A Life of Walt Whitman

by Henry Bryan Binns

So when Emerson wanted to talk, they would walk together on the Common;[261] as on one memorable, bright, keen February day, when under the bare branches of the American elms, they paced to and fro discoursing earnestly.

Emerson’s name had been somewhat too conspicuously displayed on the back of the second edition, of which he had been caused to appear almost as a sponsor; and some of the lines thus introduced had put his Puritan friends completely out of countenance, while giving his many enemies an admirable opportunity to blaspheme. The frank celebration of acts to which modern society only alludes by indirection, revealed to the observant eye of orthodoxy that cloven hoof of immorality which it always suspects concealed about the person of the philosophic heretic. And we can well imagine the consternation of the blameless householder of Boston as, in the bosom of his astonished family, he read aloud the pages commended to him by the words of the master.

It was thus upon Emerson, who did not quite approve the offending poems, that much of the storm of indignation wreaked itself; and whatever Emerson himself might think of the situation, his family was indignant. One can almost hear them arguing that a man has heresies enough of his own to close the ears of men to his message, without gratuitous implication in heresies which are not his; if he value his charge, let him keep clear of other men’s eccentricities; he really has no right to allow himself to be represented as the sponsor for such sentiments as Whitman printed in the Body Electric.[262]

But whatever his friends might counsel, Emerson spoke from his own heart and wisdom that February day. He was pleading not for himself, but for the truth as he saw it, and for his offending friend. It was not because the book was being published as it were in his own diocese, his own beloved Boston; but because the new edition would be the first to be issued by a responsible house, and destined, probably, to enjoy a wide and permanent circulation, remaining for years the final utterance of Whitman upon these matters, that Emerson was so urgent and so eloquent.

His position was a strong one; his arguments, and the spirit which prompted them, were, as Whitman admitted, overwhelming, and his companion was in a sense convinced. It is much to be regretted that neither of the friends kept any detailed record of this discussion, but I think we can guess what the older man’s position would be.

Your message of the soul, we can imagine Emerson saying, is of the utmost importance to America: it is what America needs, and it is what you, and you alone, can make her hear. But you can only make her hear it, if you state it in the most convincing and simple way.

Now these poems of yours upon sex complicate and confuse the real message, not because they are necessarily wrong in themselves—I do not say they are—but because they do and must give rise to misunderstanding, and in consequence, obscure or even cancel the rest. They give the book an evil notoriety, and will create for it a succès de scandale. It will be bought and read by the prurient, to whom its worth will be wholly sealed.

And not only do you destroy the value of the book by printing such poems as these, you render it actually dangerous. Personally you and I are agreed—he would say—with Boehme where he writes that “the new spirit cometh to Divine vision in himself, and heareth God’s word, and hath Divine understanding and inclination ... and ... the earthly flesh ... hurteth him not at all”.[263] We know the flesh to be beautiful and sacred; we turn with loathing from the blasphemies of Saint Bernard and of Luther, who saw in it nothing but a maggot-sack, a sack of dung. On these things we are at one; but how are we most wisely and surely to direct others on the road to self-realisation?

To feed the monster of a crude passion is surely not the way to bring the individual toward the Divine vision. To be frank about these matters is necessary; but in order to be honest is it necessary to fling abroad this wildfire, against which we are all contending, lest it destroy the labours of ages? Must we nourish this giant, whose unruly strength is for ever threatening to tear in pieces the unity of the self?

By these poems you are deliberately consigning your book to the class which every wise parent must label “dangerous to young people,” and which the very spirits you most desire to kindle for America will be compelled, by the law of their being, to handle at their peril, and to turn from with distress.