Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-06-03

other question as to Walt Whitman's place
there. We are disposed to consider the
last question first. We think Whitman
has no other hold upon the world than is
given by his coarseness and eccentricity. |
He is not poet. He has not clear |
mind. He possesses no views or ideas |
which are worth impartiug His so.called |
poems are barbarous jumbles in the fashion |
OF catalogues for the most part mere lists |
of names of things, peppered with adJec-
tives, and arranged in queer and asym- |
metric ways. AS to that element IN his
writings which mas procured the prohibit
ton referred to- it seems TO US that to call
it obscenity is an abuse of language.
Whitman is certainly not a pure writer,
and few Of his sentences are very coarse.
But there is not line In his Leaves OF
Grass half as nasty as scores OF lines IN
the Ola Testament, and for community
which swallows the Old Testament without
wry faces to pretend shame at Walt Whit
man is merely inconsistency, and IN no
sense purity. The absurdity and incon-
sistency OF the injunction on Whitman
may be further shown by the fact that
within the last few years reprints of Mrs.
Aphra Behn, Mrs. Haywood, and other
really licentious and indecent authors, have
been put upon the market freely that
TRANSACTIONS OF Balzacs ''Contes Drola-
tiaues, of Boccaccio's "Decameron, and
Marguerite OF Navarre's " Heptameron,
are freely sold that translations of the
poems of Nillon and Beaudelaire have been
in like manner offered to the public and
that the so-called 'feshly school" OF
poets, of which Swinburne and Rossetti and
Morris are examples and leaders, have
issued within the past ten years great
quantity OF verse which may be truly
said to bear about it what Juvenal calls
" the odor of the stews.,
While this rank growth of sensuous or
sensual literature passes the censor un-
scathed, why is it that District Attor-
ney of Boston thinks it his duty to present
Walt Whitman's alleged poems for indict-
ment? We presume it is because the Dis
trict Attorney is an ignorant and narrow
minded official, who perhaps really thinks
that there is something exceptionally
naughty about these rude and crude jingles
in travesty of poetry. But it is very silly
to make spiteful little assaults like this
upon individuals. Walt Whitman is really
only a manifestation of tendencies which
belong to the intellectual movements Of
the age, and which will have their way,
let who will oppose them. After Puritan
ism came the license OF the Restoration.
After the austere purity of Milton came
the brilliant profigacy of Congreve and
Farquhar and Vanbrugh. After the Hey
woods and the Behns came Richardson
and the Lake Poets and Sir Walter Scott
and the modern view of modesty In Ian
guage. Fielding, hearty, manly, vigorous
Fielding, must have seemed perfect
monster of obscenity to the delicate
minds which had been reared upon the
" vegetable loves" of Miss Porter, Miss
Pardoe, Miss Milford, and their class of
authors. But presently the pendulum be-
gan to swing back again. The reaction
from Evangelicalism towards Agnosticsm
naturally and perhaps necessarily created |
"feshly school of poetry, and this has
proceeded to much greater lengths than
poor Whitman ever dreamed of.
As to the French authors and poets, they |
have always been more or less " free in |
their expressions, and more so since they
left Classicalisn for Romanticism. Victor |
Hugo is certainly more amusing than |
Racine and Corneille, and more natural. |
But he is at one end and lola at the other, |
while between those two flourish crowd |
OF aspiring writers, all OF whom rely more
or less upon "feshliness." The same
sensual tendency has long been visible in
the fiction which, though lowest in point |
Of merit, is perhaps most eagerly sought by |
able, but it is true, that the world has a
distinct appetite for that kind of writing,
and that it will have it if it is TO be had, no
matter what censures are passed upon the |
taste. In short, we are in the midst of |
a strong reaction against asceticism and |
the relics OF Puritanism, and as is always the |
case with reactions, it carries a great many |
people to altogether mischievous and I'M
justifable lengths. This extravaganza,
however, seems necessary too, for without
it the condensation would never set |
in, and so perhaps what we ought most to |
deprecate and apprehend is kind OF
apathetic and stagnant condition, In which |
all taste for better intellectual food shall |
be lost, yet its vicious substitutes not be
enjoyed at all. For such condition might |
endure long enough to debauch society al |
most incursbly.
Walt Whitman, however, is butterfly |
that should not be broken upon the wheel. |
He has no mission, and no Ineligible |
message. His uncouth utterances may be
preserved by the curious for their very
oddly, but assuredly not for any intel
lectual merits For of this they possess
nothing They are mere barbarous
"yawps," as Whitman himself has aptly
styled them. They will never hurt any
body, however, and this is SO clear to all
who are acquainted with them as to rem.
der the action of the Boston authorities
peculiarly absurd. If there is to be a
crusade against depraving literature it will
be easy enough to point out books which
are fit for nothing but bonfires, but we had
thought that the futility of trying to stamp
out bad literature by statutory enactments
or judicial processes was by this time too
generally understood to make it probable
that any more follies of that kind would be