The Realism of Walt Whitman. We present, in this connection,some views concerning Whitman's poetry generally, and add some further remarks concerning the propriety of issuing the volume in its present shape. If we look at the matter widely, there is really no such thing as good or bad subjects in poetry, but good or bad poets. Anything, everything, is a fit subject.
Art has no business with leading-strings or handcuffs or gags.
This is Victor Hugo's protest against the disapprobation of those French critics whose conventional imaginations were very much disturbed by the astonishing leaps through time and space that were made by this untrammelled and disorderly genius. If a poet has produced really fine poetry, no matter what his material may have been, he has justified himself, at least from the standpoint of his art. If the ideas are no longer worthy, while the form remains perfect, we have an art that rapidly deteriorates and becomes trivial, and bears within it the germ of decay. If, on the other hand, the ideas are noble and the form indifferent, we have an imperfect, incomplete art, that if it be in a healthy state must soon develop into fuller and finer expression. There is, therefore, not the danger that those concerned with the merely moral side of the question might suppose, in setting art free and cutting her leading strings, as long as the real function of art is recognized.