to see things as they are, and to disentangle from the transient and fleeting the great truths of life, finds that in achieving a noble sincerity he has also achieved the highest beauty.
The great utterances of the world are beautiful, because they are true. Whereas the artist who is determined to attain beauty at all costs will obtain beauty of a kind—“silver-grey, placid and perfect,” as Andrea del Sarto said, but the highest beauty it will not be, for that is no mere question of manner, but a perfect blend of manner and matter.
It will no doubt be urged that, despite his sincerity, there is a good deal in Whitman that is not beautiful. And this must be frankly conceded. But this will be found only when he has failed to separate the husk from the kernel. Whitman’s sincerity is never in question, but he does not always appreciate the difference between accuracy and truth, between the accidental and the essential. For instance, lines like these—
“The six framing men, two in the middle, and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam.”
or physiological detail after this fashion:—
“Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws and the jaw hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck sheer.
Strong shoulders, manly beard, hind shoulders, and the ample size round of the chest,
Upper arm, armpit, elbow socket, lower arms, arm sinews, arm bones.
Wrist and wrist joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger joints, finger nails, etc., etc.”
The vital idea lying beneath these accumulated facts is lost sight of by the reader who has to wade through so many accurate non-essentials.
It is well, I think, to seize upon the weakness of Whitman’s literary style at the outset, for it explains so much that is irritating and disconcerting.
Leaves of Grass he called his book, and the name is more significant than one at first realizes. For there is about it not only the sweetness, the freshness, the luxuriance of the grass; but its prolific rankness—the wheat and the tares grow together.
It has, I know, been urged by some of Whitman’s admirers that his power as a writer does not depend upon his artistic methods or non-artistic methods, and he himself protested against his Leaves being judged merely as literature. And so there has been a tendency to glorify his very inadequacies, to hold him up as a poet who has defied successfully the unwritten laws of Art.