LIFE AND WORK OF WALT WHITMAN
[1]
[2]
MAURICE MENDELSON
__TITLE__ LIFE AND WORK
__SUBTITLE__
A SOVIET VIEW
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[3]Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
Illustrated by G. Dauman
M. >KH3Hb H TBOPMECTBO XHTMEHA Ha __COPYRIGHT__ First printing 197670202--481
M--------------120--75
014(01)-76
[4] CONTENTS Page Foreword...........................................................................................................7 THE ``PUZZLE'' OF WALT WHITMAN....................................................... 9 Part One. THE BIRTH OF A POET.............................................................. 15 Part Two. LEAVES OF GRASS ......................................................................86 Part Three. DRUM-TAPS.............................................................................203 Part Four. FIRM AS EVER...........................................................................243 AND IN CONCLUSION............................................................................. 310 Some Books and Articles on Walt Whitman in Russian ............................... 337 Name Index................................................................................................... 344 [5] ~ [6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FOREWORDSeveral years ago, in 1969, poetry lovers all over the world celebrated the 150th birthday of the great American poet, Walt Whitman. Some fourteen years earlier, in 1955, the hundredth anniversary of the appearance of Leaves of Grass was also quite widely observed.
Both these dates left an indelible imprint on the minds of thousands---many, many thousands---of men and women in the land where I live, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
These anniversaries certainly testify to the enduring quality of the American poet's work.
Whitman's voice rings out today as clearly as ever. His poetry is so full of freedom and light that one thing is sure: it will maintain its vitality in times to come. This despite the fact that some influential literary critics refer to Whitman's verses with open or scarcely concealed scorn.
We should not be surprised that reactionaries reject Walt Whitman. Was he not convinced that humanity would live on for ever and not die an inglorious and pitiful death; was he not sickened by everything that impoverishes the human spirit and destroys what is best in men and women; did he not believe that real unity of peoples of all races is possible; did he not see the world as boundless in extent and as blindingly beautiful? He spoke of it in words that are simple and eternally fresh, for he wanted poetry, joy and communion with nature to be accessible to every man and woman.
It is precisely those qualities of Whitman's, which are resented by the narrow-minded, that will continue to endear him to the human beings of the future. The indestructible 7 charm of his poetry is sure to shine ever more brightly as years go by and win its way into the hearts of many millions of people.
We accept this poet, born so many years ago, as our contemporary. He belongs to the not so distant past of world literature, and also to the present day. In many ways Leaves of Grass must also be regarded as the future of American prosody. When we read Whitman nowadays, we feel the warmth and inimitable originality of a poetry which will be claimed as their own by our grandchildren, and perhaps by their grandchildren too.
8 __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE ``PUZZLE'' OF WALT WHITMANThat summer the sea-port of Arkhangelsk had an unusual look. Everywhere, on the embankment of the Northern Dvina and in the avenues, in the hotel lobbies and in the shops, there were crowds of foreign-looking people who made themselves understood to the local inhabitants by means of gestures rather than words.
It was 1942. A large convoy of American and English ships which was bringing over a load of armaments for the Soviet Army had been attacked on its way to Arkhangelsk. Only a few boats had managed to get away from the German submarines. The survivors made their way to Soviet territorial waters in lifeboats.
They were faced with the prospect of spending several weeks in a strange town. And now, day after day, they wandered along Arkhangelsk's streets, decked in the fresh delicate greenery of the short northern summer, hurrying nowhere, with nothing to do....
There were various types amongst them: young boys straight from the school bench and "old sea-wolves'', respectable engineers and happy, carefree young lads; some were just enjoying the summer sun, organically incapable of dwelling on dark and terrible thoughts; then there were men afflicted with melancholy who found it difficult to forget their recent encounter with death.
They behaved in various ways. Some of them approached life in the land of Soviets, the land of socialism, with curiosity, anxiously picking up news from the fronts. When nazi planes broke through and bombed Arkhangelsk they worked all night helping the victims.
9I happened to be in the town at the time, and to this day I remember the sailors' stories about what they had been through and how their comrades had perished.
My memory retains dozens of faces. But I can picture with particular clarity one American sailor whom I met during that difficult summer: graying temples, kindly wrinkles, a certain comfortable carelessness about his baggy clothing, big workworn hands, bright-blue eyes with an open expression.
I conceived a liking for this American.
Nonetheless, the man remained a stranger to me until one day he suddenly underwent a remarkable change. A soft light began to glow in his eyes, his lips spread in a warm smile and his whole face lit up with tenderness. A thought immediately occurred to me: what a nice person this man must be!
The moment of revelation occurred when the elderly sailor shyly introduced an unexpected question into conversation: was it possible to obtain in Arkhangelsk a copy of a book which he greatly treasured? He had carried it with him over the oceans for dozens of years but in the recent debacle it had gone to the bottom together with the rest of his simple possessions. Did they know this book in Soviet Russia?
The American was asking about a book, but he seemed to be speaking about a living human being, someone very close and dear to him.
The book which the foreign sailor sought---and found---in Arkhangelsk, was a collection of poems. On its title page were the words Leaves of Grass. The author of the book was a nineteenth-century American P°et---Walt Whitman.
This was not the first time that I had met people for whom Whitman was a kind friend who showed them the beauty of the human soul. But this American sailor, who during the bloodiest of wars related with such sadness his loss to a chance Soviet acquaintance, helped me feel more fully the magnetic attraction of Whitman's poetic word, the beauty of his verse and the strength of his democratic spirit.
The name of Walt Whitman stands on a par with those of the greatest masters of American literature---Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, to mention only a few.
But what sort of a person was the author of Leaves of Grass? And what is his place in American and world literature?
The outstanding literary critics of the United States, USSR, 10 England, Cuba, Germany and other countries have said a great deal about the American poet's contribution to the spiritual life of his contemporaries and of their descendants.
The famous American nineteenth-century philosopher and poet, the Sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was one of the first, if not the very first, to understand the significance of Leaves of Grass. Immediately after reading the book Emerson wrote Whitman a letter which contained the following lines: "I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. ... I give you joy of your free and brave thought".^^1^^ This was in 1855.
Thirty years later Cuba's greatest writer, Jose Marti was to find in Whitman's work something in harmony with the democratic and revolutionary aspirations of people struggling for independence and for a better life. "The grandiose, portentous lines of the old poet,'' Marti wrote in 1887, "cut through the gloom like fresh gusts of wind.'' "Listen to the people singing ... listen to Walt Whitman!''^^2^^
At the end of the last century the poet's love of freedom found a lively echo in the heart of a young Englishwoman, then little known, Ethel Lilian Voynich, who was later to create the novel The Gadfly. She wrote to a girl-friend that she often re-read some poems by Whitman and liked them more and more every time.
The dawning of the twentieth century....
In his article "The Destruction of the Personality'', written after the 1905 revolution in Russia, Maxim Gorky drew attention to the American poet's leanings, albeit unconscious, towards socialism. He mentioned Whitman first among those writers who, starting out as individualists, "arrive at socialism and the preaching of social action ... calling on man to merge with mankind".^^3^^ In an article which appeared in the first post-revolutionary Russian edition of Whitman's verse, Anatoly Lunacharsky shrewdly remarked that the real foundation of Whitman's poetry was not individualism, but just the opposite, a drive towards collectivism. "The power and overwhelming _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Shock of Recognition, Ed. by E. Wilson, Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, Doran, 1943, p. 247.
~^^2^^ J. Marti, Obras completes, t. XIII, Habana, 1961, p. 177.
^^3^^ M. Gorky, Works in 30 volumes, Vol. 24, Moscow, 1953, pp. 48--49 (in Russian).
11 beauty of Whitmanism lies in ... communism, collectivism...,'' he said. "Whitman is a man with a wide-open heart.''^^1^^During the years of revolutionary upheaval in Germany, Johannes Becher wrote of the ardent American poet with tenderness and love. The beauty and power of Whitman's poetry have been remarked upon at different times by the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, the Dane Martin Andersen Nexo and the German Thomas Mann. The Irish communist playwright Sean O'Casey honored the memory of the great American poet in his public speeches. In a letter to the Soviet literary critic A. Elistratova, O'Casey spoke of the fire blazing in Whitman.
When progressive writers of various countries look for an example of genuine inspiration, bold poetic innovation and love of humanity the name of Walt Whitman immediately comes to mind.
The most far-sighted public figures, thinkers and authors of the United States have seen in Whitman a poet of genius, the glory of American national poetry. Among them was one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century, Carl Sandburg, the prominent socialist Eugene Debs and the Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, Gus Hall. The heroic American communist "Mother Bloor" treasured the memory of "The good, gray poet" (as a girl she had known him). For Theodore Dreiser, Langston Hughes and dozens of other American novelists, poets and playwrights, Whitman's poetry has been something vital and dear.
For hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of Americans, Whitman's poetry represents what it did for the sailor who found himself in Arkhangelsk during the Second World War: a source of joy, hope and great aesthetic pleasure.
The poet's works, however, are unknown to many of his countrymen. One American literary critic has written that "the schoolgirl wearing the 'I Hear America Singing' sweater has no exact knowledge of the source of the title repeated in the design of her garment.''~^^2^^
There is good reason to speak of the ``problem'' of Whitman. American critics not infrequently refer to his life and his _-_-_
^^1^^ A. Lunacharsky, Works in 8 volumes, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1965, p. 387 (in Russian).
^^2^^ Ch. B. Willard, Whitman's American Fame, Providence, Brown Univ 1950, p. 228.
12 work as a ``puzzle''. In 1955, for example, Gay Allen, the wellknown authority on Whitman's works, wrote: "No author in American literature has been a greater puzzle to his biographers and critics than Walt Whitman.''~^^1^^In the early sixties of this century the literary historian Edwin Miller remarked in the first complete edition of Whitman's writings: "Those who succumb to one current critical fashion virtually read Whitman ... out of the history of poetry.''^^2^^ "The poet, the seer, and the man...,'' Miller continues, "remain mystifying ... despite the thousands of pages expended by biographers in quest of illumination.''^^3^^
In the United States and other countries more than a hundred book-length studies have been devoted to Walt Whitman. The number of articles which examine his life and work must run in the thousands. But in quite a few of these learned investigations the poet is depicted as an ignoramus who passed off clumsy combinations of words as poetry; as a poseur incapable of sincere feeling; as a militant individualist and a shameless braggart; as an enemy of democracy; as an apologist of expansionism; as an advocate of slavery; as a man for whom the people were only a faceless crowd; as an eccentric whose extravagances aimed at self-advertisement; as a priest of the cult of "pure art'', and so on and so forth.
Let there be no misunderstanding: I do not have in mind the opinions of the run-of-mill American journalists of the mid-nineteenth century who greeted the first editions of Leaves of Grass with hoots of derision simply because the poetry in the book was unlike the classical odes or romantic poems to which they were accustomed. I am speaking about American critics of the present day.
Here are two examples taken from American critical literature of recent years.
L. M. Clark dedicated her book W. Whitman's Concept of the American Common Man to proving that Whitman was really hostile towards democracy and the common man. Leslie Fiedler, in company with others, has worked hard to convince his readers that in his life and his work the author of Leaves of Grass was nothing but a cunning impostor.
_-_-_~^^1^^ G. W. Allen, The Solitary Singer, N. Y., Macmillan, 1955, p. IX.
~^^2^^ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, Vol. I, Ed. by E. H. Miller, N. Y., New York Univ. Press, 1961, p. 1.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 2.
13Emory Holloway, whose outstanding, role in the development of American studies of Whitman is well enough known, in his book Free and Lonesome Heart expressed anxiety about the further development of Whitman research in the United States. He hoped that "the myth of the future (about Walt Whitman.---M. M.) will be one that points up his real service to mankind rather than one which obscures this service by half-truths calculated to his discredit".^^1^^ Although Holloway's book unfortunately develops a highly questionable thesis (about a supposed son of the poet), the author inequivocally condemns ``pseudoscientific'' works of Freudian nature concerned with Whitman's "alleged homosexuality".^^2^^
Who, then, is right in the heated debate which has been going on now for more than a hundred years? What was Walt Whitman really like? What was foremost in his heart: cold self-love and indifference to good and evil, or a warm sympathy for common people and for the liberation movements in his native land and other countries? Was Walt Whitman a skilful demagogue playing at democracy, or a poet whose world view was organically linked with that of the democratic masses? Is Whitman's poetry a collection of vulgar sound effects or is it comparable, as Arnold Zweig has written, with the music of Beethoven? Was the poet bound hand and foot by bourgeois individualism, or did his strength lie in an emotional and intellectual leaning towards collectivism?
The struggle for Whitman is being carried on in our time and it has lost neither its intensity nor its social significance.
_-_-_^^1^^ E. Holloway, Free and Lonesome Heart, N. Y., Vantage Press, 1960, p. 13--14.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 16.
14 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ PART ONE __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE BIRTH OF A POET __ALPHA_LVL2__ A Long Foreground __*_*_*__Whitman's book of poetry Leaves of Grass contains the following lines:
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.^^1^^
These verses first appeared in print in the poem "Starting from Paumanok" (1860) and were incorporated, in 1881, into the famous poem "Song of Myself''. In actual fact, when Whitman's collection of poetry went on sale, he was only thirty-six years old.
But of course this was a respectable age at which to start as a poet. When he greeted Whitman "at the beginning of a great career'', Emerson was quite right in adding that it must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. Whitman's journey to Leaves of Grass really had a long foreground.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, when young Walt was beginning to discover the world, there was a great deal in _-_-_
~^^1^^ Quotations from Leaves of Grass (final texts of the poems) are based on the book: W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Ed. by E. Holloway, Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, Doran, 1928. Quotations from "Specimen Days'', "Democratic Vistas" and some other of Whitman's prose writings are based on the book: W. Whitman, The Complete Poetry and Prose, Vol. Two, N. Y., Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948. These quotations are given without footnotes.
15 the United States which seemed young and full of promise. Many participants of the American bourgeois revolution of the eighteenth century were still alive, the last of that heroic breed who had forced the English monarchy to unclench the fist that had gripped the American colonies.The transformation of thirteen English colonies into an independent state, and moreover, into a republic, was an event of great import. Somewhat later, at the end of the century, the democratic forces of the United States won a further victory. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the revolutionary Declaration of Independence, was elected president.
When Walt Whitman was born, Jefferson's presidency was already a thing of the past, but Americans still remembered it well and placed great hopes in the ideals promulgated by Jefferson. It must be remembered, however, that the American republic was a bourgeois state in which the cult of the dollar grew stronger day by day. Besides, the United States of America was from its very inception a country of legalized Negro slavery.
More than once in the early nineteenth century one of the founding figures of American poetry, Philip Freneau, expressed his alarm about the domination of greedy men of property. Soon the working people of the United States had to shoulder the burden of one of the earliest economic crises in the history of world capitalism. Nonetheless millions of Americans looked to the future with hope. Were they not, after all, citizens of a country which had no king and no nobility? And America had so much unoccupied land that it was possible (or so it seemed) to provide a farm for any man.
The first Whitmans had come to the New World in the mid-seventeenth century. They owned a large piece of land on Long Island (which the poet loved to call by its Indian name, ``Paumanok''). But Walter Whitman senior, the father of the future poet, inherited a farm of very modest dimensions. Walt's mother also grew up on Long Island, in a more prosperous family. Her father was an American of Dutch descent who bred horses.
Walter Whitman junior was born on May 31st, 1819, in the village of West Hills, only thirty miles from New York (Manhattan). Some years later the head of the family came to the conclusion that he could not support his family in West Hills, and so he moved with his wife and three young children 16 to Brooklyn, which was next to New York, on the other side of the East River.
At first the poet's father worked as a hired carpenter. Later he founded something in the nature of a small building enterprise.
He struggled hard to become a businessman, but his dream of "making good" was never to be fulfilled. He died without making a proper provision for his family. Biographers usually describe him simply as a failure whose efforts came to nothing because he had no gift for "making money''. But this ``unlucky'' man's tragedy had something typical about it. The fact is that the head of the Whitman family labored under a burden most uncongenial for a man of business---he was honest, trusted people and had profound faith in the ideals of democracy.
It is interesting, that at about the same time failure also came to haunt John Marshall Clemens, the father of another American writer, Mark Twain. Walt Whitman and Mark Twain spoke in almost identical words of their irreproachably honest fathers being the victims of sharp dealers.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that Walt was indebted to his father for a great deal, in particular for that deep understanding of certain social problems which he later displayed in Leaves of Grass.
The biography of Whitman written by his friend, Richard Maurice Bucke (it is possible that some of the pages devoted to the Whitman family are the work of the poet himself) contains the noteworthy confession that it was from his father that the author of Leaves of Grass inherited his love of freedom.
Walter Whitman senior was faithful to the revolutionary ideals of the eighteenth century Enlighteners, who had paved the way for the American bourgeois republic. To the very end of his life the poet's father held dear all that was democratic and revolutionary in the ideas of Jefferson.
Whitman senior's devotion to the finest traditions of the War of Independence is confirmed by his attitude to Thomas Paine, the boldest, most consistent and plebean of the rebels who roused the Americans to struggle against the English oppressors.
The poet's father had met Paine not long before the latter died in the first decade of the nineteenth century---at the time Thomas Paine was no longer held in respect in the United __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2-284 17 States. He was abused from all sides, was poor and often ignored. Only a few people had the courage to maintain contact with such a dangerous free-thinker. One of them was Walter Whitman. At that time he was earning his living as a carpenter in New York, and visited Paine several times in his modest dwelling on Bleeker Street. The young carpenter read not only the works of Paine, but also the writings of several other eighteenth-century Enlighteners including the French ones.
However, Whitman senior was not only concerned with the ideas of the past. The future poet was only ten years old when Robert Dale Owen (the son of the well-known Utopian socialist) and Frances Wright, the famous leader of the American liberation movement, began to publish the weekly newspaper, the Free Enquirer.
Some idea of the views held by the editors of this publication may be gained from an article by Wright which appeared in the Free Enquirer in November 1830:
``What distinguished the present from every other struggle in which the human race has been engaged is that the present is, evidently openly and acknowledgedly, a war of class, and that this war is universal...; it is now everywhere the oppressed millions who are making common cause against oppression....'' The author of the article does not condemn the struggle of the exploited classes. Millions of people, Wright continues, are "rather chargeable with excess of patience and over abundance than with too eager a spirit for the redress of injury, not to speak of recourse to vengeance.''~^^1^^
Walter Whitman senior was one of the subscribers to the Free Enquirer. He was not frightened by the fact that among "respectable people" Wright had the reputation of an immoral and dangerous person.
There was always plenty of ``radical'' literature in Whitman's home and ``rebellious'' ideas were hotly discussed in the family. Whitman senior passed on to his son his own respect and love for Jefferson, Paine and Wright.
Whitman's father died soon after his son's first book of verse was published. Not one letter from the poet to his father has been preserved. But Walt Whitman did leave behind a large _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ph. S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, International Publishers, N. Y., 1947, p. 132.
18 number of letters addressed to his mother, Louisa van Velsor Whitman. In his youth, and even more so in later years, whenever he left Brooklyn for long or short periods of time, Walt Whitman corresponded regularly with his mother. He loved this simple, scarcely literate woman with a gentle and loyal love. She did not understand his poetry but had a responsive heart and a rare ability to appreciate people and grow attached to them, to "fall in love" with them.In one of his poems Whitman spoke of the impression made on his mother by the beauty of an Indian girl who had come hoping to get some sort of work. The poet wrote:
__FIX__ Indentation of lines like "purity," .The more she look'd upon her she loved her,
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ purity,
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ fireplace, she cook'd food for her,
She had no work to give her, but she gave her
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ remembrance and fondness.
The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the middle of the afternoon she went away,
O my mother was loth to have her go away,
All the week she thought of her, she watch'd for her
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ many a month,
She remember'd her many a winter and many a summer....
From his mother the poet inherited his gentleness of spirit and his ability to become deeply attached to people.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ``Growth-Health-Work"The childhood of Walter Whitman junior in Brooklyn differed in no way from that of any ordinary American boy from a simple family. As an old man Whitman more than once recalled the hardships his family suffered when he was a child. He also remembered that once he went with his mother and father to hear the Quaker rebel Elias Hicks (who dared to express his liking for Paine).
Walt attended school for a few years, but at the age of eleven he had to start work; his first job was as an errand-boy in a lawyer's office. Fortunately, his employer was a good man. He helped the boy to learn to write properly and gave him the __PRINTERS_P_19_COMMENT__ 2* 19 chance to borrow books from a library. Soon young Walt went to work on a newspaper, where he could learn the printer's trade. This was his "college education'', so typical of many American writers: some twenty years later Mark Twain was to follow almost the same path, working in the print-shop of a newspaper.
Whitman's dearest recollections of childhood and adolescence were those trips he made to the rural spots of Long Island. His relatives, including his maternal grandfather, still lived on a farm there, and Walt never missed an opportunity to visit them. Just as Mark Twain at the end of his life wrote about his uncle's farm as a "heavenly place" for boys, so Whitman recalled with warm feeling the charm of the Hempstead plains.
In the poem, "There Was a Child Went Forth'', Whitman captures a young boy's poetic perception of nature. The child not only sees the grass, the young lambs, the village schoolmistress on her way to school, not only hears the song of the phoebe-bird, but all of these become a part of him.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ And grass and white and red morning-glories, and
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ white and red clover,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the mare's foal and the cow's calf...
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ became part of him,
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ corn, and the esculent roots
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms and the
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the commonest weeds by the road,
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ of the tavern whence he had lately risen....
Long Island, where he was born, had not only plains and fields, farms and villages: the ocean was nearby. The small village where Whitman lived stood on one of the highest points of the island and the sea was visible both to the north and to the south.
20Although his soul was filled with joy at this closeness to nature, Whitman never had any penchant for the hermit's life. It was not only the endless plains, the vast ocean expanses and the burning sky at sunset that gave him pleasure; he enjoyed being with people too.
``Growth-Health-Work" is the title given to a section of twenty lines in "Specimen Days" which is devoted to the story of Whitman's early youth. Towards the mid-thirties of the last century, Walt became "a healthy, strong youth''. At about this time his family left Brooklyn and returned for a short while to the rural life of Long Island.
His carefree childhood, however, was now already behind him, and the youth was forced to earn his own keep. Although young Walt had learnt the art of type-setting well, he did not stay for long in any one print-shop. The story of his early working life is one of endless moves from one job to another. There is a legend that Whitman was simply lazy.
When I discuss Whitman's life as a professional newspaperman, I shall try to explain the real meaning of what certain contemporaries of the poet preferred to call ``laziness''. But why is it that we have before us such a long list of newspaper print-shops in which Whitman worked for only a couple of months, or even less? There is no special secret here; young Walt was simply restless. Add to this that the newspaper business in the United States was at the time the least ``respectable'' of professions. Newspapers quickly went bankrupt.
At the age of seventeen, having lost his job in yet another print-shop and despairing of finding another (one of the regular economic crises, which were becoming a more and more common feature of American life, had broken out), Walt went to Hempstead village, where his parents lived at the time. It was hard to make a living, and the youth jumped at the opportunity of becoming a village teacher. What did it matter that he himself was not very well educated? Walt Whitman had at least thoroughly mastered grammar (the fruits of his work at the lawyer's and his newspaper jobs), and he was kind to children.
His pupils were apparently very fond of him. In any case he did not follow the example of other teachers who assiduously applied the birch; he behaved simply and did not consider it beneath his dignity to freely play with the children.
21At about this time Whitman began to be concerned with political problems, and also with philosophical and moral ones. He was not yet twenty years old, but he already took an active part in the discussions which were organized by the village debating clubs. In his days as a teacher in one of the villages on Long Island, eighteen-year-old Whitman spoke as an equal with local doctors and judges, and even with one member of the state legislature.
The young Whitman's views of the world, like his father's, were based on the bourgeois-democratic system associated with the name of Thomas Jefferson. His ideal was the free farmer, his hope, an America where there would be no poverty and no great wealth, where the broad expanses of land would allow everyone to make a living while retaining his independence.
Jefferson himself, who had led the struggle of the country's democratic elements against the Federalists (the spokesmen of the ``moneyed'' townspeople and the rich plantation-owners) was no longer alive; nevertheless, together with other "simple American folk'', the Whitmans, both father and son, persistently looked for the Jeffersonian mark in the activities of prominent politicians of the thirties. They were attracted to those who condemned the blatant greed of the bankers and manufacturers of the northern states, but they overlooked the fact that many of these political leaders were quite sympathetic to slavery in the South. The most noteworthy of the politicians regarded as Jefferson's heirs was Andrew Jackson. This leader of the Democratic Party became President of the United States when Walt was still a boy. Van Buren largely followed in Jackson's footsteps when he replaced him eight years later.
In 1836, when the time came for the next election campaign, Walt Whitman was already sufficiently mature to understand what was taking place in his native land. The Democrat Van Buren was opposed by a candidate of the Whigs, a party which quite openly defended the interests of the capitalist elements of the country. Young Whitman was against the Whigs and accepted with approval all that Frances Wright was doing to secure the election of Van Buren.
Whitman associated Wright's name not only with the Democrats' struggle against the Whigs, but also with the many freedom-loving ideas expressed in her writings. This ``noble'' woman (as Whitman called her) always stressed the natural equality of men as well as the right of workers to unite in 22 defense of their interests. She also spoke and wrote of the need to improve the educational system.
Whitman was prepared to defend this ``troublemaker'' against all her enemies, for she was incomparably "nobler, grander ... than all who traduced her".^^1^^ Whitman said about Wright that she "has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her: fell down before her: her very appearance seemed to enthral us".^^2^^ "I never felt so glowingly towards any other woman,''^^3^^ he said about Frances Wright on another occassion.
It was she who aroused Whitman's interest in the writings of progressive French thinkers. Volney's works produced a great impression on him. The poet was much indebted to Wright's influence for the Utopian and anti-clerical aspects of his outlook. He was also much impressed by her speeches against Negro slavery.
Alongside the image of Frances Wright the poet always retained in his mind that of Thomas Paine. Walt Whitman often talked about Paine, about his merits and the slurs which he had to bear in the United States, with a certain colonel Fellows, who had known the great thinker personally and was himself, according to Whitman, a man with a very exalted sense of honor.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ``We All Shall Rest At Last"The earliest literary efforts of Whitman the type-setter have not been preserved---nobody valued collections of the wretched papers for which the future poet worked. And in any case, his notes were usually unsigned. In his old age, however, the poet stated that he began to write sentimental bits for the Long Island Patriot when he was eleven or twelve years old. "... This was about 1832,'' he said. Soon after this he "had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then celebrated and fashionable Mirror, of New York City.... How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white paper, in nice type.''
_-_-_~^^1^^ H. Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, N. Y., Mitchell Kennerley, 1915, p. 499.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 205.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 500.
23It is known for certain that as a youth Whitman worked for the Long Island Democrat. The editor of this paper had even reprinted several of his compositions from another local paper before their author started to work for him as a type-setter. It was possibly Whitman's value as a supplier of literary material that made the editor hold on to him, since, if one is to believe the editor's wife, the youth fulfilled his duties in the print-shop none too assiduously.
By his twentieth birthday, Walt Whitman already had reason to consider himself a professional journalist, albeit of a distinctly provincial cast. In 1838 some friends helped him to found his own weekly paper, the Long Islander. Quite naturally, in an out-of-the-way place, the editor of the paper also set the type, did the press-work and delivered the paper to subscribers himself. These were happy days and months in Whitman's life. To the end of his days he cherished the memory of his meetings with "the dear old-fashion'd farmers and their wives, the stops by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners, occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through the brush...''.
Yes, most of Whitman's writings of these years are lost. However, a series of articles under the general title "Sun-Down Papers From the Desk of a Schoolmaster" have been uncovered and there can be no doubt that they were written by him. These articles appeared at the very beginning of the forties and are frankly didactic in character. The young moralist wages battle against the bad habit of smoking, and even against coffee. He admits that he knows nothing about women, and therefore has skirted around the topic. On the other hand, no few lines are devoted to the sin of miserliness. In the struggle against this evil the author uses humor as a weapon. He cunningly sings the praises of the idler who does not wish to live the way sharp dealers (cotton merchants, for example) do; he mockingly forewarns property-owners that there is no way to take accumulated wealth with them into the next world, for the train which travels there has no provisions for carrying baggage.
The young editor, type-setter and teacher considered himself a poet as well. In his first verses he dealt for the most part with a subject that had always concerned him---the immoral nature of the pursuit of wealth.
Whitman's first poetic works were written in the romantic vein, which at that time almost completely dominated 24 American literature. These were imitative, unskilled verses, and yet the views of life which Whitman absorbed from the romantic poets of his country---from Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant and others---were based on exalted humanist principles.
The world-outlook of the best representatives of American romanticism corresponded to the organic needs of Whitman's soul, to his conceptions, hazy as they were, of the nature of reality, conceptions differing widely from those held by the typical American bourgeois.
The romantics, who were the immediate forerunners and contemporaries of Whitman (not only poets, but prose-writers as well, among them James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville), became aware of some of the internal contradictions that characterized the social order which had emerged as a result of the War of Independence. Incapable of grasping the full significance of these contradictions, they mirrored the basic conflicts within American society mostly in mystified form, in complicated and often hazy romantic images. Nevertheless, at the foundation of the more important writings of American romantics lay an awareness of the disharmony between the democratic slogans of the American republic and the grim reality of the bourgeois ways of life.
Poe, Hawthorne and Melville gave voice to this conflict in a particularly gloomy manner. They rejected the world of the dollar, the merciless struggle for gain, for success at any cost, the pitiless individualism. It was no accident that several of the romantics were impressed by the patriarchal customs still preserved among the Indians and the natives of the islands of the Pacific.
While writing his early verses, Whitman most often tried to imitate Bryant, who contrasted the beauty, might and wealth of nature of the new continent to inhuman social relations, and revealed moral untenability of the philosophy of the man of property.
In the poem ``Thanatopsis'', written before the author of Leaves of Grass was born, Bryant glorifies the all-levelling grave which reduces to naught the achievements of the mighty of this world. The ``magnificent'' couch of death awaits us all, it is impossible to escape it, and in the "mighty sepulchre" money 25 and power no longer have any meaning---here the pauper will find his place beside the kings, "the powerful of the earth''. It is quite obvious that the author of this poem took his cue from the eighteenth-century English poets, well-known for their ``graveyard'' poetry. Bryant's poetry was a reflection of the feelings of Americans who regretted the passing of the "old order" and the domination in the United States of the accumulators of wealth.
Whitman composed the majority of his early romantic poems around the age of twenty. We can judge his first attempts only on the basis of some fifteen short pieces which he published in the late thirties and early forties in the provincial papers which he either edited or worked on at that time.
``Our Future Lot" (1838), the first of Whitman's poems known to us, appeared in the above-mentioned weekly Long Island Democrat. The young author strove to convince the "swelling soul" that once he broke out of "this earthy cage" he would rise to "bright and starlike majesty".^^1^^
Whitman not only made use of the traditional motifs of American romantic poetry of the time, but followed the usual forms of verse structure (his poems, written in classical meter, are rhymed).
The real meaning of this and several other songs glorifying death written by young Whitman is plainly revealed in the poem "Fame's Vanity" (1839). To what end is man's breast full of "thoughts with vanity all rife"? To rush in hot pursuit of fame's "false glare" means to deprive oneself of real happiness. It is better to remain "obscure, unknown'', better to lie beneath a "markless resting stone''. Death in any case makes all men equals, the "mighty one and lowly wretch".^^2^^
The very titles of these poems speak of despondency (``My Departure'', 1839; "The End of AH'', 1840; "We All Shall Rest At Last'', 1840). The poet calls upon the man who has not rid himself of vain strivings to recognize their futility.
Nature is sublime in her quietude, only "weak, proud, and erring man" does not know the meaning of rest, busied as he is with senseless struggle (``The Love That Is Hereafter'', 1840). _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. I, Ed. by E. Holloway, N. Y., Peter Smith, 1932, p. 2.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 5
26 In the poem "We AH Shall Rest At Last" we find the following lines:No: dread ye not the fearful hour;
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The coffin, and the pall's dark gloom;
For there's a calm to throbbing hearts,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ And rest, down in the tomb.^^1^^
Thoughts on the pointlessness and even baseness of the desire for power over things and over other people were natural for a follower of Paine and Wright. But the ideal so dear to these thinkers, of a man oppressing no one and exploiting no one, nor allowing himself to be oppressed or exploited, did not find its expression in the poems "We All Shall Rest At Last" and "The End Of All''. And this was symptomatic. To many Americans it seemed that the time of revolutionary struggles which had marked the birth of the republic was now irrevocably a part of the past.
Let us note, however, that in Whitman's early verses there are not only ``graveyard'' images. For instance, the poet wrote patriotic pieces in honor of the fathers who had fought for the independence of the United States (``The Columbian's Song'', 1840, for example).
The subject of another poem, "The Inca's Daughter" (1840), was probably borrowed from Cooper's books about the Indians. Some intonations in it are typical of Byron's oriental poems. Whitman depicts an Indian girl who prefers death to capture. The Inca's daughter proclaims,
``Now, paleface, see! The Indian girl
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Can teach thee how to bravely die....''^^2^^
``The Inca's Daughter" and "The Columbian's Song" were also written according to the accepted canons of American poetry of the period. Much later, in the poem "Song of the Exposition'', Whitman was to mock the sentimental imagery and feeble rhymes which filled mid-nineteenth-century American poetry. But in the early verses of the man who wrote "Song of the Exposition" there were many qualities which in the future he himself would deride.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 11.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 8.
27 __ALPHA_LVL2__ ``Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate"Between the ages of twenty and thirty Whitman wrote less and less poetry. There is no doubt that any youthful faith he had had in his calling as a poet quickly disappeared. He made a series of agonizing attempts to become a short story writer, and during the first half of the forties wrote many short stories. They were printed in newspapers and magazines which folded after a brief existence. It was rare for collections of them to be preserved.
We know enough short stories by Whitman, however, to be quite certain that his talents were not suited to this genre. He did his best to intrigue the reader, but on the whole his prose is exceedingly weak. The poetics of mystery and terror typical of the American romantic school of the thirties and forties shines with a dreary glow in Whitman's stories. At the same time, one is aware of an irksome tendency to moralize.
Whitman placed his greatest hopes on the novel Franklin Evans; or the Inebriate. A Tale of the Times. He wrote it in 1842, when he was only 23. In his old age Whitman used to tell his friends that he wrote this cautionary tale about the harmfulness of alcohol while himself inebriated. There is reason, however, to doubt that the author really was hypocritical in writing The Inebriate: there is too much genuine feeling in this clumsy and melodramatic work.
The poet recalled that he had undertaken the writing of the novel when he was offered a certain sum in cash for an exciting work exposing the evils of drunkenness. Franklin Evans, however, does not deal only with the sad fate of the alcoholic. A considerable portion of the story is concerned with the joyless life of young men who come to the city from the provinces in search of work. By this time New York was already a big capitalist city, where naive young boys, left to their own devices, lived in cheap and dirty furnished rooms, exposed to every possible form of vice and hardship. Whitman described all this as best he could. Likewise he contrasted the fate of a poor man imprisoned for an insignificant offense with the successful life of rich men who obtained their money by dishonest means but remained unpunished.
The weakness of this sentimental work lies partly in the depiction of alcoholism as the cause of nearly all unhappiness in life, but at least in a few places the author truthfully 28 demonstrates the connection between alcoholism and the arduous economic conditions in which the hero has found himself. It is precisely the lack of work that forces him to try to improve his mood with the help of wine. Much later, the poet was to lay the blame for alcoholism on employers who force workers to do repellent work. In Whitman's stories one often comes across scenes that demonstrate vividly the humane feelings of the author, but at that time Whitman was still not capable of rising above the level of melodrama and of drawing convincing human characters.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The "New Orleans Theory" and Other MattersOf course, a writing career initiated in this fashion could hardly be called propitious. The delicate fountain of poetry born in Whitman's soul while he was still almost a boy seemed to have quickly dried up.
By the turn of the forties the young poet had published about a dozen poems, but in the next eight years less than half as many saw the light of day. Soon he ceased printing prose works as well.
As he approached thirty, Whitman must have felt that he had failed both as a poet and as a story-writer. But quite soon he began to write the verses which were eventually to make up the book Leaves of Grass. This happened at the very end of the forties.
Where then is the link connecting verses like "We All Shall Rest At Last" with the magnificent ``Europe'', published in 1850? How were "My Departure" and a melodramatic novella about a father who hates his son transformed into "Song of Myself"? What was it that so unexpectedly (or does it only seem that way?) made a poet of Walt Whitman when he reached the age of thirty? I am not the first to ask this question. There is probably no study of Whitman's life and work in which it does not arise. The way in which many authors in America answer this question is characteristic, however, of much that is weak in bourgeois literary criticism.
The theory ``explaining'' the instantaneous transformation of Whitman into a poet which was advanced more than half a century ago by the American critic Henry Binns was naive, but still not obnoxious. In his book on Whitman Binns disclosed several new facts about the poet's life and depicted him with 29 genuine sympathy; but what makes the work noteworthy in the history of Whitman studies is that the so-called New Orleans hypothesis makes its appearance here for the first time.
In 1848, having lost his job once again, Whitman accepted an invitation to work for a new paper which had been started by a group of businessmen in New Orleans. Now, Binns tries to convince us that Whitman went to New Orleans an average journalist and returned a few months later a genuine poet, and all because during his stay in that beautiful southern city he fell in love with some unknown woman. This love, apparently, determined all of Whitman's subsequent development, and made him a true poet.
As Binns puts it, "It seems that about this time Walt formed an intimate relationship with some woman of higher social rank than his own ... that she became the mother of his child ... and that he was prevented by some obstacle ... from marriage....''^^1^^
Followers of Binns have supplemented his ``theory'' with many romantic details. Some say that the woman Whitman loved with such an overwhelming passion occupied a higher social niche, and therefore he could not marry her. Others assert just the opposite: that she belonged to a lower social cast and this was what prevented the poet from marrying her.
The idea that sufferings in New Orleans born of love were the major factor in the rise of Whitman the poet has been developed by many critics. Among the many biographers to write of Whitman's ``purifying'' love for the beautiful New Orleans Creole (after all, why shouldn't she be a Creole?) are the American critic Holloway, the French critic Bazalgette and Bailey, an English historian of literature.
Binns' theory may perhaps appear attractive but the trouble is that nobody can point to unquestionable facts supporting it. Absolutely nothing is known about this mysterious woman. Gay Allen, one of Whitman's most recent American biographers, who collected a great deal of data on the poet's life, admits that not one concrete fact has ever been unearthed to support this romantic fiction.
Of course, it goes without saying that Whitman was a man far removed from monkish inclinations. Nothing human was alien to him. Whitman was neither a puritan nor a hypocrite. _-_-_
^^1^^ H. Binns, A Life of Walt Whitman, N. Y., Haskell, 1969, p. 51.
30 When in the mid-seventies, the poet heard of the death of the gifted actress and authoress Ada Clare, whom he had known since before the war, he wrote to a friend: "Poor, poor, Ada Clare---I have been inexpressibly shocked by the horrible & sudden close of her gay, easy, sunny free, loose, but not ungood life....''^^1^^Nothing is known about the women the poet loved when quite young. Whitman was extremely unwilling to share his intimate secrets with others. Not long before his death, however, the poet said in answer to a correspondent's questions that his love-life in his youth, and even later, was certainly not above reproach.
It is perfectly possible that Whitman really did love a woman whom he could not marry for reasons unknown to us. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that it is simply a product of fantasy to claim that all this took place in the spring of 1848 in New Orleans and that it was precisely this love which called forth Leaves of Grass.
Critics have also spent a great deal of time and effort trying to impress upon their readers the idea that at the end of the forties Whitman underwent some kind of ``mystical'' illumination, which instantaneously transformed a common journalist into a great poet. This theory was put forward many years ago by Richard Bucke, who wrote that in his thirties (as, he says, was the case with all founders of religions) Whitman was possessed by some sort of cosmic influence. Apparently this occurred not in 1848, but five or six years later. Whitman's brain, like that of other mystics, was supposedly affected by some sort of Brahmanic radiance which forever illuminated his life.
This view of the mystic Bucke, though he was a friend of Whitman, would probably not be worth remembering if it were not for the fact that even today he has a considerable following. Among the supporters of the "mystical theory" concerning the origin of Whitman's poetic genius we find, for instance, the well-known American literary critic Mark Van Doren. At the end of the Second World War he wrote: "Biographers speculate concerning a mystical experience around the year 1850. There was one, but the nature of it cannot be known.''^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ W. Whitman, The Correspondence, Vol. II, p. 285.
~^^2^^ Watt Whitman, Sel. by M. Van Doren, N. Y., Viking Press, 1945, p. 6.
31The theory of "mystical illumination" has gained even wider circulation in the United States quite recently. For instance, in his book A Critical Guide to "Leaves of Grass" (1957), James E. Miller Jr. builds his whole analysis of the ``structure'' of the poem "Song of Myself" on the premise that Whitman was an accomplished mystic, and that this fact determined the ``structure'' and even the essence of his work.
However, the ``mystical'' explanation of the sources of Whitman's poetry is not the latest novelty in American Whitman studies. Several historians of literature are nowadays inclined to view the birth of the poet's creative powers in frankly psychopathological terms. Critics of the Freudian school seek the key to Whitman's genius in his supposed homosexual inclinations. Again it must be said that no one has been able to adduce actual facts confirming such hypotheses. In Whitman's verse and prose the sun shines brilliantly and a fresh wind blows; his works breathe naturalness and purity.
The attitudes of some American critics are rather graphically set forth in the works of Richard Chase. From the undeniable fact that the poet underwent considerable hardships in the course of his life and, specifically, that he had to change his jobs fairly often, Chase has built up the image of a neurotic. Whitman's journey through life, Chase alleges, consisted of "a series of advances and retreats" connected with the state of his nerves. This, according to Chase, was what made Whitman a poet. The American critic phrases his conclusion as follows: "The emergence of Whitman's genius may be understood as the consequence of his having failed, because of neurotic disturbances, to make terms with the world.''^^1^^
Here we can agree with only one point, that Whitman really did have difficulty in making "terms with the world''. He was not a very accommodating man, not much inclined to compromise.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Once Again Into the FortiesWhat, then, did happen to Whitman at the end of the forties? Remember, that at the beginning of the decade he wrote extremely traditional verse and very soon fell almost _-_-_
~^^1^^ Leaves of Grass. One Hundred Years After, Ed. by M. Hindus.Stanford, Cal., Stanford Univ. Press, 1955, p. 52.
32 completely silent. And then, in 1847, Whitman first committed to paper lines which recall those later contained in Leaves of Grass. The first poem actually included in this book was not to be published until 1850. Leaves of Grass saw the light of day five years later.Of course, Whitman's poetic talent was born long before this. The youth was attracted to poetry very early in life. The charm of his native plains, the expanse of the ocean which opened from the hills of Long Island, folk songs, stories told by his mother and by the village shepherds when Walt was a child,---all these aroused poetic feelings in him. The tendency to think in images, a sense of rhythm, an attraction to verse and a skillful wielding of the pen in general---all this was to some degree Whitman's even before 1847. And then, of course, certain important principles were typical of the poet early in life---democratic leanings, faith in simple Americans, in farmers with trousers spattered with manure, city mechanics or fishermen.
Nevertheless, the forties did mark a turning point for Whitman. Just what happened to him at that time, what helped to make Whitman a real poet, will become clearer as we analyze the course of his life throughout the decade, the evolution of Whitman's ideas, as we look at the things that troubled or excited him.
It must be kept in mind that the forties was a time of great change in the history of the North American republic.
In the summer of 1841, when Whitman was twenty-two, reports appeared in two New York newspapers (among them the New York Post, one of the most respected organs of the press at that time, edited by the poet Bryant) of a speech made by a certain Walter Whitman. In the paper the New Era, the following words of this speaker, at a meeting called by the Democratic Party, were quoted: "We are battling for great principles---for mighty and glorious truths. I would scorn to exert even my humble efforts for the best democratic candidate that ever was nominated, in himself alone.''~^^1^^ These rather traditional words concealed a complex content.
Not long before this, Whitman had become convinced that there was nothing left for him to do in the villages of Long _-_-_
^^1^^ The Uncollected Poetry and Prose..., Vol. I, p. 51.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3-284 33 Island, and he moved to New York again, this time to stay there for the foreseeable future. The young man immediately became involved in the political life of the city and apparently was sufficienly well-known to the local leaders of the Democrats for his devotion to their party to be invited to make a public speech. Of course, there was nothing unexpected in Walt Whitman's publicly declaring himself a supporter of the Democratic Party; he would not hesitate in choosing between the Whigs and the Democrats. Like his father and many American farmers, workers and craftsmen, the political novice regarded with alarm the doings of big businessmen. Whitman aimed at preserving, as far as possible, "good old ways'', the ways of the farmer.Mistrust of wealthy people and of the future which their domination meant for the country was one of the main features of the philosophy of life millions of Democrats shared. In the Democratic Party itself, however, a very important role was played by elements who were far from democratic.
Both parties had loyal supporters in the northern and southern states. Without qualifying the statement, we could not describe the Whigs as the party of the Northerners, and the Democrats as the party of the Southerners.
Still, the fact remains that the southern plantation owners wielded a particularly great influence in the Democratic Party. Politically active Democrats from the southern states opposed the slightest attempts at any restriction of the power of the slave-owners. Moreover, they had the support of the northern bosses of the Democratic Party, especially of those whose economic interests were directly or indirectly tied up with the production of cotton.
However, the poet could not yet understand this, just as many other Americans from the lower classes still had not discerned the real nature of the northern Democratic leaders. In the early forties slavery still was not regarded by millions of Americans, even in the North, as an intolerable evil.
The struggle against slavery in the United States dated back to the birth of the republic. During the War of Independence and immediately after, this struggle reached fairly large proportions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the movement lost its former impetus. The Negroes rose up against slavery time and time again, but received little or no support from the whites.
34In his book William Lloyd Garrison and His Times (1880), devoted largely to the biography of one of the leaders of the abolitionist movement in the United States, Oliver Johnson, himself a notable abolitionist, wrote that at the end of the twenties of last century "there was hardly a ripple of excitement about slavery in any part of the nation. The fathers of the Republic had fallen asleep; the Anti-Slavery sentiment of the country ... had become too feeble to utter even a whisper. From one year's end to another there was scarcely a newspaper in all the land that made the slightest allusion to the subject.... The cotton traffic had become immensely profitable.... The still, small voice of conscience was overwhelmed by the hoarse clamors of avarice.... Pulpit and press were generally silent''.^^1^^
It is true that the abolitionist society founded by Garrison, who also set up an anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator, at the beginning of the thirties, attracted to its ranks hundreds of supporters from all parts of the country, including the South. It is also true that some heroic people, paying no attention to threats (several abolitionists paid with their lives for their convictions), helped Negroes escape from the southern states, made speeches and published pamphlets demanding civil rights for slaves. Workers who belonged to unions had long been protesting against slavery. Despite all this, the sad picture drawn by Johnson corresponded, on the whole, to the actual situation.
Many years later, when the war between the North and the South had ended, Whitman was to say that rotten and dangerous elements had begun to play a noticeable part in the leadership of the Democratic Party long before the war. However, at the beginning of the forties he was not, as yet, acutely aware of the danger lurking in the protective attitude of the most powerful Democrats towards the institution of slavery. He was still far from aligning himself fully with abolitionists. It is a curious fact that in the novel Franklin Evans Negro slavery is mentioned without the slighest hint of criticism.
Those are the facts. Nevertheless, Whitman's words about his faithfulness to "great principles" were spoken sincerely. The young man from the backwoods did not belong to the _-_-_
^^1^^ O. Johnson, William Lloyd Garrison and His Times, Boston, B. B. Russell, 1880, pp. 21--22.
35 ranks of politicians prepared to stoop to anything for the sake of "making good''. Whitman took his stand because he really believed in certain noble principles, although his understanding of the situation at which the country had arrived was obviously limited. He soon was to demonstrate his faithfulness to these "great principles" in practice. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Whitman and "Great Principles"In the forties Walt Whitman was first and foremost a journalist, a newspaper editor. The list of periodicals for which he worked during this decade is extremely long---the Aurora, the Tattler, the Democrat, the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Freeman, and many others.
Attempts by literary historians to seek out collections of the publications on which the poet worked over a hundred years ago have met with only partial success. Some of Whitman's articles were reprinted only in 1950. The first issue of the Brooklyn Freeman was considered lost for almost a century.
What was the American press of the eighteen-forties like? Charles Dickens visited the United States when Whitman was beginning his career in journalism in New York. In Martin Chuzdewit and other works Dickens describes the typical American newspaper of the time in a manner which, while grotesque, was basically accurate. The typical American newspaper reflected a life abounding in violence and bloodshed, was filled with crudity, dirt and slander. Its ``news'' contained one drop of truth for each bucketful of deceit. When Martin Chuzzlewit disembarks in New York, his ears are assailed by the cries of boys hawking newspapers. The choice is quite wide: "New York Sewer'', "New York Family Spy'', "New York Keyhole'', "New York Plunderer'', etc.
Of course, not all American newspapers were of this kind. Whitman knew of several publications inspired by lofty thoughts and noble ideals. One might recall, of course, the Free Enquirer. Bryant conducted a bold defense of democratic ideas in his paper. The abolitionist press was imbued with a spirit of heroism. Even so, the style of the gutter press had its influence even on some honest American journalists.
The budding politician Whitman had sometimes assailed his opponents with a lack of restraint which would have embarrassed the liveliest of European journalists.
36For instance, in 1840, on the eve of the elections, a dispute took place between a certain Whig and the Democrat Whitman. The local Whig paper in reporting the downfall of the "champion of democracy" (more than likely, a case of wishful thinking) quoted indignantly his characterization of the Whig opponent as a liar and a scoundrel. Further on, there was a declaration that for one more such outburst he would be given a sound hiding. In answering his competitors' paper on the pages of the organ of the Democrats, Whitman not only refused to apologize for his rudeness, but made use of other expressions in the same vein. Later on Whitman also was not averse to employing very strong language in his attacks on political opponents.
But let us examine what irked the Democrat Whitman in his debate with a Whig and why he ignored the threat of reprisals. It seems that Whitman's wrath was to a large degree justified. An accusation had been made concerning the leader of the Democrats, Van Buren, which was not only untrue, but rather clearly revealed the class essence of the Whigs' position. This was a position which Whitman could not but regard with extreme distaste. The American Whigs, startled by the hostility with which rank and file Democrats regarded their `` respectable'' and prosperous opponents, spread slanderous rumors, which were picked up and used even in the tiniest villages of Long Island. It was claimed that Van Buren wanted to introduce communal ownership not only of property, but of wives and children as well. There is no doubt that Whitman had good reason to be angry....
The first paper which employed Whitman after his speech in defense of the Democrats was the Aurora. A great many new periodicals had appeared almost simultaneously in New York at the beginning of the decade, and the daily Aurora was not among the best of them. In fact the Aurora was rather distinguished for its familiarity of tone, predilection for sensation and cheap ``aristocratism''. The first editor of the paper, Thomas Nichols, quite frankly set himself the aim of creating a kind of mirror of the life of the New York beau monde. He called the Aurora "the Court Journal of our democratic aristocracy".^^1^^ This meant that politics received less _-_-_
^^1^^ Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, Ed. by J. J. Rubin and Ch. H. Brown, State College, Pa, Bald Eagle Press 1950, p. 2.
37 attention in the Aurora than society gossip, and news from Europe was squeezed out by local scandals.The man who preceded Whitman as editor of the newspaper was so active and unconstrained that soon the owners began to fear that the paper would be charged with libel, and so fired him. The post of leading editor was given, as announced in the issue for March 28, 1842, to "Mr. Walter Whitman, favorably known as a bold, energetic and original writer...".^^1^^
This announcement was in many ways typical of the newspaper for which Whitman was starting work. In the first place, the owners of the Aurora knew this "original writer" too little to grace him with such a flattering title. Secondly, the announcement about the post of leading editor was a lie, since Whitman was the only editor of the paper. In fact, the whole permanent staff of the Aurora consisted of him and one crime reporter. Society news was supplied by free-lance workers, at the rate of one cent per line.
The editor of the Aurora was not yet 23. A photograph of him taken about this time has been preserved. Whitman is shown as a young man with an elegant beard. The young journalist probably wore a top-hat and did not scorn to carry a cane. A contemporary of his testified that his buttonhole was almost always adorned with a flower.
Whitman well understood what his readers expected of him, he sported the manner of a man of the world, an idler arid joker. Many of his articles in the Aurora were narratives about himself---about his walks in the town, chance meetings and comical incidents. The editor actually declared to the public that his job was to give the readers "something piquant, and something solid, and something sentimental and something humorous...".^^2^^ (Later he was to say that the Aurora was "a trashy, scurrilous, and obscene daily paper....'')^^3^^
However, New York life at the beginning of the forties did not fit into the framework of this ``piquant'' scheme. Although Whitman wrote in jest that when he went out walking after lunch, children stepped aside to make way for him because he was obviously a ``gentleman'', he was not only concerned about his appearance. Though not much troubled then by the lot of _-_-_
^^1^^ Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, p. 2.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 4.
^^3^^ Ibid., p. 13.
38 the Negroes, this follower of Jefferson and Wright held such a basic principle of bourgeois democracy as the separation of church and state very close to his heart.It so happened that the Roman Catholic Bishop John Hughes thought to take advantage of the arrival of a large number of Irish immigrants in the United States to obtain a subsidy for the church schools from the city funds. The leaders of Tammany Hall were in favor of his request. They agreed to support the school bill because the votes of the Irish were greatly needed.
When this happened, the editor of the Aurora suddenly abandoned his light and humorous tone. Rolling up his sleeves, he jumped straight into the fray with Hughes and those Democrats who had sided with him. Once more Whitman declined to choose polite terms of expression. He did not wish to use pretty words when the talk concerned unclean doings.
Quite unexpectedly for himself, the "leading editor" found himself in a rather ticklish situation. At this very time a chauvinist organization of Native Americans supporting racial ``purity'' was being set up in the United States. Speaking in the name of ``genuine'' Americans, these racists defamed all immigrants, especially Irish Roman Catholics. His instinctive democratic feelings, however, soon helped Whitman to find his bearings in the situation. It is true that he criticized the leaders of the Irish Catholics in the United States, but he refused to side with the reactionaries who persecuted all immigrants. The editor found it necessary to dissociate himself from such politics in a special article.
Less than a year after Whitman expressed his faith in "great principles'', life itself put his words to the test. On the eve of current elections the editor of the Aurora faced a serious dilemma: should he remain faithful, in spite of everything, to the Democratic candidates, or condemn the New York leaders of the Democratic Party, who had betrayed the principle of separation of church and state? He found the courage to overlook "local interests of party"~^^1^^ in the name of democracy, and this so resolutely that he actually expressed his joy at the defeat of Tammany Hall at the polls.
Then an incident which would be repeated over and over again during the forties occurred: the editor devoted too _-_-_
^^1^^ Ibid., p. 7.
39 wholeheartedly to democratic principles was shown the door by the owners of the paper.The publishers of the Aurora attempted to conceal the real political reasons for Whitman's dismissal. Only a few weeks earlier they had called Whitman an ``energetic'' writer, but in May 1842 there appeared in the Aurora an article containing the following words: "There is a man about our office so lazy that it takes two men to open his jaws when he speaks.... What can be done with him?''~^^1^^
The claim that it was hard to force Whitman to speak proved none too happy an invention. It would have been truer to say that it was impossible to force him to be quiet. Whitman's answer to the attacks of Herrick and Ropes, the owners of the Aurora, came in the Tattler, with an extremely vivid list of all of their failings, which he knew very well indeed.
It was at this time, having lost his gainful employment as editor of a New York daily newspaper, that, in an effort to earn a living, Whitman undertook the composition of a book in praise of sobriety.
One paper after another, sentimental or ``horrific'' stories, articles on local topics, sometimes written simply because the columns of a paper had to be filled with something or other---this was how things went almost to the end of the forties.
Among the articles Whitman published while working on the Evening Tattler there were (as there had been while he was on the Aurora) unassuming descriptions of walks through the town. At the same time, the conflict with the publishers of that ``trashy'' paper continued. Quite in the spirit of the newspapers satirized by Dickens, the owners of the Aurora called their former editor a "pretty pup" guilty of "indolence, incompetence, loaferism"^^2^^, etc.
Whitman paid them back in kind, characterizing his former employers as "dirty fellows" who were ignorant "of their own ignorance".^^3^^ They were tramps, the incarnation of the foulest egoism, blackmailers, etc.
Whitman did not stay long on the Tattler either. The reasons for this are not known, but here is what G. W. Allen, who is far from inclined to emphasize the poet's rebellious tendencies, _-_-_
^^1^^ Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, p. 12.
^^2^^ Ibid.
^^3^^ Ibid., p. 13.
40 wrote about Whitman's leaving the New York Democrat: "... there can be little doubt that he was ousted by the 'Old Hunker' politicians, the first of several defeats that he would suffer at their hands.''^^1^^ In fact, it cannot be called the first, if we recall the circumstances involved in his dismissal from the Aurora, but it is true that further encounters with reactionary politicians awaited the young journalist.Whitman worked as editor of the New York Democrat in the mid-forties. By this time differences of opinion in the ranks of the Democratic Party, which later led to a split, were already quite apparent. The leaders of the northern Democrats were ever more ready to follow the dictates of the southern Democrats in support of slavery. This caused resentment among those Americans who had not forgotten that even some of the ``fathers'' of the republic had seen in slavery something inimical to democracy.
Conservatives mockingly called those who were ready to "undermine the foundations" ``Barnburners''. Everybody knew the joke about the farmer who wanted to rid himself of rats, and burned the barn infested by them to the ground. In the same way, "respectable people" reasoned, these hot-heads, in their attempt to get rid of shortcomings, were ready to set the country on fire and destroy it. Nevertheless, the movement of the ``Barnburners'' (they took up this nickname with pride) attracted more and more Democrats.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ``America's Most StormilyThe late eighteen-forties was a most important period in the history of the world. In many European countries it was a time of revolution. E. L. Masters in his book about Whitman remarked that "as Whitman tried to sing America ... the Communist Manifesto of 1848 was spreading its influence over the Western World".^^2^^
In America, too, events of earth-shaking significance took place, but only a very few American writers were able to understand the tremendous revolutionary import of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ G. W. Allen, The Solitary Singer, p. 65.
~^^2^^ E. L. Masters, Whitman, N. Y., Biblo and Tannen, 1968, p. 106.
41 period when the first of Whitman's poems, published later in Leaves of Grass, were created.Some scholars link the appearance of Whitman's book to economic advance in the United States in the eighteen-fifties. One literary man who was more discerning in his judgement was Carl Sandburg. This poet emphasized that the author of Leaves of Grass "wrote his vital passages at the height of America's most stormily human period of history".^^1^^
Various tendencies, sometimes diametrically opposed, interwove and clashed in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Merchants grew rich, new factories sprang up, bankers acquired more and more influence. At the same time, the slave owners of the southern states stubbornly refused to give ground. If anything, they behaved more aggressively than ever before. By continually expanding the areas where slave labor was used, hindering the growth of industry and of the capitalist order of things in general, and fettering the North politically, the plantation owners of the South obstructed, in a fairlyobvious way, the development of the productive forces of the country. The abolition of slavery was urgently demanded by the basic interests of capitalists in New England as well as New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other northern and western sections of the United States. But most consistent of all in their struggle against slavery were the American farmers, artisans and workers.
From the late forties their political activity grew year by year. The hatred of the working people of the northern and western states and territories for the southern plantation owners was to a large extent determined by the antagonistic interests of these Americans in relation to the cardinal problem in the country's life, the problem of land. For the American people it took on supreme importance.
``... The agrarian question at that time,'' Lenin wrote, "had been brought to the fore by the course of the American social movement....''^^2^^
It was during the forties that a stubborn struggle developed between the tenant-farmers and the great landowners of the state of New York, descendants of the first Dutch settlers. _-_-_
^^1^^ W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Introduction by C. Sandburg N V Random House, 1944, p. VIII.
^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works,Moscow, Vol. 8, p 323.
42 Having inherited immense holdings, these landowners exacted an excessively high rent from the tenants; the enmity towards the extortionists at times produced something that looked like rebellions.Incomparably more important, however, were the fundamental differences between millions of farmers, artisans and workers in the northern states and the big plantation owners of the South. At the basis of the conflict lay the question of who was to own the huge areas of territory still unoccupied in the West of the country.
The new republic had endless expanses of land still undivided into private lots, and it seemed that it would be possible to give farms to everybody. Even those who had never considered taking up agriculture felt that a farm of their own could be a sheet anchor in the event of a failure in town. Other people instinctively felt that the development of individual farming would postpone the aggravation of the ills wrought by developing capitalism.
There were very many people who favored the idea of dividing the unoccupied government lands (either free or for a nominal price) in the form of homesteads among all those who wanted them. This demand was democratic in nature, though its content was bourgeois. But the movement for the division of the western lands among small farmers threatened to undermine the foundations of slave-run plantations and enraged the planters. No matter how quickly the reserves of unoccupied land expanded, the appetite of the southern landowners grew still more quickly. The slave owners were most active in opposing the realization of the democratic masses' dream of homesteads. It is quite understandable, therefore, that the struggle for land and the anti-slavery movement were closely linked.
In order to understand more clearly the historically progressive significance of the mounting struggle for land on the American continent on the eve of the Civil War, let us recall the appraisal made by Marx and Lenin of the views of Hermann Kriege, a German who emigrated to America during the forties. In a journal which Kriege began to publish in the United States, he proposed the idea of redistributing the land, which he thought was possible under American conditions.
Citing Kriege's pronouncements in his article "Marx on the American 'General Redistribution''', Lenin remarked that here 43 was "a real plan for an American general redistribution: the withdrawal of a vast land expanse from commerce, the securing of title to the land, limitation of the extent of landownership or land tenure.''~^^1^^
But Kriege insisted that his idea was a communist idea. And this, of course, roused Marx to indignation and protest. In his article Lenin notes that Marx quite correctly subjects Kriege's utopianism to sober criticism. Lenin, however, goes further: "But it would be a great mistake to think that the Utopian dreams of the participants in the movement caused Marx to adopt a negative attitude to the movement in general.... Marx was able to extract the real and progressive content of a movement from its tawdry ideological trappings.''^^2^^ He was far from merely repudiating this petty-bourgeois movement and saw the significance of "the revolutionary aspect of the attack on private property in land".^^3^^
As it developed, the abolitionist movement also took on a more and more obvious revolutionary character. The link between the struggle for land in the United States and the struggle against slavery is mentioned, for instance, in a letter which Marx wrote to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. This "dire epopee,'' Marx pointed out, had its beginning in the struggle for land, which was "to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labour of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slavedriver....''^^4^^
In the struggle for the liberation of the Negroes, the most progressive elements of the northern bourgeoisie made common cause with the people. Nevertheless, as was correctly observed by one abolitionist, even in New England, the center of the struggle against slavery, the abolitionist movement recruited its members mostly from the common people. In his book The Negro People in American History, William Foster points out that bourgeois circles were long unappreciative of the work of their revolutionary vanguard, the middle-class abolitionists. Indisputable facts show that during the decades immediately preceding the war between the North and the _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, op. cit., p. 324.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 324.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 328.
^^4^^ The General Council of the First International, 1864--1866, Minutes, Moscow, 1964, p. 52.
44 South prominent public figures of the American bourgeoisie made deal after deal with the southerners.In the middle of the nineteenth century the realization of the American way (as Lenin later characterized it) of capitalist development in agriculture hung in the balance. Working Americans linked their hopes for freedom and well-being with the struggle for land and against slavery; it seemed to them that victory over the plantation owners would turn the United States into a country of farmers and artisans, content with their lot. For some time Whitman also shared these illusions.
The basic economic causes of the mounting anti-slavery movement in the United States are fairly evident, but of course, the most progressive Americans fought slavery not only for economic reasons. In the hearts of honest, steadfast abolitionists burnt a fervid love of freedom. They were genuinely concerned with securing human rights for men and women, irrespective of the color of their skins. They were inspired by humanism.
Whitman attended stormy meetings in defense of Negroes on more than one occasion. Later he would often recall these crowded meetings addressed by leaders of the anti-slavery movement. Among them were Garrison, the bold abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who was held in high esteem by the founders of Marxism, and Frederick Douglass. From these and other men supporting the immediate liberation of the slaves, Whitman learned to fight fearlessly for the lofty goals of emancipation.
He listened attentively and joyfully to the magnificent speeches for which the leaders of the abolitionists were so famous. In his old age, the poet recounted how a certain member of Tammany Hall, with the help of the most vicious elements of New York, led attacks on anti-slavery meetings. But, wrote Whitman with pride, the abolitionists defended themselves bravely and never gave ground.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Brooklyn EagleA change in the attitude of millions of Americans to the doings of the slave owners---from vague indifference to wrathful indignation and attempts to thwart them---found dramatic expression at the very end of the forties and the beginning of the fifties. But serious shifts had already been 45 noticeable in the winter of 1846--47. It was at this same time that Walt Whitman's view of the world also underwent a significant change. In less than two years, from early 1846 to the first days of 1848, when the poet was editing the daily newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle, the main local organ of the Democratic Party, which had been in power in the United States for many years, he became, in many respects, a new man.
When, after the death of the paper's editor in February 1846, Whitman was invited to take his place, he accepted the job---one may assume---without much hesitation. The offer was very flattering, since the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle held a prominent position in the city, and the young journalist could have no objection in principle to working on the paper. True, Whitman had argued, sometimes bitterly, with the leaders of the Democratic Party in Brooklyn and New York, but he had remained a loyal Democrat.
Whitman was tied to the Democratic Party by his undimmed affection for the memory of Jackson, whom he had considered a noble old man with a simple soul. Like most other Democrats, the new editor of the Brooklyn Eagle was against certain measures which people with money longed to force through in the United States. But as before, he rarely thought much about the fact that the Democratic Party was becoming a steady supporter of slavery.
Like other American dailies of the time, the Brooklyn Eagle consisted of four pages, filled largely with advertizing. Since Whitman was the only editorial worker (although it is quite possible that he made use of a reporter for some time) he had to do almost everything that was necessary to get the paper out. He composed leading and feature articles, prepared the ``news'' (mostly on the basis of other publications), provided purely literary material, took part in polemics, and was responsible for proof-reading. The editor did his job conscientiously: when there was a shortage of material, he would reprint his old verses and prose writings (the novel Franklin Evans received a new title in the Brooklyn Eagle---A Tale of Long-Island. Fortunes of a Country-Boy).
The paper freely indulged in abuse directed at rival organs of the press. In the first place, the editor of the Brooklyn Advertiser was a Whig, and in the second place, he had expressed doubts about Whitman's knowledge of grammar....
46In Whitman's paper one could read about the arrival in the United States of a famous inpressario with an astounding dwarf and about what was supposedly the only living orangoutang in England or America. Nor did the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle attempt to hide his delight in the achievements of American technology, which allowed you to travel by train to a town 100 miles from Brooklyn and back again all in one day.
Once he composed a highly traditional ode dedicated to Independence Day (it could be sung to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner''). It seemed that life in the United States was moving on quietly and peacefully, in an established groove, but all the while events of the greatest import were taking place in the country.
The United States of America had long had its eye on the highly fertile and under-populated lands of neighboring Mexico, a country which was then considerably larger than present-day Mexico. The most determined supporters of the annexation of at least part of the Mexican lands were the plantation owners, but some northerners also campaigned for the expansion of American territory. Shortly before, in 1845. the Americans had decided on the official annexation ol Texas, seized from the Mexicans many years earlier. Eventual ly Texas was turned into a slave state. But Mexico still possessed an even more dainty morsel---California.
Whitman was only getting into his stride as editor when American soldiers invaded Mexican territory. Military operations began between the United States and Mexico, though the formal declaration of war was made much later. There can be no doubt as to the expansionist nature of American military actions in Mexico. Not all honest Americans grasped immediately what was going on, but the feeling that the United States had launched on a venture of conquest began to disturb more and more people.
Lincoln, the future president, was an opponent of the war with Mexico; he pointed out in his speeches that the bloodshed was only to the advantage of the slave owners who wanted new land where they could use the labor of their black-skinned human cattle.
Douglass considered the war disgraceful and unjust, and it goes without saying that the other abolitionists also protested against it. The workers' organizations sharply condemned the unjust war.
47Soon after military operations began, the poet James Russell Lowell published some brilliant satirical verses attacking the war. In "The Biglow Papers" (first series) Lowell made use of the language of poorly educated farmers to mock "them thet rule us, them slave-traders'',^^1^^ and at the same time castigated the "Yankee renegaders" who were ready to help create on Mexican land "bigger pens to cram with slaves''.
Speaking to the soldiers, the poet exclaimed,
Taint your eppylettes an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right....^^2^^
Emerson was also revolted by the war with Mexico. In his ``Ode'' the United States are depicted as a country which does no more than prattle about culture. Was not the poet's homeland tormenting Mexico with armed force? Such were the spoken and written reactions of the brightest minds of America more than 100 years ago.
It is worth noting that, according to the testimony of G. W. Allen, some present-day historians are beginning to justify the American president's views at that time and to rationalize his actions. Several literary critics in the United States have attempted to support their case by referring to Whitman, whom they depict as an extreme expansionist. Thus, for instance, H. S. Canby wrote that "Whitman grew up in the Great Expansion of the thirties, the forties, the fifties"~^^3^^ and that Leaves of Grass expresses "a young expansionist mind in an expansionist country".^^4^^ In some books Whitman is shown as a consistent supporter of the war with Mexico, from beginning to end.
The real situation was quite different. There is no doubt that the war found Whitman far from a convinced abolitionist, and that he did not immediately oppose annexation. But during the Mexican war, Whitman's ideas and views, together with those of American working people, underwent serious development.
_-_-_^^1^^ The Democratic Spirit, Ed. by B. Smith, N. Y., Knopf, 1941,
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 353.
~^^3^^ H. S. Canby, Walt Whitman, N. Y., Literary Classics, 1943, p. 327
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 48.
48When the battles began, Van Anden, the owner of the Brooklyn Eagle,, who belonged to the conservative wing of the Democrats, apparently had good reason to be pleased with his new editor. The editorials written by Whitman just after the American troops had crossed the border made the Mexicans out to be the blackest of villains. The editor accused them of being ready to execute hundreds of people; he spoke of the tyranny within Mexico and openly advocated seizure of Mexican territory. Such articles probably reflected the feelings of those Americans (even poor ones) who in their dreams of owning a lot of land were able to contemplate, without any qualms of conscience, American territorial expansion at the expense of their neighbors.
Sometimes Whitman attempted to justify the actions of the American army by the prospect of a republican order which would be established on the newly acquired territories in place of the monarchy. He wanted to convince his readers (and himself as well) that once having seized Mexican land, his fellow-countrymen would introduce a liberal form of government and free the people of their shackles. After all, was not his country providing humanity with a new and free way of life?
At first Whitman saw no relation between the war with Mexico and the interests of the slave owners, and was not inclined to attack the planters on this account. Nevertheless, the owner of the Brooklyn Eagle was probably even then not fully satisfied with his editor. The fact is that Whitman took it into his head to devote one of his first leading articles (``Slavers---and the Slave Trade'') to a most dangerous subject. He condemned the import of slaves into the United States via the countries of South America. Ostensibly there was nothing seditious about this, since the author seemed only to be urging observance of the laws which forbade the import of human beings as slaves. But in the article he was not only expressing concern at the contravention of existing legislation. He was worried by the inhumanity of the very institution of slavery.
Whitman gave a scathing description of a ship which carried Negro slaves. There was unbelievably little floor space for each slave. "Are you sick of the description?" wrote the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, "O, this is not all, by a good sight. Imagine neither food nor water given these hapless prisoners ... __PRINTERS_P_50_COMMENT__ 4-284 49 dozens of the poor wretches dying, and others already dead....''^^1^^
Van Anden had reason to be perturbed. Not only was the article written with passion, but the author tackled the problems in a manner which was dangerous for the slave owners. In exposing the smugglers he attacked not only those who were foreigners, but American slave traders as well. He also condemned attempts to justify slavery by conditions supposedly existing in Africa from time immemorial. The editor knew that wars between African tribes, as a result of which the vanquished were sold into slavery, were engineered by the whites. The author of the article demanded that the law make provision for the punishment riot merely of the "sailor on the sea'', but also of the "cowardly rich villain, and speculator on the land...".^^2^^
The war with Mexico went on, and the paper still seemed to support it, but soon new notes began to appear in Whitman's deliberations on the subject. His articles called on the reader to pay attention to public opinion, and public opinion was against the war. The editor, recently in such a militant mood, now began to emphasize that peaceful conquests were much nobler than conquests by force of arms. And then he suddenly came up with the demand to do everything possible to bring the war with Mexico to an end.
Shortly after the new year, in 1847, the Brooklyn Eagle quite bluntly proposed ending the war. In one of his articles Whitman wrote: "... the time ... has arrived when all citizens should speak candidly and firmly on this subject of the Mexican War. Let it go no further!"~^^3^^
American literary critics quite often ignore all this. But facts tell an incontrovertible story: after his first year of work on the Brooklyn Eagle, the views of the new editor on the war changed. The reason was, first and foremost, that the problem of the war became intertwined with that of slavery.
The time was close when the fruits of the successful American military operations would be harvested. In Washington, preparations were being made to declare vast territories that had been wrenched away from a weak country, the _-_-_
^^1^^ W. Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces, N. Y. ;ind I.nd., Putnam's Sons, 1920, pp. 188--89.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 190.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 255.
50 property of the United States. But suddenly a very serious obstacle confronted the slave owners who were impatiently awaiting this outcome.David Wilmot, a Congressman from the northern state of Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution that became known as the Wilmot Proviso, according to which slavery was to be excluded from the new territory.
This threatened the plantation owners and their northern allies with genuine catastrophe. Wilmot was preparing to take away a gigantic piece of land from the slave owners. In fact, the question of who was to wield power in the country in the future had now been raised.
To support Wilmot really meant to help undermine the whole system of slavery in the United States. It is quite understandable why the Wilmot Proviso caused panic in the South, and was fairly widely supported by people in the North. As a result, the differences between the plantation aristocracy of the South and their natural antagonists on the farms and in the towns of the North assumed an extremely sharp character.
The struggle over Congressman Wilmot's proposal set off a truly mass national movement against slavery, the first that Whitman witnessed during his lifetime. The struggle within the Democratic Party between the ``Barnburners'' and the "Old Hunkers" grew particularly fierce. A chain reaction began which finally led to the Democratic Party's defeat in the elections of 1860, after many years of virtual monopoly in United States politics. Abraham Lincoln became the new president of the country, representing the new Republican Party. The Civil War and the rout of the slave owners were already close.
But let us return to the late forties; in the struggle ensuing from the Wilmot Proviso, the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle sided with the progressive people of his country. In the issue of February 3, 1847, Whitman proudly observed that the Brooklyn Eagle "was the very first Democratic paper which alluded to this subject (of abolition of slavery in the new territories.---M. M.) in a decisive manner...".^^1^^
Walt Whitman, the composer of rather sickly verses, of lively but insignificant stories, took this most important, militant civic _-_-_
^^1^^ Ibid., p. 197.
51 idea to heart. One might say that he had found himself. Whitman had never been so passionately dedicated to any cause. Not much earlier he had been almost indifferent towards the problem of slavery, but now its denunciation became his most important theme.In December 1846, the principal newspaper of the Brooklyn Democrats featured an article of genuine historical significance, whose content went as follows: "If there are any States to be formed out of territory lately annexed, or to be annexed, by any means to the United States, let the Democratic members of Congress, (and Whigs too, if they like) plant themselves quietly, without bluster, but fixedly and without compromise, on the requirement that Slavery be prohibited in them forever. We wish we could have a universal straightforward setting down of feet on this thing, in the Democratic Party. We must.''^^1^^
One might get the impression from some statements in this article that its author hoped that the whole Democratic Party would support Wilmot, but he was not as naive as that. Only a dreamer with his head in the clouds could suppose that the southern politicians would vote for the Wilmot Proviso. The editor probably only wished to inspire ``Barnburners'' with confidence in their strength.
Month by month, Whitman grew more stubborn in the defense of this revolutionary step in the struggle against the slave owners. When the Democratic Party suffered a defeat in the next election the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that this election was "a terrific warning of the folly of all half-way policy in such matters...".^^2^^
I must specify that at this time Whitman was still not demanding the complete abolition of the very institution of slavery. His official aim was to defend the Wilmot Proviso. Nonetheless, through the editor's discussions as to whether the new states were to be ``slave'' or ``free'', his hatred for the system of slavery in general was more and more clearly manifested. Slavery, wrote Whitman in the spring of 1847, basing his judgement on the views of "all the old fathers of our freedom'', is "inconsistent with the other institutions of the land".^^3^^
_-_-_^^1^^ W. Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces, p. 194.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 222.
^^3^^ Ibid., p. 201.
52Even now the Brooklyn Eagle sometimes condemned the fanaticism of the people Whitman called ``ultra-abolitionists''. The paper still indulged in attacks on the Mexicans. But the lengths to which Whitman went in his support of abolitionism can be seen from his article "American Workingmen, Versus Slavery" which appeared in the early autumn of 1847.
Whitman wrote: "The question whether or no there shall be slavery in the new territories ... is a question between the grand body of white workingmen, the millions of mechanics, farmers, and operatives of our country, with their interests, on the one side---and the interests of the few thousand rich, `polished', and aristocratic owners of slaves at the South, on the other side.''~^^1^^ He continued: "The influence of the slavery institution is to bring the dignity of labor down to the level of slavery, which, God knows! is low enough. And this it is which must induce the workingmen of the North, East and West, to come up, to a man, in defense of their rights, their honor, and that heritage of getting bread by the sweat of the brow, which we must leave to our children."~^^2^^
It is not difficult to see that Whitman's democratic convictions and the logical development of his love for freedom led him to condemn the order which allowed not only literal slavery, but also other forms of the enslavement of man.
Whitman deliberately and firmly took his stand on the side of the workingmen and the farmers. Their interests demanded the abolition of slavery, and the main burden of struggle was laid on the shoulders of these people. Whitman called on "...the carpenter, in his rolled up sleeves, the mason with his trowel, the stonecutter with his brawny chest, the blacksmith with his sooty face, the brown fisted shipbuilder, whose clinking strokes rattle so merrily in our dock yards...''^^3^^ to join in the fight against slave owners. Let "every mechanic" together with "the workers of the land" say clearly that they wish to exist "free and independent" not only in name and not be "put down to an equality with slaves".^^4^^ Some fifteen years before the Civil War, Walt Whitman predicted that the day was drawing near when "thousands of noble hearts at the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 208.
~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 209--10.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 210.
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 211.
53 North---the entire East---the uprousing giant of the free West" would "sweep over them (the slave owners.---M. M.) and their doctrines as the advancing ocean tide obliterates the channel of some little brook that erewhile ran down the sands of its shore. Already the roar of the waters is heard; and if a few short-sighted ones seek to withstand it, the surge, terrible in its fury, will sweep them too in the ruin''.^^1^^The revolutionary meaning of the article "American Workingmen, Versus Slavery" is indisputable. But something further must be said about it. This outstanding work of American revolutionary journalism, like several other articles by Whitman written at the end of the forties, contains lively and powerful images, sonorous melodies, audible rhythms, a battle call expressed by means of insistent repetition of words; and this, of course, is characteristic of many poems by Walt Whitman. I have in mind those poetic works which he began to jot down in his notebooks at precisely this time, beginning in 1847.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Little NotebookIn the earliest of Whitman's extant notebooks the owner's address is given as the editorial offices of the Brooklyn Eagle, and it is fairly certain that he began making entries in the little notebook while still working for Van Anden. A few pages in the book are given to records of expenses and notes of a similar nature, but most of the space is devoted to aphorisms and strange-looking lines of unequal length, which somehow resemble lines of poetry. These were not outlines for editorials, and one feels that such notes of Whitman's are something very intimate.
The journalist who daily discussed current political problems on the pages of his newspaper, was tormented by a longing to understand, visualize and interpret the world. He was trying to write poetry which was peculiar both in content and form. Yet the very first note in Whitman's little book reads: "Be simple and clear.---Be not occult.''^^2^^ This demand he followed both as a thinker and as a poet. The striving towards the real and the genuine can be felt in everything he _-_-_
^^1^^ W. Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces, pp. 213--14.
^^2^^ The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. II, p. 63.
54 wrote. In the little notebook we also discern a powerful love of freedom. It breathes a most uncompromising democratic faith.Let me start with the aphorisms. "I never yet knew how it felt to think I stood in the presence of my superior.'' It is possible that Whitman had in mind, above all else, God. Further on we read: "If the presence of God were made visible immediately before me, I could not abase myself.''~^^1^^ Still less would the owner of this notebook agree to abase himself before any human being at all. "Liberty is not the fruition but the dawn of the morning of a nation.''^^2^^ In another place we find him saying: "He has the divine grammar of all tongues, and says indifferently and alike, How are you friend? to the President in the midst of his cabinet, and Good day my brother, to Sambo, among the hoes of the sugar field, and both understand him and know that his speech is right.''^^3^^ On this occasion ``he'' is both a philosopher and a poet at one time. In re-worked form these lines became part of Leaves of Grass.
Throughout the notebook there gradually arises the image of a man incarnating Whitman's ideal: a democrat, opposed to ``gentlemen'' of aristocratic origin, a man independent and good-natured, a man who demands equality for everybody, who prefers to be poor rather than rich. "The ignorant man,'' we read in one remark, "is demented with the madness of owning things.... But the wisest soul knows that no object can really be owned by one man or woman any more than another.''^^4^^
Taken together, the aphorisms of the notebook tell us something about Whitman's understanding of the social life of the country. By 1847 it grew subtler, as his democratic bent became more militant and his thirst to understand life in its fullness more imperative. Whitman was like a coiled spring, challenging all who thought, felt and acted differently from him or, one should rather say, from the character depicted by Walt Whitman. The owner of the notebook not only advocated the equality of the President and the average American, but also put the President and a Negro slave on the same level. _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., p 64.
~^^2^^ Ib,d.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 65.
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 67.
55 Moreover, Whitman called Sambo, laboring on the plantation, ``brother'', while the President was only a ``friend''.Besides the aphorisms, and echoing them, there appeared in the little notebook lines liki this:
I am the poet of slaves, and of the masters of slaves
I am the poet of the body
And I am
This line remained unfinished, but later Whitman repeated: "I am the poet of the body.'' And, at last completing his thought, "And I am the poet of the soul.''~^^1^^
Such, apparently, were the first lines of the very first verses of the new type which Walt Whitman committed to paper. It is still too early even to speak of ``verses''; it is as though the first lumps of formless ore had been cast to the surface by the shovel. But it was from this ore that the poetic metal was to be smelted. In the poem "Song of Myself'', published for the first time at least seven years later, we find, for example, the following lines:
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ and the pains of hell are with me,
But first I graft and increase upon myself,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the latter I translate into a new tongue.
In reading the poet's early notebook, one seems to see the rudimentary beginnings of Leaves of Grass. This is the first glimmer of the dawn of Whitman's poetry. On the eve of the fifties he deliberately renounced the poetic canons which he had earlier followed faithfully. Traditional rhythms and rhymes began to shackle Whitman. He wanted to say something which could not be contained within the usual poetic conventions.
The poet understood perfectly well that at first sight the verses, which were not only "without rhyme, but whollv regardless of the customary verbal melody & regularity...''^^2^^ _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Uncollected Poetry and Prose..., Vol. II, p. 69.
~^^2^^ Walt Whitman's Workshop, Ed. by C. J. Furnes, N. I., Russel and Russel, 1964, p. 150.
56 would strike the reader with "incredulous amazement''. He says this in the introduction to the London edition of Leaves of Grass (it was not to be published in Whitman's lifetime). Here, however, it must be observed that even the very first lines of verse that we find in Whitman's notebook had certain elements which gave the feeling of rhyme and of rhythm.``I am the poet of the body, and I am the poet of the soul.'' "I am the poet of slaves, and of the masters of slaves.'' Words are repeated and word arrangements are repeated. These repetitions make us feel something similar to what we experience when we come across an internal rhyme in traditional poetry, and a complicated rhythmic pattern is also formed. Let us recall the lines in "Song of Myself" where Whitman speaks of his origins:
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ the same, and their parents the same...
In these lines, too, we find repetitions and sense a distinct rhythm. Repetitions and parallel grammatical constructions are also typical of the lines mentioned above: "The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me'', and so on....
Whitman himself wrote that Leaves of Grass had its very own "rhythmic style"~^^1^^ and he used to express delight at the writers who created the most complex harmonies. As a poet he did not reject the use of rhythm, but actually sought to emphasize it. This is evident in one of Whitman's greatest poems, "Song of Myself'', which we quoted above.
In the early editions of Leaves of Grass (up to the 1881 edition), the opening lines of "Song of Myself" read like this:
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Later Whitman felt that the first line was incomplete rhythmically, and somehow hung in the air, so he added _-_-_
^^1^^ Ibid., p. 35.
57 several words to it, which gave the line a rhythmical balance and harmony. It now reads:I celebrate myself, and sing myself....
Now read aloud the second and third lines of "Song of Myself''. Their rhythmical quality is obvious. Whitman continued to polish his published poems throughout his life and in new editions of Leaves of Grass poems already known to the reader would glow with new colors. Their rhythm, in particular, grew ever more vivid and exact.
Of course, it is still early for the reader to judge the wealth of Whitman's "rhythmic style''. He has only become acquainted with a few lines from Leaves of Grass and the poet's notebook. Nevertheless it is worthwhile here to make some general remarks about this "rhythmic style" of Whitman's. Although the poet used metrical forms more often than is usually thought, strict meters in their, so to say, ``pure'' form are comparatively rare in his work. In Leaves of Grass there beats a multi-hued, shifting, varying rhythm (and it presents no small obstacle in the translation of Whitman's poems). Correspondingly, in the poet's work the most complicated melodies arise.
The musical pattern of Whitman's verse is achieved by the division of the lines into "rhythmical units'', which, as a rule, are quite large. These "rhythmical units" are organized around several stressed syllables, with the primary stresses forming the rhythmic basis; they are subordinated to a structural pattern which, though not always obvious, is nonetheless undoubtedly there. And, as we have seen, another distinctive feature of Whitman's verse is the rhyme-like repetition of words. Almost half the lines in Leaves of Grass start with a repetition, and similar repetitions occur again and again at the end and in the middle of lines.
But even the poet's very earliest notebook allows us to see something else. In Whitman's ponderings on philosophy and politics there was an obvious striving to express his thoughts in images (remember the philosopher's greeting to Sambo). In Whitman's first poetic jottings of a new type there is even more figurative imagery, even more of the feeling aroused by concrete objects. Whitman wrote of himself, "I am the poet of Equality...".^^1^^ Further on we find the following idea: just as the _-_-_
^^1^^ The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. II, p. 70.
58 air belongs to everyone, (''it is for the heroes and sages ... it is for the workingmen and farmers ... it is for the wicked just the same as the righteous''),^^1^^ so equality is the natural right of all. In Whitman's poetry, even the very earliest, we get to know people, and above all, we see before us that well-defined, concrete person who has declared himself the poet of equality. Walt Whitman is both the author and the hero of the verses in the small notebook. From page to page his character unfolds; he is a man hungry for life. He wants to find out more about the world, to feel more; reality in all its infinite variety is dear to him. Whitman's lines in the notebook are filled with faith and love of life:I am the poe.t of reality
I say the earth is not an echo,
Nor man an apparition;
But that all the things seen are real....^^2^^
The struggle between the defenders of freedom and those who bind people in shackles is real; the physical world is real; the human body is real; man's soul is real. Some of the ideas noted down by the poet in this little book show that certain pantheistic conceptions were close to his way of thinking. For instance: "The soul or spirit transmits itself into all matter---into rocks, and can live the life of a rock---into the sea, and can feel itself the sea....''~^^3^^ These pantheistic motifs helped Whitman to express in images his feeling that the world was a totality, that the material and the spiritual aspects of life formed a unity. At the same time the ``new'' poet was instinctively driven towards materialism. At the very end of the forties he wrote on the margin of an article in an English magazine that materialism was the basis of poetry, meaning by this, above all, the need for poetry to be closely linked to life.
There is yet another side to the man who comes to view in the small notebook.... It contains the outline of a poem in which Whitman expressed his idea of the role of the poet in the following unexpectedly bold and lively images:
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 75.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 69.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 64.
59To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
0 despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
I quote the lines in the form in which they later appeared in Song of Myself.
Thus, Whitman not only grasped the world mentally, constantly inhaling everything around him, including that which is hidden from the human gaze. He did not only proclaim equality. As a poet, he apprehended life actively, he was vigorous, full of strength, full of determination to make people happier.
In the soul of this American, who by the end of the forties had come to the conclusion that there was a real possibility of putting an end to slavery, a fiery desire was growing to free man from all his torments.
It was then that the poet was born in him.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Editor is Dismissed AgainThe Brooklyn Eagle was still issued every day, but the editor no longer faced the task of merely filling the usual spaces free of advertising with interesting material. He was constantly obliged to discharge new salvoes in the direction of the enemy camp, for there is no doubt that the slave owners and their allies were already Whitman's sworn enemies.
At the Democratic Party convention Wilmot received no support. The conservatives at the head of the party even improved their position. The House of Representatives in Washington at first approved the Proviso, but General Cass, the leader of the Democratic Party, managed to force through an abrogation of the decision. In late 1847, Cass expounded his views in a lengthy document. It was assumed that all the Democratic Party papers would publish it, even if it was not to the liking of some of the editors.
But here Walt Whitman displayed a firmness of purpose which Van Anden had not expected of him. He refused to print Cass's declaration, and then published an article of his 60 own (in the issue dated January 3, 1848) in which he demolished the General's position. This was an affront the "Old Hunkers" could not tolerate.
Wishing to avoid a public scandal, Van Anden did not immediately announce that Whitman had been dismissed from the paper. Only after other organs of the press (for instance, the New York Globe) began to hint that not all was well in the editorial office of the Brooklyn Eagle, did Van Anden announce that the publisher "in the course of his business arrangements, has found it necessary to dispense with one of its editors".^^1^^
Van Anden's announcement appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle in late January 1848, but on the 5th of that month the paper had already printed extracts from Cass's document, which suggests that by then Whitman was no longer the editor.
The argument between the Brooklyn Eagle and other newspapers about Whitman's dismissal did not end there. Van Anden was forced to return to this ticklish question more than once. It is interesting that, like the owners of the Aurora, the publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle tried to justify his action by alleging that the dismissed editor was an idler.
Van Anden had yet another sharp exchange with the local press in the summer of 1848 when an article appeared in the Brooklyn Advertiser which explained the ``secret'' reasons for Whitman's break with the Eagle. According to the paper, the first of these reasons was Whitman's unwillingness to support the position of the conservatives. The second was that the former editor of the Brooklyn Eagle reacted quite unambiguously to a personal insult he had suffered from a certain well-known politician. Quite simply, the editor had kicked him down the stairs.
The owner of the Eagle answered the article in the style of Dickens's "New York Sewer'', declaring that all its allegations were false. The fact was that Mr. W. was lazy, sluggish and rude.
An important piece of news was printed in the New York Tribune in connection with Whitman's break with the Brooklyn Eagle. After informing its readers that the conservatives had assumed a position of power in the press organ of the Brooklyn Democrats, it indicated that the Brooklyn Barnburners were _-_-_
^^1^^ W. Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces, p. XXXIV.
61 intending to found their own paper, and even specified that Walt Whitman, formerly of the Eagle, would head it. It is quite possible that the idea of founding a paper which could condemn sl