Walt Whitman The late Dartmouth College utterance of the above named celebrity...
Title
Walt Whitman The late Dartmouth College utterance of the above named celebrity...
Description
Four-page manuscript in ink on paper with additional notes in another hand in blue pencil appended to the top of the first page.
The fourth page has a newspaper clipping of the pen "By Broad Potomac's Shore" attached.
The fourth page has a newspaper clipping of the pen "By Broad Potomac's Shore" attached.
Creator
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
Source
Rare & Special Books Collection
Contributor
State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry/Rare Books Collection
Rights
University at Buffalo Libraries believe this work to be in the U.S. public domain. This work may not be in the public domain in other countries.
Format
application/pdf
Language
en-US
Type
Text
Identifier
LIB-RB002-Whitman-b
Date Created
2016-09-20
Is Part Of
Walt Whitman collection (LIB-RB002)
Transcription
WALT WHITMAN.
The late Dartmouth College utterance of the above named celebrity is again arousing attention to his theory of the poet's art and its exemplification in his writings An intellectual career steadily pressing its way amid strong impediments through the past sixteen or seventeen years and evidencing itself during that time in the good sized volume of poems Leaves of Grass and the small prose book Democratic Vistas shows no sign of flagging energy in its late effusions the American Institute poem the cheering apostrophe to France or in this College Commencement piece As a strong Bird on Pinions free which with some others forms the first installment of a new volume just published In the preface to it the author says that as he intended his Leaves to be the songs of a great composite Democratic individual he has in mind to chant in the new volume of which he gives the first installment a great composite Democratic nationality Walt Whitman's form of composition is not attractive at first sight to accustomed readers of verse He discharges himself quite altogether from the old laws of poetry considering them and their results unfit for present needs and especially unfit for the United States and claims to inaugurate augurate an original modern style to be followed & expanded by future writers His theory is that our times exhibit the advent of two especially new creative worlds or influences giving a radically changed form to Civilization namely the world of science for one and the world of democratic republicanism for another and that a third influence a new poetic world of character and form adjusted to the new spirit and facts and consistent with democracy and science is indispensable He says the United States must found their own imaginative literature & poetry & that nothing merely copied from & following out the feudal world will do His aim is therefore a profound one & essentially revolutionary He dismisses without ceremony all the orthodox accoutrements tropes verbal haberdashery feet and the entire stock in trade of rhyme talking heroes and heroines and all the love sick plots of customary poetry and constructs his verse in a loose and free metre of his own of an irregular length of lines apparently lawless at first perusal although on closer examination a certain regularity appears like the recurrence of lesser and larger waves on the sea shore rolling in without intermission and fitfully rising and falling In this free metre and in verses when you get the hang of them singularly cxhiluruting ing and that affect one like an atmosphere unusually charged with oxygen he by a perpetual series of what might be called ejaculations manages to express himself on about every theme interesting to humanity or known to the body passions experiences emotions of man or woman or sought by the intellect and soul with illustrations drawn largely from our own times and country & somewhat from every age and country Undoubtedly with his new volume including the College poem As a Strong Bird the reputation of this author though still disputed is to mount beyond anything previously and his claims are to pique the public ear more than ever Expectation is even now more and more stimulated and already by a few of the boldest prophets some very audacious speculations are launched forth Time only can show if there is indeed anything in them This Walt Whitman this queer one whom most of us have watched with more or less amusement walking by this goer and comer for years about New York and Washington good natured with everybody like some farmer or mate of some coasting vessel familiarly accosted by all hardly any one of us stopping to Mr him this man of many characters among the rest that of volunteer help in the army hospitals and on the field during the whole ing and that affect one like an atmosphere unusually charged with oxygen he by a perpetual series of what might be called ejaculations manages to express himself on about every theme interesting to humanity or known to the body passions experiences emotions of man or woman or sought by the intellect and soul with illustrations drawn largely from our own times and country & somewhat from every age and country Undoubtedly with his new volume including the College poem As a Strong Bird the reputation of this author though still disputed is to mount beyond anything previously and his claims are to pique the public ear more than ever Expectation is even now more and more stimulated and already by a few of the boldest prophets some very audacious speculations are launched forth Time only can show if there is indeed anything in them This Walt Whitman this queer one whom most of us have watched with more or less amusement walking by this goer and comer for years about New York and Washington good natured with everybody like some farmer or mate of some coasting vessel familiarly accosted by all hardly any one of us stopping to Mr him this man of many characters among the rest that of volunteer help in the army hospitals and on the field during the whole of the late war carefully tending all the wounded he could southern or northern if it should turn out that in this plain unsuspected old customer dressed in gray & wearing no neck tie America and her republican institutions are possessing that rara avis a real national poet chanting putting in form in her own proud spirit in first class style for present & future time her democratic shapes even as the hards of Judah put in song for all time to come the Hebrew spirit and Homer the war life of prehistoric Greece and Shakespeare the feudal shapes of Europe's kings and lords I Whether or not the future will justify such extravagant claims of his admirers only that future itself can show But Walt Whitman is certainly taking position as an original force and new power in literature He has excited an enthusiasm among the republicans and young poets of Europe unequalled by our oldest and best known names The literary opposition to him in the United States has it is true been authoritative and continues to be so But the man has outlived the stress of misrepresentation burlesque evil prophecy and all calumnies & imputations and may now answer as Captain Paul Jones did when after the onslaught of the Serapis he was asked if he had struck his colors Struck answered the Captain quietly 'Not at all I have only just begun my part of the fighting.'"
The late Dartmouth College utterance of the above named celebrity is again arousing attention to his theory of the poet's art and its exemplification in his writings An intellectual career steadily pressing its way amid strong impediments through the past sixteen or seventeen years and evidencing itself during that time in the good sized volume of poems Leaves of Grass and the small prose book Democratic Vistas shows no sign of flagging energy in its late effusions the American Institute poem the cheering apostrophe to France or in this College Commencement piece As a strong Bird on Pinions free which with some others forms the first installment of a new volume just published In the preface to it the author says that as he intended his Leaves to be the songs of a great composite Democratic individual he has in mind to chant in the new volume of which he gives the first installment a great composite Democratic nationality Walt Whitman's form of composition is not attractive at first sight to accustomed readers of verse He discharges himself quite altogether from the old laws of poetry considering them and their results unfit for present needs and especially unfit for the United States and claims to inaugurate augurate an original modern style to be followed & expanded by future writers His theory is that our times exhibit the advent of two especially new creative worlds or influences giving a radically changed form to Civilization namely the world of science for one and the world of democratic republicanism for another and that a third influence a new poetic world of character and form adjusted to the new spirit and facts and consistent with democracy and science is indispensable He says the United States must found their own imaginative literature & poetry & that nothing merely copied from & following out the feudal world will do His aim is therefore a profound one & essentially revolutionary He dismisses without ceremony all the orthodox accoutrements tropes verbal haberdashery feet and the entire stock in trade of rhyme talking heroes and heroines and all the love sick plots of customary poetry and constructs his verse in a loose and free metre of his own of an irregular length of lines apparently lawless at first perusal although on closer examination a certain regularity appears like the recurrence of lesser and larger waves on the sea shore rolling in without intermission and fitfully rising and falling In this free metre and in verses when you get the hang of them singularly cxhiluruting ing and that affect one like an atmosphere unusually charged with oxygen he by a perpetual series of what might be called ejaculations manages to express himself on about every theme interesting to humanity or known to the body passions experiences emotions of man or woman or sought by the intellect and soul with illustrations drawn largely from our own times and country & somewhat from every age and country Undoubtedly with his new volume including the College poem As a Strong Bird the reputation of this author though still disputed is to mount beyond anything previously and his claims are to pique the public ear more than ever Expectation is even now more and more stimulated and already by a few of the boldest prophets some very audacious speculations are launched forth Time only can show if there is indeed anything in them This Walt Whitman this queer one whom most of us have watched with more or less amusement walking by this goer and comer for years about New York and Washington good natured with everybody like some farmer or mate of some coasting vessel familiarly accosted by all hardly any one of us stopping to Mr him this man of many characters among the rest that of volunteer help in the army hospitals and on the field during the whole ing and that affect one like an atmosphere unusually charged with oxygen he by a perpetual series of what might be called ejaculations manages to express himself on about every theme interesting to humanity or known to the body passions experiences emotions of man or woman or sought by the intellect and soul with illustrations drawn largely from our own times and country & somewhat from every age and country Undoubtedly with his new volume including the College poem As a Strong Bird the reputation of this author though still disputed is to mount beyond anything previously and his claims are to pique the public ear more than ever Expectation is even now more and more stimulated and already by a few of the boldest prophets some very audacious speculations are launched forth Time only can show if there is indeed anything in them This Walt Whitman this queer one whom most of us have watched with more or less amusement walking by this goer and comer for years about New York and Washington good natured with everybody like some farmer or mate of some coasting vessel familiarly accosted by all hardly any one of us stopping to Mr him this man of many characters among the rest that of volunteer help in the army hospitals and on the field during the whole of the late war carefully tending all the wounded he could southern or northern if it should turn out that in this plain unsuspected old customer dressed in gray & wearing no neck tie America and her republican institutions are possessing that rara avis a real national poet chanting putting in form in her own proud spirit in first class style for present & future time her democratic shapes even as the hards of Judah put in song for all time to come the Hebrew spirit and Homer the war life of prehistoric Greece and Shakespeare the feudal shapes of Europe's kings and lords I Whether or not the future will justify such extravagant claims of his admirers only that future itself can show But Walt Whitman is certainly taking position as an original force and new power in literature He has excited an enthusiasm among the republicans and young poets of Europe unequalled by our oldest and best known names The literary opposition to him in the United States has it is true been authoritative and continues to be so But the man has outlived the stress of misrepresentation burlesque evil prophecy and all calumnies & imputations and may now answer as Captain Paul Jones did when after the onslaught of the Serapis he was asked if he had struck his colors Struck answered the Captain quietly 'Not at all I have only just begun my part of the fighting.'"
Original Format
Manuscripts
Collection
Citation
Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892, “Walt Whitman The late Dartmouth College utterance of the above named celebrity...,” Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries, accessed April 25, 2024, https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/items/show/81566.