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America
and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression …
it is brawny enough and limber and full enough … on the tough stock of a
race who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea
of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has
attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant
tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance … it is the dialect
of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and
of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth faith
self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence
decision and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the
inexpressible.
No great literature nor any like style of behavior or oratory
or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions
or the treatment of bosses of employed people, nor executive detail or
detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts or
police or tuition or architecture or songs or amusements or the costumes
of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of
American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of
the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman’s and
freewoman’s heart after that which passes by or this built to remain. Is
it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious
distinctions? Is it for the ever growing communes of brothers and
lovers, large, well-united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond
all models? Is it something grown fresh out of the fields or drawn from
the sea for use to me today here? I know that what answers for me an
American must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part
of my materials. Does this answer? or is it without reference to
universal needs? or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of
special ranks? or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science or
forms? Does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute
acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought for life and death? Will it
help breed one goodshaped and wellhung man, and a woman to be his
perfect and independent mate? Does it improve manners? Is it for the
nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readily with the
sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of the mother of many children?
Has it too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Does it
look for the same love on the last born and on those hardening toward
stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of
assault outside their own?
The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away.
The coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great
can only be satisfied by the demeanor of the vital and great. The
swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float
off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and
goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that
is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the
ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite … they are not
unappreciated … they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of
the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it … no disguise
can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only towards as
good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way.
An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which
make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and
proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The
signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true the
other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as
affectionately as he has absorbed it.
Note 1. Walt
Whitman (1819–1892), the most original of American poets, was born in
West Hills, Long Island, educated in the Brooklyn Public Schools, and
apprenticed to a printer. As a youth he taught in a country school, and
later went into journalism in New York, Brooklyn, and New Orleans. The
first edition of “Leaves of Grass” appeared in 1855, with the remarkable
preface here printed. During the war he acted as a volunteer nurse in
the army hospitals, and, when it closed, he became a clerk in the
government service at Washington. He continued to write almost till his
death. [back]
