Evening star., 1925-02-10
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

How many men still living in
w ashlngton remember having seen
walt Whitman. -the good gray poet"
walk the streets Of the National
capital during the Civil War times? ?
Ihls thought came to me on read
ing letter from a correspondent
who asked about Whitman. who he
was. what he had written, since 1
mad quoted him several times re.
Gently.
Il do not remember having studied
about him when 1 was in school,"
wrote this inquirer, land NV pro
iessor or English literature i'm COL
lese dismissed him with somewhat
sheefihg references. as l remem ber"
~ Is undoubtedly true that Walt
Whitman has occupied a minor place
IN text books on American literature
of recent years the weight of public
opinion has forced some mention of
nim' put the writer's of such text books
usually have SHE'D at giving the man
full credit
Yet Walt Whitman was great
original force. recognized i'm Europe
along with Poe. long before his own
1"un1ry Tnnan E gave him meed of praise
Ioday his chief work, Leaves Of
Grass" stands as a sort of Law bibJe of
Americanism
ninstonians all should read
Leaves of Grass" for IT was this
DOCK that aroused the ire of q Sec
retary of Treasury i'm 1865, who dis
missed whitman, clerk, on account
of the volume.
That Secretary made a very poor
literary judgment when he branded
tne Dook as obscene" Read today
even the most timid will wonder
how on earth thr nan ever rot bis
view SO obfuscated.
Leaves o. iS i",t r-ar- t.,
some few portions that Is all. II ia
not sEggestive 1T is not o.,s,.,.ue
nobody says it is any more. But il
created a terrible ''powwow' in its day
Walt Wthitman was born on Long
Island in 1919, and uiec II
house on Mickle street. carrao.. v
j., in 1892. In between he edited a
paper, wrote some mediocre stories.
penned his Leaves of Grass and a
couple of other books, got a clerk
snip IN the Government at about 5000
year, got fired" got another lob.
held onto to 1t until 1873, went to
Camden
The best part of old Walt may be
found in Leaves OF Grass" The
edition j like best is that published
by David Mckay, Philadelphia, in
which the famous Song of Myself
is labeled Walt Whitman" very
characteristically.
This edition contains many photo
graphs of the brusque coarse Whit
man. which help one to understand
the poetry which some critics call
just prose. and the prose which 9TH
ers insist is poetry.
frankly, l do not know what IL is.
but, whatever IL ig IL is very p-reaf-
l am convinced of that. Yet it's ap-
peal is and forever will be limited
one Designed by the author to ey-
press the great voice of American
democracy, IL hardly ever appeals to
the so-cailed man on the stree 4"
but usually solely to the So called in
telligentsia.
remember sergeant at Walter
Reed Hospital during the war. a
timid. artistic man, who was out of
his element in a soldiers uniform
He had copy of Leaves of Grass"
You see, he needed the rough stimu-
lus of it's lines to help him carry
on"
The edition mentioned here con-
tains what / call MISREPRESENTATION
Le., 1t has a comma every place pos
sioIe, an exclamation point after every
line, etc Later editions have deleted
this excess punctuation. as more In
line with the punctuation ideals OF
the time, and in SO doing have taken
away some of the vigor of the poems
at least to one reader. Walt was a
rough old bird. calling his own stuff
"barbaric yawp,' and plenty of
exclamation marks. lots of interro-
CATION points. commas sprinkled in
as with pepper pot, help give his
enuSiCnS a sense of reality