I do not think that I could ever place so lofty an estimate upon the poet’s work, however, as you give,—although no doubt rests in my mind as to your critical superiority. I think that Genius must have greater attributes than mere creative power to be called to the front rank,—the thing created must be beautiful; it does not satisfy me if the material be rich. I cannot content myself with ores and rough jewels. I want to see the gold purified and wrought into marvellous fantastic shapes; I want to see the jewels cut into roses of facets, or turned as by Greek cunning into faultless witchery of nude loveliness. And Whitman’s gold seems to me in the ore: his diamonds and emeralds in the rough. Would Homer be Homer to us but for the billowy roar of his mighty verse,—the perfect cadence of his song that has the regularity of ocean-diapason? I think not. And did not all the Titans of antique literature polish their lines, chisel their words, according to severest laws of art? Whitman’s is indeed a Titanic voice; but it seems to me the voice of the giant beneath the volcano,—half stifled, half uttered,—roaring betimes because articulation is impossible.
Beauty there is, but it must be sought for; it does not flash out from hastily turned leaves: it only comes to one after full and thoughtful perusal, like a great mystery whose key-word may only be found after long study. But the reward is worth the pain. That beauty is cosmical—it is world-beauty;—there is something of the antique pantheism in the book, and something larger too, expanding to the stars and beyond. What most charms me, however, is that which is most earthy and of the earth. I was amused at some of the criticisms—especially that in the Critic—to the effect that Mr. Whitman might have some taste for natural beauty, etc., as an animal has! Ah! that was a fine touch! Now it is just the animalism of the work which constitutes its great force to me—not a brutal animalism, but a human animalism, such as the thoughts of antique poets reveal to us: the inexplicable delight of being, the intoxication of perfect health, the unutterable pleasures of breathing mountain-wind, of gazing at a blue sky, of leaping into clear deep water and drifting with a swimmer’s dreamy confidence down the current, with strange thoughts that drift faster. Communion with Nature teaches philosophy to those who love that communion; and Nature imposes silence sometimes, that we may be forced to think:—the men of the plains say little. “You don’t feel like talking out there,” I heard one say: “the silence makes you silent.” Such a man could not tell us just what he thought under that vastness, in the heart of that silence: but Whitman tells us for him. And he also tells us what we ought to think, or to remember, about things which are not of the wilderness but of the city. He is an animal, if the Critic pleases, but a human animal—not a camel that weeps and sobs at the sight of the city’s gates. He is rude, joyous, fearless, artless,—a singer who knows nothing of musical law, but whose voice is as the voice of Pan. And in the violent magnetism of the man, the great vital energy of his work, the rugged and ingenuous kindliness of his speech, the vast joy of his song, the discernment by him of the Universal Life,—I cannot help imagining that I perceive something of the antique sylvan deity, the faun or the satyr. Not the distorted satyr of modern cheap classics: but the ancient and godly one, “inseparably connected with the worship of Dionysus,” and sharing with that divinity the powers of healing, saving, and foretelling, not less than the orgiastic pleasures over which the androgynous god presided.
I see great beauty in Whitman, great force, great cosmical truths sung of in mystical words; but the singer seems to me nevertheless barbaric. You have called him a bard. He is! But his bard-songs are like the improvisations of a savage skald, or a forest Druid: immense the thought! mighty the words! but the music is wild, harsh, rude, primæval. I cannot believe it will endure as a great work endures: I cannot think the bard is a creator, but only a precursor—only the voice of one crying in the wilderness—Make straight the path for the Great Singer who is to come after me!... And therefore even though I may differ from you in the nature of my appreciation of Whitman I love the soul of his work, and I think it a duty to give all possible aid and recognition to his literary priesthood. Whatsoever you do to defend, to elevate, to glorify his work you do for the literature of the future, for the cause of poetical liberty, for the cause of mental freedom. Your book is doubly beautiful to me, therefore: and I believe it will endure to be consulted in future times, when men shall write the “History of the Literary Movement of 1900,” as men have already written the "Histoire du Romantisme.”
I don’t think you missed very much of my work in the T.-D. I have not been doing so well. The great heat makes one’s brain languid, barren, dusty. Then I have been making desperate efforts to do some magazine work. Thanks for your praise of “The Pipes of Hameline.” I wish, indeed, that I could drag myself out of this newspaper routine,—even though slowly, like a turtle struggling over uneven ground. Journalism dwarfs, stifles, emasculates thought and style. As for my translation of Gautier, it has many grave errors I am ashamed of, but it is not castrated. My pet stories in it are “Clarimonde” and “Arria Marcella.”
Victor Hugo was indeed the Arthur of the Romantic Movement, and Gautier was but one of his knights, though the best of them—a Lancelot. I think his “Emaux et Camées” surpass Hugo’s work in word-chiselling, in goldsmithery; but Hugo’s fancy overarches all, like the vault of the sky. His prose is like the work of Angelo—the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, the figures described by Emilio Castelar as painted by flashes of lightning. He is one of those who appear but once in five hundred years. Gautier is not upon Hugo’s level. But while Hugo wrought like a Gothic sculptor, largely, weirdly, wondrously, Gautier could create mosaics of word-jewelry without equals. The work is small, delicate, elfish: it will endure as long as the French language, even though it figure in the Hugo architecture only as arabesque-work or stained glass or inlaid pavement.
Oh yes! you will catch it for those articles! you will have the fate of every champion of an unpopular cause,—thorns at every turn, which may turn into roses.
I hope to see you some day. Will always have time to write. Sometimes my letter may be short; but not often. Believe me, sincerely,
Lafcadio Hearn.