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p Whitman, of course, was not the only American writer roused to wrath by the slave owners’ advances. At the time that Whitman was still writing mostly about the “glory” of death, Whittier was already putting his muse at the service of abolitionism, and Henry Longfellow’s poetic cycle Poems on Slavery appeared at the same time as Franklin Evans. When, in the late forties, the struggle against slavery assumed large proportions, abolitionist themes came to the fore also in the work of James Lowell. Verse was used as a weapon against the plantation owners by Bryant, Emerson and several other American poets. There is no doubt that the flourishing of poetry in the middle of last century was closely linked to a surge in the anti-slavery movement.

p This was noticed by Lev Tolstoy, as indicated in the following words (used by his English translator, Aylmer Maude, in an article in which he summarized Tolstoy’s ideas about the nineteenth-century literature of the United States): "A great literature arises when there is a great moral awakening. Take, for instance, the emancipation period, when the struggle for the abolition of serfdom law was going on in Russia, and the anti-slavery movement was alive in the United States. See what writers appeared: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thoreau, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Longfellow, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and others in America....”   [75•1 

p All these writers, as well as Whitman, were not only concerned with the bitter fate of the slaves. Yet it was the spirit of struggle for the principle expressed by Whitman in the words, "I say man shall not hold property in man”, which called to life many of the finest works of American literature on the eve of the Civil War.

p The Biglow Papersby Lowell (remember that the first series of poems under this title was written during the war with Mexico) is a grotesque, satiric condemnation not only of the southern slave owners, but also of their northern connivers. The key to the vitality and expressiveness of this, the poet’s best work, lies in the very commonness and crudeness of the language used by Lowell’s heroes, and in the sarcastic tone of the author. 76 Lowell was to live for a great many more years and write many more books, but he will probably always be remembered as the author of The Biglow Papers (the second part of this collection of satirical verse was published during the Civil War; although it does not compare in freshness and vividness with the first part, it nevertheless contributes to the value of the work as a whole).

p Longfellow’s Poems on Slavery have stood for more than a century not only as a witness of how close the author of Haiawatha was to the progressive anti-slavery ideas of his time, but also as an aesthetic phenomenon of the first order, impressive in its dramatic character and wealth and variety of poetic motifs.

p One poem in the cycle is a masterpiece of American abolitionist verse. "The Warning" is a prophecy of retribution which will fall on the country that makes its peace with slavery.

p There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
          Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
          And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,^1^
Till the vast Temple of our liberties
          A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.  [76•1 

p The cycle Poems on Slavery points to some of the sources of the other works that Longfellow wrote in mid-century. Was not even Haiawatha, published at the same time as the first edition of Leaves of Grass, inspired by feelings close to those which had fired Longfellow’s poems about the Negroes? It was the wave of sympathy for all enslaved peoples spreading through the United States with the growing abolitionist movement that enabled the poet to create a work about the proud race being exterminated by the Americans, a poem embodying the dream of peace and friendship between peoples.

p John Greenleaf Whittier was of the same stock as the New England farmers, who gave him his democratic attitudes and his implacable hatred toward slavery. All his life Whittier was faithful to farm laborers, both to those who lived in the bosom of nature, yet were unaware of the bliss of their condition, and to those whose hopes of happiness were crushed by poverty. Never was the poet disloyal to his conviction regarding the 77 wrongness of slavery. Together with his love for the farmers, this quality gave Whittier’s poetry the glow of genuinely humane feeling.

p For instance, in his "Stanzas for the Times" (1844), the poet says that "Freedom’s light" grows dim but insists: "... One voice shall thunder—WE ARE FREE!".  [77•1 

p In Whittier’s famous poem "The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters, Sold into Southern Bondage" he depicts the grief of a woman deprived forever of her "stolen daughters"   [77•2 . This work is written in the rhythms of Negro songs of grief and protest.

p The first prose works protesting against slavery also appeared at a time when Whitman was still writing nearpuerile verse, but the abolitionist novel started to flower only at the beginning of the fifties. It is worth noting that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared almost simultaneously with Whitman’s first “real” poems. At that same time Henry Thoreau became an important defender of the ideas of abolitionism.

p Whitman published four poems in 1850, and found only one of them worthy of inclusion in his first book of poems. But these short works reveal much of the ideological and emotional stimuli which helped in the creation of the remarkable Leaves of Grass.

p In his poems of 1850 Whitman had not yet reached the turning point. He had still not really found himself, still not become a real master. And yet the four poems of the year of “compromises”, poems unlike each other, reflecting different stages in the poet’s development, make it clear how something new, something inherently Whitman’s own, arose out of traditional poetic forms.

p The experience of the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle and the Brooklyn Freeman in the late forties made it clear to him that the power of the slave owners lay in the support they received from the Northerners. In his poem "Song for Certain Congressmen" (now known as "Dough-Face Song”) Whitman continued to work for the cause which had occupied his thoughts as a publicist and man of politics. The poem is satirical; speaking in the voice of the “dough-faces”, Whitman 78 exposes with merciless mockery the pettiness and villainy of the supporters of “compromises”.

p Maddened by the demands of the Free Soilers, the slave owners “howl” hysterically against Free Soil and abolition, and the “dough-faces” among the northern congressmen echo the wild wailing.

p Not so long before Whitman himself had called the abolitionists “fanatics”, but now he puts this reproach into the mouths of the despised supporters of the Southerners.

p To put down "agitation,” now,
          We think the most judicious;
To damn all "northern fanatics, "
          Those “traitors” black and vicious;
The “reg’lar party usages"
          For us, and no "new issues.”  [78•1 

p This is really a pamphlet in verse. The poet lists the names of the most odious lawmakers who were trying to gratify the plantation owners; he lays bare the motives behind their actions (they are chasing after "present gain”). Whitman warns the “dough-faces” that the hour of retribution will come. The nature of "Dough-Face Song" is undisguisedly publicistic, and the poetic form is traditional. It is written in iambic meter and rhymed. For instance, the “dough-faces” exclaim:

p And what if children, growing up,
          In future seasons read
The thing we do? and heart and tongue
          Accurse us for the deed?
The future cannot touch us;
          The present gain we heed.  [78•2 

p In his next poem “Blood-Money” Whitman continues his struggle against the northern advocates of a deal with the Southerners. The poet’s denunciations have become even sharper, his tone even sterner.

p Whitman included concrete historical material in this poem, and this type of content bursts the usual poetic shell, 79 demanding a new, subtler form of verse. “Blood-Money” is not so resounding a poem as "Dough-Face Song”. It has neither rhymes nor the usual line structure, but it is superior to the latter poem in its wealth of images. Its two memorable characters are Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot.

p Of olden time, when it came to pass
That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his
          work on earth,
Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,
And took pay for his body.  [79•1 

p The reader understands that the poet is not simply retelling the gospel, but is speaking about a traitor of his own times, one who also betrayed a high ideal and noble principles for thirty pieces of silver, for “blood-money”. Further on there is a description of the taunting of Christ after he has fallen into his enemies’ hands through Judas’s betrayal. He is "toilsome and poor”, people surround him "mad with devilish spite”.

p The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee
          with their palms;
Bruised, bloody, and pinion’d is thy body,
More sorrowful than death is thy soul.  [79•2 

p The poetical form of “Blood-Money” shows Whitman’s movement from his early verses to Leaves of Grass. And yet it is still by no means the work of the Whitman whom we know, for instance, from "Song of Myself”.

p The poet not only uses the images of Holy Writ (which occur only rarely in Leaves of Grass) but also to a great extent assumes the rhythmic structure of the Bible. The passionate tone of “Blood-Money”, the author’s tendency to use an “oratorical” style and the complexity of the rhythmic pattern of its free verse all herald the appearance of a new and original poet.

p In 1850 Whitman published yet another poem inspired directly by the struggle against slavery. In the poem " Wounded in the House of Friends" (its original title was simply "The House of Friends”), the poet again uses biblical imagery and, 80 to a certain extent, biblical rhythms. Just as Jesus’ wounds were inflicted in the house of his friends, so the "death stab" now comes in America "from the house of friends”. Of course, Whitman is speaking here of the northerners who, in the guise of “friends” of freedom, were actually helping "the slave owners. The poet is no longer merely sad, no longer does he simply denounce his enemies in anger. In this poem he sounds the call to battle and clearly defines the antagonists. They are, on one side, "young North”, and on the other, the states wallowing in the filth of slavery and the “dough-faced” scum who have sold out to the planters. It is these " grayhaired sneaks" that the poet hates most of all. They have to be fought resolutely. The poem "The House of Friends" ends with a direct call to genuine supporters of liberty:

p           Fight on, band braver than warriors,
Faithful and few as Spartans;
But fear not most the angriest, loudest, malice—
Fear most the still and forked fang
That starts from the grass at your feet.  [80•1 

p Its resoundingly militant tone ties this poem to the revolutionary speeches which the best of the abolitionist orators were then making. Whitman is here in the grip of a burning mood of civic passion; he is not addressing some tiny group of devoted lovers of poetry, but the masses, the people. He wants to express his emotions to the very end; he longs to lead people into battle. Stormy passions erupt to the surface of the poem, forcing him to break up the usual form of the verse.

p The desire of the author of “Blood-Money” and "The House of Friends" to make himself a tribune of the people, to incorporate in his verses an extremely important historical content, to annihilate his foes and rally fellow-thinkers, to express in its fullness all that has accumulated in his mind and his heart, was the most important reason for his rejection of rhyme and traditionally strict rhythms. In these two poems (and especially in the second one) almost every line contains a finished thought or at least a fairly complete part of a thought. This principle later became the basis for almost all the poems in Leaves of Grass.

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p It is evident that Whitman’s hatred of slavery did not exclude a feeling of contempt for those who serve the golden calf. This alone explains why he penetrated much more deeply into the reality of American life than other poets, also true to abolitionist ideals, poets such as Whittier or Lowell, who concentrated the fire of their social criticism only on slavery.

p An indication of Whitman’s long-standing fury against those who live at the expense of other people’s work is the fact that even while he worked for the Aurora the young journalist had protested against the pursuit of material gain. Later the poet had published in the Brooklyn Eagle an article significantly titled "Morbid Appetite for Money”, in which he condemned the "mad passion for getting rich" which "engrosses all the thoughts and the time of men".  [81•1  Whitman also mocked the industrialists of the North, who demanded that tariff rates be raised for the alleged good of the workers. What a countless number of pennies have been extracted from the pockets of workers, he said in one of his early articles, in order to enrich the owners of the big steam-run factories.

p The fourth poetic work published by Whitman in 1850 was called “Resurgemus”, a poem in which Whitman went far beyond the bounds of the theme of slavery. Not only does he fight against the slave owners; not only does he summon the Spartans of the abolitionist camp to battle—the poet also glorifies the revolutionary struggle for freedom throughout the world:

p Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair,
          the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand
          tight to the throats of kings.  [81•2 

p “It" is revolutionary Europe. “Resurgemus” directly echoes the revolutionary eruptions in a number of European countries in the late forties and the tragedy of the suppression of these revolutions. Most probably the feelings expressed by Whitman in “Resurgemus” could not have had such trenchant forcefulness, a quality new in his poetry, had he not by then 82 become a staunch fighter for the freedom of the oppressed in his own country. Whitman’s sympathy for the enslaved Negroes sprang from his democratic, humanistic outlook. In its turn, the high passion of abolitionism reinforced Whitman’s general humanitarian and democratic sympathies, and gave him a greater awareness of the grandeur of the revolutionary struggle in Europe.

p The conception of “Resurgemus” was broader than anything else written by the poet in 1850. The new form of Whitman’s verse took shape in the course of the year. The distance between "Dough-Face Song" and “Resurgemus” is great indeed, and yet only a few months separate these poems. One might say that in a certain sense “Resurgemus” became the foundation for Leaves of Grass. In fact, this was the only poem of those which had appeared in print before his book was published that the poet thought worthy of inclusion.

p When he printed the poem in 1850 in a newspaper, Whitman titled it “Resurgemus” (“We Shall Arise”). It was included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass without any title. A year later the poet called it "Poem of the Dead Young Men of Europe, the 72d and 73d Years of These States”. Since the third edition of Leaves of Grass, the poem has been known as "Europe (The 72d and 73d Years of These States)”.

p The revolutionary uprisings in Europe against monarchs, nobles, priests and those who wormed "the poor man’s wages" were taken up by Whitman as his own, highly personal concern. It was unbearably painful for him to see the fires of revolution extinguished and dark powers take the upper hand again. The rebel’s instinct told the poet that the main reason for the people’s defeat was their overly gentle treatment of their sworn enemies.

p But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction,
          and the frighten’d monarchs come back,
Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest,
          tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.

p The poet’s closeness to the revolutionary aspirations of the peoples of Europe is attested in several of his articles which had been published earlier. On the very eve of 1848, turning 83 respectfully to the traditions of the French revolution of the eighteenth century, Whitman called on the people of the European monarchies to turn to the same task of radical transformation of reality that the French had undertaken more than fifty years earlier.

p In “Europe” the real story of the rise and defeat of the revolutions of 1848–1849 is presented in a historically concrete manner. The poem is indeed a "Poem of the Dead Young Men of Europe" (as Whitman called it in 1856), in which the poet sings of "martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc’d by the gray lead”. But there is more to “Europe” than simple sympathy for those who perished. The basic message of the poem is clearly expressed in its original title “ Resurgemus”: the tortured revolutionaries have not disappeared without trace, for "they live in other young men ... they live in brothers again ready to defy you...”. The revolution will rise again.

p Whitman developed motifs common to folk songs and present in several revolutionary works by Burns, Byron and Shelley to create the mighty image of "the seed for freedom”, ready to send out its shoots. This “seed” is present in the grave of every warrior.

p Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed
          for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the
          rains and the snows nourish....
Liberty, let others despair of you—I never despair of you.

p These wonderfully proud words were written by Whitman at a time when it seemed that reaction had everywhere taken hold. The monarchs were celebrating their victory in Europe. But had not the slave owners also gained the upper hand against the abolitionist “fanatics” and the apparently crushed movement for Free Soil? One can rest assured that the poet’s audacious words, "Liberty, let others despair of you—I never despair of you”, referred not only to distant Europe. Whitman believed that the enemies of freedom would also be defeated on American soil. He concluded the poem with an image, which, though suggested by the New Testament, seems to have come from everyday life.

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p Is the house shut? is the master away? Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching, He will soon return, his messengers come anon.

p The very everyday quality of these words makes them convincing. “Europe” is very different from the poems in praise of liberty written by other well-known American poets. It has nothing of Whittier’s religious symbolism or the high rhetorical figures so typical of Emerson and even Bryant, nothing of the romantic refinement of Longfellow. For all its wealth of poetic images, Whitman’s language is simple and natural. The poet quite deliberately set out to write in "a perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, artless, with no ornaments, or attempts at ornaments, for their own sake”.  [84•1  In “Europe” Whitman adheres strictly to the principles which he had formulated.

p Whitman’s poem is not prose rich in images which has been arbitrarily divided into lines of varying length. It is a truly dramatic work on a profound theme, in which there emerges a varied rhythmic style capable of expressing complex ideas and countless nuances of thought and feeling. One of the things which strikes the reader is the important part that caesurae play in the rhythmic structure of “Europe”.

p The opening of the poem is a solemn glorification of the risen people. The three lines of the first stanza are identical in structure (“Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair...”, etc.) and each of them falls into two parts, each part having two primary stresses. It is as though one can hear the measured tread of the revolutionary masses. The second stanza is a passionate lament; the revolutionaries have suffered a terrible blow. The stanza begins with a stormy, pauseless exclamation: "O hope and faith!" The long lines of the third stanza, which are divided into several parts by internal pauses, present an agonizing story of the mockery to which the people are subjected.

p The revolutionaries are defeated. But the struggle for freedom can never die, for the "seed for freedom" is indestructible. The last stanza is full of hope and promise. The rhythm of these lines overflows with vigor and hope.

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p Whitman was not the first poet to attempt a new, freer, “unfettered” rhythmic pattern. In this regard, some poems by William Blake are worthy of note. (A hundred years ago Swinburne noted a certain similarity between the poetry of Blake and that of Whitman.) What is really important is that the tendencies within Whitman’s poetry of 1850 did not remain just tendencies. They ripened fully and formed the basis of all the poet’s subsequent work. The author of Leaves of Grass proved to be the boldest and most consistent destroyer of the seemingly incontestable rules of versification.

p The poems of 1850 (especially “Europe”) were the prologue to great poetry. For the first time Whitman emerged as a poet with his own inimitable voice. And it is highly significant that all four poems were inspired by the desire to repulse the oppressors of the people and by the thirst for revolutionary struggle.

p The poem “Resurgemus” was published in the New York Tribune in June 1850. Leaves of Grass appeared in the summer of 1855. As far as we know, Whitman did not publish a single new poem in the years between these two dates. The book was growing silently, and nothing, it might seem, foreshadowed its appearance.

p Present-day critics often assert that the Whitman who wrote "Song of Myself" and other poems appeared from nowhere. Malcolm Cowley speaks of a “miracle”. "There is no other word but miracle to describe what happened to Whitman at the age of thirty-six. The local politician and printer, the hack writer who had trouble selling his pieces, the editor who couldn’t keep a job, quite suddenly became a world poet.”   [85•1 

Of course, the birth of poetry is always a miracle, but everything else here, in my opinion, is doubtful. Whitman the journalist was not a hack, and he “couldn’t keep a job" precisely because he was a genuine democrat who defended his views firmly and ably. Whitman’s articles frequently reflected the most advanced ideas of his time, and are not separated by an unbridgeable gulf from Leaves of Grass; on the contrary, the two are closely linked. The miracle of Leaves of Grass was nurtured on the same ground that produced Whitman the revolutionary democrat.