Feinberg/Whitman
Literary File
Prose "Foreign Criticisms on an American Poet" (updated), offprint.
Box 36 Folder 15Foreign Criticism On An
American Poet.
____
The last London Quarterly bestows a
rap on the knuckles of J. Addington
Symonds 
(an English poet and critic, not
old, but by many considered the first
classical scholar in spirit, and one of the 
first in letter,) for putting in his just published
book, "Studies of the Greek 
Poets," a remarkable notice of Walt 
Whitman.  The L. Q.'s article, while
praising the book, does not deign to copy
the notice; but designates Whitman "a
vile American scribbler."  As some curiosity
has been aroused for the cause of 
the Quarterly's ire, we extract the pith
of Mr. Symonds' opinion:
"Strange as it may seem," says this
classicist, "Walt Whitman is more truly
Greek than any other man of modern
times.  Hopeful and fearless, accepting 
the world as he finds it, recognizing the
value of each human impulse, shirking
no obligation, self-regulated by a law of
perfect health, he, in the midst of a chaotic
age, emerges clear and distinct, at
one with nature, and therefore Greek.
Hellenism of this sort is independent of
dogmas and may be combined with
almost any creed.  It is that which the
Greeks had of eternal, indestructible, 
separable from local customs and transient
conventionalities."
This brief yet magnificent eulogium
reminds one of the equally strong words of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, years ago.  It may
be remembered that Mr. E., in his first
tumultuous delight at reading Whitman's 
verse, pronounced it "the greatest piece 
of wit and wisdom that America has yet
contributed." Whether the story, since
told, that Emerson has retracted that
judgement, be true or not, it is certain
that his estimate has been overtopped by
several of the keenest literary experts in
Great Britain, France, Germany, and 
Denmark.
In particular, two exhaustive and
lengthy criticisms--one in the London
Westminster Review, and one in the Paris
Revue des Deux Mondes--have been made
of Whitman's whole verse; the first criticisms
of the kind elaborately devoted to
an American poet by leading foreign reviews. 
The Englishman--assuming "that
the poetical writers of America have
none of them ever accepted the current
practical facts, or spirit, or the democratic
politics of the actual United States, as
the foundation or background of their
poetry, but that they have shunned or 
ignored those facts, and that their verse,
to all intents and purposes, has only been
a  continuation of the old European poetic
standards, feudal beliefs and forms--
asserts that Whitman is the first singer
in America who has deliberately based 
a lyrical utterance for the American
States squarely on their own present political,
social, industrial, and even military 
conditions and character, and who 
has undertaken to root their verse on
their own soil and give it hues and flavors
of its own, and who addresses himself
not to the audiences of the European
world or the past, but quite altogether to
the audiences of the present and future
American and democratic world"--finding
in him unquestionably the bard of the current 
New World, and the representative 
in art of its Democracy; while the 
Frenchman, with much sharpness toward
his book, tried by French models, emphatically
pronounces his rendering of 
the passionate, vast and lurid  aspects of 
the American War--the general uprising
after the  attack on Sumter, the flames
bursting from a thousand points--the
armed volunteers springing up everywhere--
the tumultuous processions of the
regiments--the war itself--the hospitals--
the great armies on the march or in 
their tents--the dead and wounded--the 
convulsive and tender sights, the kiss of
death, the heroism of soldiers, the affection
of comrades--to be, as uttered in
Drum Taps, the finest combination of 
the martial and human ever yet expressed
in song.
Then may be mentioned a late lecture
in St. George's Hall, London, by a Cambridge
man, Professor Clifford, before
the crowded scientific and aristocratic
elite of Britain, on "The Relation Between
the Sciences and Modern Poetry,"
in which the Professor, reading mostly
from the pieces of Whitman, (the report
in the English paper says "amid hearty
and general  applause"!) put him decidedly 
at the top of the heap, and pronounced 
him the only poet whose verse
based on modern scientific spirit, is vivified
throughout with what Professor C.
terms the "cosmic emotion."
Without further instances, it is probable,
indeed, that the most vital, even if
comparatively narrow, undercurrent of
European interest and belief in America,
as to its native literary expression, has
been turned on Whitman's poems, and is
steadily increasing in breadth and 
depth.
Meanwhile the subject of these fine
praises, quite unregarded in his own
country, (except a mocking sneer or
squib, from time to time, in the papers,)
is eking out his last years in indigence 
and illness, and has not, even to this
day, found a publisher for his works,
which, (though the demand is steady and
not inconsiderable,) cannot be procured
at all at the stores,  and the small editions
of which, so far, Whitman has 
printed himself.