This is a far cry from the
open, benevolent proletarian who was to make a splashy debut 15 years
later with the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The difference bowls
one over. Something big happened to Whitman in the intervening years.
Which brings us to a third, less obvious reason for
Whitman's comparative neglect: Among his disciples -- and "disciples"
is by no means too strong a word -- he was considered not only a great
poet but a prophet and sage. To them, Leaves of Grass was more than a
book of poetry; it was a new religion. Somehow this veneration has made
him shady, a bit of a quack. It has served to demean rather than exalt
him. ("Do you suppose a thousand years from now people will be
celebrating the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth of
Christ?" asked an eminent Whitman pal in 1890.) Indeed, Whitman
considered himself an American avatar. Speaking to sidekick Horace
Traubel, he said, "The public has no notion of me as a spiritualistic
being. Apart from a few . . . no one understands that I have my
connections -- that they are deep-rooted -- that they penetrate shows,
phenomena, do not pause with these."
The groundbreaking
Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke wrote about one man who
reported that Whitman spoke to him only about a hundred words
altogether, "and these quite ordinary and commonplace." Nevertheless,
soon afterward "a state of mental exaltation set in, which [the man]
could only describe by comparing to slight intoxication with champagne,
or to falling in love, and this exaltation, he said, lasted at least
six weeks in a clearly marked degree, so that, for at least that length
of time, he was plainly different from his ordinary self."
Bucke adds that "this person's whole life has been
changed by that contact -- his temper, character, entire spiritual
being, outer life, conversation, etc., elevated and purified in an
extraordinary degree." Nor is this an isolated, oddball account:
Traubel described similar altered states.
There's little hint of this in the letters. A typical
one reads: "will sell you the above-described at three dollars ($3)
each copy -- $150 cash for the 50." Abbreviations and dashes abound; he
was saving his best energies for his poems. Most of the letters cluster
toward the end of his life -- by page 38, he is already complaining
about the illnesses that foreshadow his slow, agonizing death; by page
46, he is already settled in the familiar environs of Camden, N.J.
The long bumpy ride of his reputation as poet and sage
began soon after his death in 1892, following long years of strokes and
related complications (pneumonia provided the coup de grace). In 1936,
the Dictionary of American Biography stated: "It is now difficult, if
not impossible, to believe that he came into the world to save it, or
that he will save it. The world in general pays little attention to his
name; he has never been a popular poet . . . . But as his isolation
grows more apparent it grows more impressive. . . . The claims
originally made for him as man and moralist are made less often, and
promise to disappear. "
Clearly, it's time to think again. Kudos to the
University of Iowa Press -- and to Folsom, Genoways and others -- for
championing an admirable crusade against the tide of the times. €
Cynthia L. Haven writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and the Times Literary Supplement.
