The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1919-06-05
WALT

WALT WHITMAN
The year of our Lord 1919 was prolific in distinguished
births, and the year 1919 was notable for important centen-
mails. The good city Of Memphis celebrated her one hundredth
natal day in spite of the rain and inclement weather. Hickman,
Ky, also celebrated her natal day in May. The year 1919 saw
the birth Of James Russell Lowell, Walt Whitman, whose hun
dredth anniversary occurred on May 81 just passed John Ruskin
and George Eliot, among the literary folk, and many others.
New England celebrated Lowels anniversary deliberately in
February last. England sent one of her leading literary men to
represent her. Whltmans anniversary was unnotlced. There
is a reason-to use a famous advertising refrain. From the
beginning Lowell was popular He was looked upon both as a
classic and a companion. Whitman, although called the good
gray poet" now, was never popular Foreign nations esteem him
the supreme figure in American literature. In the early fihies he
shocked and outraged New England Purtanism by publishing
Leaves of Grass" He was looked upon as a literary ruffian,
and extreme New England prudery pronounced him "na-awsty'
the same prudery that compels young people to grow up in
chaste ignorance of physiology, From the first Whitman had
a few enthusiastic admirers, and these have been increasing as
the wears rolled by. Anne Gilchrst, Of noble memory, wrote a
cinency and acvmen. Across the water William NJ. Rossetti
the scholarly Swinburne, and others interpreted him. Lowell was
SNUG and conventional and had only ~Longtelow as a rival IN
popularity. Whitman was a rude barbarian, The average man
could make nothing of him He was neither poetry nor prose
He broke away in form and substance from the conventional
and only the cultivated ear could appreciate the natural rhythm
which he substituted for the traditional rhyme and meter TO
which the public was welded, and he insisted on tearing OH
the fig leaves with which poor humanity had clothed itsei
Worse than this, he preached a democracy WnGn IL m'lu omd cb IA 4
saint and sinner, white and black, in one brotherhood and emu,
dren of one God. Sixty or seventy years ago TINS was lookeo
upon an aboiionist heresy, fit only tor base aphioophasous
louise eaters. He preached the divinity OF SELL and was put down
a. \ blatant egoist, while claiming nothing for himself that ne
do u biAA4AN 49, hE1
did not claim for all men, and he INDUCED in more frank helpiu'
selfciticism than anyone else has done,
Whitman has been coming into his own OF late years
William Norman Guthrie, Shelby county born, and a cultured
product of the Sewanee schools, savagely attacked Whitman
when he first read him. In his maturer years he saw d'iier'
emily, and has given in his book, Modern Poet Prophets, a
beautiful and sympathetic Interpretation of the Camden sage
that does him full justice.
Lafcadio Hearn, in his lectures to his Nipponese students,
unfolds and analyzes Whitman in a manner to make him intel
lisible and beautiful, and many Others have done work along
the same line.
When all is said, Whitman is deeply religious. Whitmaniana
is not narrow denominatonaism but a broadly and profoundly
universal religion that is not exclusively concerned with the self
ish saving of individual souls. but with elevating humanity and
royalzing the race.
Whitman is one Of the few that come as the fruit of the
ripened centuries. He has a meanngful message for us. 1t
was given to him in fragments, and he delivered it to us in a
iragmentary way. The careful reader will find a sequence to
these fragments which makes Of them a concrete unity and a
symmetrical whole. Greater poets and prophets are to come to
explain and reveal things to us, strange and beautiful things,
which, when revealed, will appear familiar to us, and like unto
original intunions, The Leaves of Grass lies uncut on library
shelves. He is read only by the very curious and by scholars
who cannot afford to ignore him. If read in connection with
one of his interpreters he richly repays perusal, lie Will be
more widely esteemed on his second centennial.