The Whitman Revival Continues:
PHILIPSON, MORRIS
The Whitman Revival Continues Leaves of Grass: One Hundred Years After. Ed. by Milton Hindus. Stanford. 149 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Morris Philipson Lecturer, Department of Humanities, Hofstra...
...But, then, he is no longer a New Cause to be defended (free love, free verse or free state), let alone a fashion to be affected...
...the political Left sees only his equali-tarianism...
...Psychologizing of that sort is no substitute for poetic and philosophic criticism...
...David Daiches's essay examines the expression of the "both/and" theme in Whitman's prosody as a fusion of the epic and the lyric styles, merging the prophetic presentation of public themes with the exploitation of emotional autobiography...
...But these two latter writers seem to stake too much on the assumption that Whitman's homosexuality explains (or...
...One learns that this is the hundredth anniversary of Leaves of Grass with a feeling of surprise: "Is it really that long...
...In much modern thought, the idea of personal development is the supreme principle and goal, but the two chief factors in the debate (the individual and society) have been divided into irreconcilable opposites...
...The psychological Left sees in him egocentric hedonism...
...To celebrate this centenary, the Stanford University Press has brought out a new examination of Whitman's work by six distinguished critics, edited and introduced by Milton Hindus...
...Rather, this new collection attests to a discovery that goes well beyond nostalgia for a poet who was loved in adolescence but neglected in favor of others as one became "cultured.' These essays reveal Whitman as a writer with very significant values to contribute to the contemporary scene and to our mature problems...
...I had not known how much the spirit of Whitman animated us until it was withdrawn from us...
...Leslie Fiedler considers the myths about the poet which Whitman generated himself and those which derive from the mistakes of critics who read his poetry as confessional rather than art...
...Whitman's achievement was that of "policy made personal...
...worse, explains away) much of his paradoxical and contradictory insights...
...Richard Chase writes of the biographical background...
...Even the title Leaves of Grass symbolizes this vision: It is the image of both leaves (the particular, individual, separate) and grass (the universal, all-covering, uniting...
...His vision of life as the functional unity of the particular and the universal is in direct contrast to the attitude of mind which sets politics and psychology in opposition...
...As a whole, the volume is immensely suggestive...
...In the words of Kenneth Burke...
...Partisans of both extremes have tried to use Whitman for their ends...
...This overarching theme, paradoxical and fascinating, is the main subject of these essays...
...His analysis of the unique structure of Whitman's poems is thus made particularly significant...
...In his appealing introduction, Professor Hindus suggests that Whitman's thought could have issued only from a "spiritually healthy person...
...Both the existentialists at one extreme and the Communists at the other state the problem with "either/or" alternatives: Either the self or society, either the ego or humanity, either the individual or the nation can be developed at the expense of the other...
...William Carlos Williams considers Whitman's role in the evolution of literature in the English language and remarks upon the dire effects of Whitman's fall from power...
...these essays are certain to inspire many readers to go back and read Whitman himself...
...With elaborate analysis of terms, Burke pursues Whitman's theory of democracy through his poetry by way of psychological associations...
...Whitman strikes his readers with such vigor and presence (his voice is always the "I-now" talking to the "you-now") that it is difficult to place him in a time not our own...
...Reviewed by Morris Philipson Lecturer, Department of Humanities, Hofstra College EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE was the year in which Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was first published...
...J. Middleton Murry's essay traces the theme back to its religious presupposition that "democracy can be justified and believed in only on the basis of a prior conviction of the infinite worth of the individual...
...In Whitman himself, however, what one finds is not the struggle of "either/or" but a reconciling philosophy of "both/and": "One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
