Rupert Brooke and Whitman
You treated Brooke in a masterly way in the last issue. I saw many things I hadn’t seen before, and understood the Wagner better. But I disagree with you in one way.
The Wagner and the Channel Passage are merely clever realistic satire—that’s always worth while. But it’s the thought behind the Menelaus and Helen sort of thing that I don’t like. Of course there’s no doubt that Helen grew wrinkled and peevish. But to say that therefore Paris in his grave was better off than Menelaus living is just a bit decadent, isn’t it? I’m forced to picture Brooke as the sort of chap who couldn’t enjoy a good dinner if he had to wash the dishes afterward:—instead of regarding dishwashing as a natural variety of living that could be thoroughly enjoyable with shirtsleeves and a pipe. I’m afraid he wouldn’t play American football for fear of getting his face dirty. He’s just a bit finicky about life. He’s afraid to commit himself for fear he’ll have to endure something about which he can’t weave golden syllables. That’s the reason I don’t agree with you about Whitman liking all of him. Whitman was frank about the whole world, dirt and all, and he accepted it enthusiastically. Brooke writes about dirt in such a way as to make it seem horrible.
This poem of Whitman’s will prove my point:
Afoot and light hearted, I take to the open road;
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, heed nothing;
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Still, here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go.
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am filled with them and I will fill them in return.
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe that you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference nor denial;
The black and his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician; the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early marketman, the hearse, the moving of furniture into town, the return back from town,
They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none may be interdicted;
None but are accepted—none but are dear to me.
Mon enfant! I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money;
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Beside this, doesn’t the Menelaus and Helen seem like an orchid?—a very beautiful, rich orchid, to be sure, but not of the Whitman family.
George Soule.