Read Ebook: Walt Whitman: An Address by Ingersoll Robert Green

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Ebook has 275 lines and 16755 words, and 6 pages

We cannot measure Shakespeare by a few lines, neither can we measure the Bible by a few chapters, nor "Leaves of Grass" by a few paragraphs. In each there are many things that I neither approve nor believe--but in all books you will find a mingling of wisdom and foolishness, of prophecies and mistakes--in other words, among the excellencies there will be defects. The mine is not all gold, or all silver, or all diamonds--there are baser metals. The trees of the forest are not all of one size. On some of the highest there are dead and useless limbs, and there may be growing beneath the bushes, weeds, and now and then a poisonous vine.

If I were to edit the great books of the world, I might leave out some lines and I might leave out the best. I have no right to make of my brain a sieve and say that only that which passes through belongs to the rest of the human race. I claim the right to choose. I give that right to all.

Walt Whitman had the courage to express his thought--the candor to tell the truth. And here let me say it gives me joy--a kind of perfect satisfaction--to look above the bigoted bats, the satisfied owls and wrens and chickadees, and see the great eagle poised, circling higher and higher, unconscious of their existence. And it gives me joy, a kind of perfect satisfaction, to look above the petty passions and jealousies of small and respectable people--above the considerations of place and power and reputation, and see a brave, intrepid man.

It must be remembered that the American people had separated from the Old World--that we had declared not only the independence of colonies, but the independence of the individual. We had done more--we had declared that the state could no longer be ruled by the Church, and that the Church could not be ruled by the state, and that the individual could not be ruled by the Church. These declarations were in danger of being forgotten. We needed a new voice, sonorous, loud and clear, a new poet for America for the new epoch, somebody to chant the morning song of the new day.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind, fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public. They flatter the stupid and pander to the prejudice of their readers. They write for the market--making books as other mechanics make shoes. They have no message--they bear no torch--they are simply the slaves of customers. The books they manufacture are handled by "the trade;" they are regarded as harmless. The pulpit does not object; the young person can read the monotonous pages without a blush--or a thought. On the title pages of these books you will find the imprint of the great publishers--on the rest of the pages, nothing. These books might be prescribed for insomnia.

Men of talent, men of business, touch life upon few sides. They travel but the beaten path. The creative spirit is not in them. They regard with suspicion a poet who touches life on every side. They have little confidence in that divine thing called sympathy, and they do not and cannot understand the man who enters into the hopes, the aims, and the feelings of all others.

In all genius there is the touch of chaos--a little of the vagabond; and the successful tradesman, the man who buys and sells, or manages a bank, does not care to deal with a person who has only poems for collaterals--they have a little fear of such people, and regard them as the awkward countryman does a sleight-of-hand performer.

In every age in which books have been produced the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius. If what are known as the best people could have had their way, if the pulpit had been consulted--the provincial moralists--the works of Shakespeare would have been suppressed. Not a line would have reached our time. And the same may be said of every dramatist of his age.

If the Scotch Kirk could have decided, nothing would have been known of Robert Burns. If the good people, the orthodox, could have had their say, not one line of Voltaire would now be known. All the plates of the French Encyclopedia would have been destroyed with the thousands that were destroyed. Nothing would have been known of D'Alembert, Grimm, Diderot, or any of the Titans who warred against the thrones and altars and laid the foundation of modern literature not only, but what is of far greater moment, universal education.

It is not too much to say that every book now held in high esteem would have been destroyed, if those in authority could have had their will. Every book of modern times, that has a real value, that has enlarged the intellectual horizon of mankind, that has developed the brain, that has furnished real food for thought, can be found in the Index Expurgatorius of the Papacy, and nearly every one has been commended to the free minds of men by the denunciations of Protestants.

If the guardians of society, the protectors of "young persons," could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent. If authority could have had its way, the world would have been as ignorant now as it was when our ancestors lived in holes or hung from dead limbs by their prehensile tails.

But we are not forced to go very far back. If Shakespeare had been published for the first time now, those divine plays--greater than continents and seas, greater even than the constellations of the midnight sky--would be excluded from the mails by the decision of the present enlightened postmaster-general.

The poets have always lived in an ideal world, and that ideal world has always been far better than the real world. As a consequence, they have forever roused, not simply the imagination, but the energies--the enthusiasm of the human race.

The great poets have been on the side of the oppressed--of the downtrodden. They have suffered with the imprisoned and the enslaved, and whenever and wherever man has suffered for the right, wherever the hero has been stricken down--whether on field or scaffold--some man of genius has walked by his side, and some poet has given form and expression, not simply to his deeds, but to his aspirations.

From the Greek and Roman world we still hear the voices of a few. The poets, the philosophers, the artists and the orators still speak. Countless millions have been covered by the waves of oblivion, but the few who uttered the elemental truths, who had sympathy for the whole human race, and who were great enough to prophesy a grander day, are as alive to-night as when they roused, by their bodily presence, by their living voices, by their works of art, the enthusiasm of their fellow men.

Think of the respectable people, of the men of wealth and position, those who dwelt in mansions, children of success, who went down to the grave voiceless, and whose names we do not know. Think of the vast multitudes, the endless processions, that entered the caverns of eternal night--leaving no thought--no truth as a legacy to mankind!

The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.

Walt Whitman is in the highest sense a believer in democracy. He knows that there is but one excuse for government--the preservation of liberty; to the end that man may be happy. He knows that there is but one excuse for any institution, secular and religious--the preservation of liberty; and that there is but one excuse for schools, for universal education, for the ascertainment of facts, namely, the preservation of liberty. He resents the arrogance and cruelty of power. He has sworn never to be tyrant or slave. He has solemnly declared:

This one declaration covers the entire ground. It is a declaration of independence, and it is also a declaration of justice, that is to say, a declaration of the independence of the individual, and a declaration that all shall be free. The man who has this spirit can truthfully say:

I have taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown. I am for those that have never been master'd.

He was wise enough to know that giving others the same rights that he claims for himself could not harm him, and he was great enough to say: "As if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same."

He felt as all should feel, that the liberty of no man is safe unless the liberty of each is safe.

There is in our country a little of the old servile spirit, a little of the bowing and cringing to others. Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people. Nothing is so demoralizing as the worship of place. Whitman has reminded the people of this country that they are supreme, and he has said to them:

The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him, The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them. Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you, Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you.

He describes the ideal American citizen--the one who

Says indifferently and alike "How are you, friend?" to the President at his levee, And he says "Good-day, my brother," to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field.

Long ago, when the politicians were wrong, when the judges were subservient, when the pulpit was a coward, Walt Whitman shouted:

Man shall not hold property in man. The least developed person on earth is just as important and sacred to himself or herself as the most develop'd person is to himself or herself.

This is the very soul of true democracy.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

Walt Whitman utters the elemental truths and is the poet of democracy. He is also the poet of individuality.

INDIVIDUALITY.

In order to protect the liberties of a nation, we must protect the individual. A democracy is a nation of free individuals. The individuals are not to be sacrificed to the nation. The nation exists only for the purpose of guarding and protecting the individuality of men and women. Walt Whitman has told us that: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual--namely to You."

And he has also told us that the greatest city--the greatest nation--is "where the citizen is always the head and ideal."

And that

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

This poet has asked of us this question:

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?

The man who asks this question has left no impress of his lips in the dust, and has no dirt upon his knees.

He was great enough to say:

The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own.

He carries the idea of individuality to its utmost hight:

What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?

Glorying in individuality, in the freedom of the soul, he cries out:

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

And again;

O the joy of a manly self-hood! To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown, To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, To speak with full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest. To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.

Walt Whitman is willing to stand alone. He is sufficient unto himself, and he says:

He is one of

Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and Governors, as to say "Who are you?"

And not only this, but he has the courage to say: "Nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self."

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