The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
Namely, a character, making most of common and normal elements, to the superstructure of which not only the precious accumulations of the learning and experiences of the Old World, and the settled social and municipal necessities and current requirements, so long a-building, shall still faithfully contribute, but which at its foundations and carried up thence, and receiving its impetus from the democratic spirit, and accepting its gauge in all departments from the democratic formulas, shall again directly be vitalized by the perennial influences of Nature at first hand, and the old heroic stamina of Nature, the strong air of prairie and mountain, the dash of the briny sea, the primary antiseptics—of the passions, in all their fullest heat and potency, of courage, rankness, amativeness, and of immense pride. Not to lose at all, therefore, the benefits of artificial progress and civilization, but to re-occupy for Western tenancy the oldest though ever-fresh fields, and reap from them the savage and sane nourishment indispensable to a hardy nation, and the absence of which, threatening to become worse and worse, is the most serious lack and defect to-day of our New World literature.
Not but what the brawn of
"Leaves of Grass" is, I hope, thoroughly spiritualized everywhere, for final
estimate, but, from the very subjects, the direct effect is a sense of the life, as
it should be, of flesh and blood, and physical urge, and animalism. While there are
other themes, and plenty of abstract thoughts and poems in the
volume—while I have put in it passing and rapid but actual glimpses of the
great struggle between the nation and the slave-power, (1861–'65,) as the
fierce and bloody panorama of that contest
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[begin page 284]- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
unroll'd itself: while the whole book,
indeed, revolves around that four years' war, which, as I was in the midst of it,
becomes, in "Drum-Taps," pivotal to the rest entire—and here and there,
before and afterward, not a few episodes and speculations—that—namely, to make a type-portrait for living,
active, worldly, healthy personality, objective as well as subjective, joyful and
potent, and modern and free, distinctively for the use of the United States, male
and female, through the long future—has been, I say, my general object.
(Probably, indeed, the whole of these varied songs, and all my writings, both
volumes, only ring changes in some sort, on the ejaculation, How vast, how eligible,
how joyful, how real, is a human being, himself or herself.)
Though from no definite plan at the time, I see now that I have unconsciously sought, by indirections at least as much as directions, to express the whirls and rapid growth and intensity of the United States, the prevailing tendency and events of the Nineteenth century, and largely the spirit of the whole current world, my time; for I feel that I have partaken of that spirit, as I have been deeply interested in all those events, the closing of long-stretch'd eras and ages, and, illustrated in the history of the United States, the opening of larger ones. (The death of President Lincoln, for instance, fitly, historically closes, in the civilization of feudalism, many old influences—drops on them, suddenly, a vast, gloomy, as it were, separating curtain.)
Since I have been ill, (1873–74–75,) mostly without serious pain, and with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge my poems, (never composed with eye on the book-market, nor for fame, nor for any pecuniary profit,) I have felt temporary depression more than once, for fear that in "Leaves of Grass" the moral parts were not sufficiently pronounc'd. But in my clearest and calmest moods I have realized that as those "Leaves," all and several, surely prepare the way for, and necessitate morals, and are adjusted to them, just the same as Nature does and is, they are what, consistently with my plan, they must and probably should be. (In a certain sense, while the Moral is the purport and last intelligence of all Nature, there is absolutely nothing of the moral in the works, or laws, or shows of Nature. Those only lead inevitably to it—begin and necessitate it.)
Then I meant
"Leaves of Grass," as publish'd, to be the Poem of average Identity, (of yours, whoever you are, now reading these lines.) A man is not
greatest as victor in war, nor inventor or explorer, nor even in science, or in his
intellectual or artistic capacity, or exemplar in some vast benevolence. To the
highest democratic view, man is most acceptable in living well the practical life
and lot which happens to him as ordinary farmer, sea-farer, mechanic, clerk,
laborer, or driver—upon and from which position as a central basis or
pedestal, while performing its labors, and his duties as citizen, son, husband,
father and employ'd person, he preserves his physique, ascends, developing,
radiating himself in other regions—and especially where and when,
(greatest of all, and nobler than the proudest mere genius or magnate in any field,)
he fully realizes the conscience, the spiritual, the divine faculty, cultivated
well, exemplified in all his deeds and words, through life, uncompromising to the
end—a flight loftier than any of Homer's or Shakspere's—broader
than all poems and bibles—namely, Nature's own, and in the midst of it,
Yourself, your own Identity, body and soul. (All serves, helps—but in the
centre of all, absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the only meaning and
vitality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, stands Yourself.) To sing
the
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[begin page 285]- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Song of that law of average Identity, and of Yourself, consistently with the
divine law of the universal, is a main intention of those "Leaves."
Something more may be added—for, while I am about it, I would make a full confession. I also sent out "Leaves of Grass" to arouse and set flowing in men's and women's hearts, young and old, endless streams of living, pulsating love and friendship, directly from them to myself, now and ever. To this terrible, irrepressible yearning, (surely more or less down underneath in most human souls)—this never-satisfied appetite for sympathy, and this boundless offering of sympathy—this universal democratic comradeship—this old, eternal, yet ever-new interchange of adhesiveness, so fitly emblematic of America—I have given in that book, undisguisedly, declaredly, the openest expression. Besides, important as they are in my purpose as emotional expressions for humanity, the special meaning of the "Calamus" cluster of "Leaves of Grass," (and more or less running through the book, and cropping out in "Drum-Taps,") mainly resides in its political significance. In my opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted development of comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all the young fellows, north and south, east and west—it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the United States of the future, (I cannot too often repeat,) are to be most effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal'd into a living union.
Then, for enclosing clue of all, it is imperatively and ever to be borne in mind that "Leaves of Grass" entire is not to be construed as an intellectual or scholastic effort or poem mainly, but more as a radical utterance out of the Emotions and the Physique—an utterance adjusted to, perhaps born of, Democracy and the Modern—in its very nature regardless of the old conventions, and, under the great laws, following only its own impulses.