Walt Whitman_Preface to Leaves of Grass.pdf

Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

(1855)

AMERICA does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or

amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . . accepts the

lesson with calmness . . . is not so impatient as has been supposed that the

slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which

served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms . . .

perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms

of the house . . . perceives that it waits a little while in the door . . . that it was

fittest for its days . . . that its action has descended to the stalwart and

wellshaped heir who approaches . . . and that he shall be fittest for his days.

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the

fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the

greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring

appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is

something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of

the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.

Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details

magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever

indicates heroes . . . . Here are the roughs and beards and space and

ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance

disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds

and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and

flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees

it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be

bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the

bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the

United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its

ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its

newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their

manners speech dress friendships---the freshness and candor of their

physiognomy---the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless

attachment to freedom---their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or

mean---the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the

citizens of all other states---the fierceness of their roused resentment--- their

curiosity and welcome of novelty---their self-esteem and wonderful

sympathy---their susceptibility to a slight---the air they have of persons who

never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors---the fluency of

their speech---their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness

and native elegance of soul . . their good temper and openhandedness---the

terrible significance of their elections---the President's taking off his hat to

them not they to him---these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic

and generous treatment worthy of it.

The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a

corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature

nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor

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farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man . . . nor suffice

the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a

deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest . . . namely from its

own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of

present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets.--- As if it were

necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As

if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the

mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening

of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North

and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the

aimless sleepwalking of he middle ages! The pride of the United States

leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and

agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to

enjoy the breed of fullsized men or one fullsized man unconquerable and

simple.

The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of

races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other

continents arrive as contributions . . . he gives them reception for their sake

and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country's spirit . . . . he incarnates

its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual

freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint

Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure

where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue

breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off

Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and

Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the

Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the seas off

California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below

more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long

Atlantic coast stretches longer and thePacific coast stretches longer he easily

stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also from east to

west and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that offset

the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and liveoak and locust and

chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree

and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon . . . .and tangles as

tangled as any canebrake or swamp . . . . and forests coated with transparent

ice and icicles hanging from the boughs and crackling in the wind . . . . and

sides and peaks of mountains . . . . and pasturage sweet and free as

savannah or upland or prairie . . . . with flights and songs and screams that

answer those of the wildpigeon and highhold and orchard-oriole and coot and

surf-duck and redshouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and

indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake

and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and

eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother's and

father's. To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present

events---of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and

mines---the tribes of red aborigines---the weatherbeaten vessels entering new

ports or making landings on rocky coast ---the first settlements north or

south---the rapid stature and muscle---the haughty defiance of '76, and the

war and peace and formation of the constitution . . . . the union always

surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable---the perpetual

coming of immigrants---the wharf hem'd cities and superior marine---the

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unsurveyed interior---the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and

hunters and trappers . . . . the free commerce---the fisheries and whaling and

gold-digging ---the endless gestation of new states---the convening of

Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates

and the uttermost parts . . . . the noble character of the young mechanics and

of all free American workmen and workwomen . . . . the general ardor and

friendliness and enterprise---the perfect equality of the female with the male .

. . . the large amativeness--- the fluid movement of the population---the

factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery---the Yankee

swap---the New-York firemen and the target excursion---the southern

plantation life--- the character of the northeast and of the northwest and

southwest---slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and

the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking

of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the

American poet is to be transcendant and new. It is to be indirect and not

direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let

the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and characters

be illustrated and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic.

Here the theme is creative and has vista. Here comes one among the

wellbeloved stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the

solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.

Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need

poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their

Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of

all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him

things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place

is good and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality

its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he

is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land . . . . he supplies what

wants supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out

of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and

populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce---lighting

the study of man, the soul, immortality ---federal, state or municipal

government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by land and sea . . . .

nothing too close, nothing too far off . . . the stars not too far off. In war he is

the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot . . .

he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew. If the time

becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it . . . he can make

every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom

or obedience or legislation he never stagnates. Obedience does not master

him, he masters it. High up out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light

. . . he turns the pivot with his finger . . . he baffles the swiftest runners as he

stands and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward

infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith . . .

he spreads out his dishes . . . he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows

men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer . . . he is

judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a

helpless thing. As he sees the farthest he has the most faith. His thoughts are

the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul and eternity and God

off of his equal plane he is silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a

prologue and denouement . . . . he sees eternity in men and women . . . he

does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the

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soul . . . it pervades the common people and preserves them . . . they never

give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable

freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and

mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a

certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the

greatest artist. . . . . . The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him

but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose

superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is

wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers . . . not parleying or

struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way see after

him! there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or

exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell or the

necessity of hell . . . . . and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for

ignorance or weakness or sin.

The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any

thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the

universe. He is a seer . . . . he is individual . . . he is complete in himself . . . .

the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of

the chorus . . . . he does not stop for any regulation . . . he is the president of

regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest. Who

knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate

themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own and foreruns the

identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the

investigations of man and all the instruments and books of the earth and all

reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or

baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit

and given audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter

with electric swiftness softly and duly without confusion or jostling or jam.

The land and sea, the animals fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the

orbs, the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes . . . but folks

expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always

attach to dumb real objects . . . . they expect him to indicate the path between

reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough . .

probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early

risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy

women for the manly form, sea-faring persons, drivers of horses, the passion

for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of

beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people. They can never be

assisted by poets to perceive . . . some may but they never can. The poetic

quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to

things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these

and much else and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of

a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself

into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of

perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as

unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as

compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and

shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the

finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but

dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the

greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough . . . . the fact

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will prevail through the universe . . . . but the gaggery and gilt of a million

years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is

lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and

crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not

concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off

your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go

freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the

mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every

year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in

any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall

be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the

silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in

every motion and joint of your body. . . . . . . . The poet shall not spend his

time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready

ploughed and manured . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go

directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he

touches . . . . and shall master all attachment.

The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He

consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and

which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and

hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning

progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of

pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or

from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of

the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the

neck of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse . . .

. he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover . . .

he is sure . . . he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills

are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him . . . . suffering and darkness

cannot---death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are

corpses buried and rotten in the earth . . . . he saw them buried. The sea is

not surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his

love and of all perfection and beauty.

The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss . . . it is inevitable as life . . . .

it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another

eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice

proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man.

To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed

to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same. These

understand the law of perfection in masses and floods . . . that its finish is to

each for itself and onward from itself . . . that it is profuse and impartial . . .

that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth or sea

without it---nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any

turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty

there is precision and balance . . . one part does not need to be thrust above

another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful

organ . . . the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest

measure and similes and sound.

Without effort and without exposing in the least how it is done the greatest

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