“when it is a grand opera,
Ah! this indeed is music—this suits me.”
That Whitman could have truly appreciated Beethoven, or understood Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” is not conceivable.
With Whitman’s egoism is connected his strenuousness. There is a stirring sound of trumpets always among these “Leaves of Grass.” This man may have come, as he tells us, to inaugurate a new religion, but he has few or no marks upon him of that mysticism—that Eastern spirit of glad renunciation of the self in a larger self—which is of the essence of religion. He is at the head of a band of sinewy and tan-faced pioneers, with pistols in their belts and sharp-edged axes in their hands:
“And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.”
This strenuousness finds expression in the hurried jolt and bustle of the lines, always alert, unresting, ever starting afresh. Passages of sweet and peaceful flow are hard to find in “Leaves of Grass,” and the more precious when found. Whitman hardly succeeds in the expression of joy; to feel exquisitely the pulse of gladness a more passive and feminine sensibility is needed, like that we meet with in “Towards Democracy;” we must not come to this focus of radiant energy for repose or consolation.
This egoism, this strenuousness, reaches at the end to heights of sublime audacity. When we read certain portions of “Leaves of Grass” we seem to see a vast phalanx of Great Companions passing for ever along the cosmic roads, stalwart Pioneers of the Universe. There are superb young men, athletic girls, splendid and savage old men—for the weak seem to have perished by the roadside—and they radiate an infinite energy, an infinite joy. It is truly a tremendous diastole of life to which the crude and colossal extravagance of this vision bears witness; we weary soon of its strenuous vitality, and crave for the systole of life, for peace and repose. It is not strange that the immense faith of the prophet himself grows hesitant and silent at times before “all the meanness and agony without end,” and doubts that it is an illusion and “that may-be identity beyond the grave a beautiful fable only.” Here and again we meet this access of doubt, and even amid the faith of the “Prayer of Columbus” there is a tremulous, pathetic note of sadness.
Yet there is one keen sword with which Whitman is always able to cut the knot of this doubt—the sword of love. He has but to grasp love and comradeship, and he grows indifferent to the problem of identity beyond the grave. “He a-hold of my hand has completely satisfied me.” He discovers at last that love and comradeship—adhesiveness—is, after all, the main thing, “base and finale, too, for all metaphysics;” deeper than religion, underneath Socrates and underneath Christ. With a sound insight he finds the roots of the most universal love in the intimate and physical love of comrades and lovers.