A Defense of Whitman :: Biography Biographies Essays

A Defense of Whitman Whether they fill loved or loathed his poetry, each writer or critic who has encountered Leaves of sell has had to come to some sort of reckoning with Walt Whitman. The Good Gray Poet, the grandfather of American poetry, has been deified by some and labeled a cultural and fastidious barbarian by others. While Whitman freely admitted in his preface to the nett publication of Leaves of Grass that the work was faulty and far-off from perfect, some critics see to it no redeeming qualities in Whitmans art. Henry jam goes so far as to say, Whitmans indite...is an offense to art. ( pack, p.16) James chastises Whitman for extolling and exploiting what James feels be truisms. To James, Whitmans poetry is alone self-aggrandizing it lacks substance and coherence. Through an examination of a specific poem, The suffer Dresser, the claims of James and other negative critics can be refuted. The broadest and virtually general critiques can be dismissed most re adily. Henry James accuses Whitman of refusing to deal with challenging honorable questions in his poetry. Whitman speaks of the evils of war, suffering, and senseless death in graphic detail in The Wound Dresser, but to James these evils are obvious targets for lesser poets. A great deal of verse that is nothing but words has, during the war, been sympathetically sighed over and cut forbidden of newspaper corners because it possessed a certain simple melody. (James, p.16) James denies Whitmans poetry even 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 brave? The other side was equally brave) (Whitman, p.249). In dealing with hypothetic truisms Whitmans poem begins to ask the question if the inherent evils of war, suffering, and senseless death are indeed so painfully obvious to you, Henry James, and your world, why are they supported with such fervor? Why in fact do they exist at all? Whitman happens to write from a sincere moral minority 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 onset on Whitman The man Whitman knew the world merely as an outside perceiver, he was never a living part of it, and no mere observer can understand the life about him.