A Defense of Whitman :: Biography Biographies Essays

A Defense of Whitman Whether they have love or loathed his poetry, each writer or critic who has encountered Leaves of Grass has had to coif to some sort of reckoning with Walt Whitman. The Good Gray Poet, the grandfather of Ameri preserve poetry, has been deified by some and labeled a cultural and artistic brute by others. While Whitman freely admitted in his preface to the final effect of Leaves of Grass that the work was faulty and far from perfect, some critics see no redeeming qualities in Whitmans art. Henry throng goes so far as to say, Whitmans verse...is an offense to art. (James, p.16) James chastises Whitman for extolling and exploiting what James feels ar truisms. To James, Whitmans poetry is completely big it lacks substance and coherence. Through an examination of a specific poem, The Wound conceit, the claims of James and other negative critics can be refuted. The broadest and most full general critiques can be dismissed most readily. Henry James accuses Wh itman of refusing to take away with challenging moral questions in his poetry. Whitman speaks of the evils of war, suffering, and senseless death in vivid detail in The Wound Dresser, but to James these evils are obvious targets for lesser poets. A great deal of verse that is goose egg but words has, during the war, been sympathetically sighed over and cut out of newspaper publisher corners because it possessed a certain simple melody. (James, p.16) James denies Whitmans poetry eventide a simple melody. Whitman is more an emotional opportunist than a poet. James even claims that Whitmans primary goal is the glorification of the Union army. The poem in question, however, hints at a different conclusion. (was one side so bold? The other side was equally brave) (Whitman, p.249). In dealing with supposed truisms Whitmans poem begins to ask the question if the inherent evils of war, suffering, and senseless death are thus so painfully obvious to you, Henry James, and your wor ld, why are they back up with such fervor? Why in fact do they personify at all? Whitman happens to write from a sincere moral nonage of which Henry James is a part. Thus to label Whitman altruistic is to label James as well. John Jay Chapman levels the most absurd attack on Whitman The man Whitman knew the world merely as an outside observer, he was never a living part of it, and no mere observer can understand the life about him.