ABSTRACT

The image of Walt Whitman that critics have before their eyes is that of a bearded and venerable old man, busy contemplating a butterfly, or surveying with his meek eyes the ultimate clarity of every joy and sorrow in the universe. Recalling these words, at the age of almost seventy, Walt Whitman knew what he was talking about; he knew—better than anyone else in America—what sort of thing a work would be, which was made out of the whole existence of a human being. Walt Whitman lived so intensely the idea of this mission that, while not saving himself from the obvious failure of such an intention, through it his work was saved from failure. Walt Whitman obeys what we might call an imaginative law. Walt Whitman is the poet of this discovery, whether it be the discovery of a blade of grass, of President Lincoln, in the moments of a vein less pure, less ours, of the American Union.