July 29, 2005
Poetry Corner
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," Professor Harold Bloom has written an introduction to the 1855 version, and the Wall Street Journal has adapted it into a guest editorial.
Whitman restores the primal androgyne "Adam early in the morning." He is our Vedas, our Bhagavad-Gita, our Sutras -- and also our Zohar, an esotericist of extraordinary originality. Emerson was Elijah or John the Baptist to Whitman's American Christ. Is not Walt as enigmatic, elusive, evasive, fascinating as the Jesus of Mark's Gospel? Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" and sent it unsolicited to Emerson, who responded to the brash and canny self-promoter on 21 July, 1855, that it was -- as a century-and-a-half later it still is -- "the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed." Emerson continued, "I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. . . . I give you joy of your free & brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. . . . I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging." Emerson invented the American Religion; Whitman incarnated it.
I vow to reread "leaves" this summer, and I'd like to recommend a great book that I read a while back: "The Better Angel: Walt Whitman and the Civil War."
No Sean Penn, Whitman came to front line hospitals to care for his brother and stayed until the end of the war helping nurses and consoling Union troops. He wrote letters back home for those who were injured or illiterate (wouldn't that be a family treasure).
A great American and a great american artist.