From Journalist to Rebellious Poet:
HINDUS, MILTON
From Journalist to Rebellious Poet The Evolution of Walt Whitman. By Roger Asselineau. Harvard. 376 pp. $7.50. Reviewed by Milton Hindus Editor, "Leaves of Grass: One Hundred Years...
...From his revolutionary sympathies in 1348, Whitman proceeded to evolutionary convictions a decade later...
...Long available in French and now translated into English, it is the first of two volumes on Whitman and deals with his life...
...In Asselineau's pages we watch Whitman move from passion and dynamism toward equilibrium and serenity...
...He had realized that human nature could not be changed by decree and that progress could be made only as the result of a slow and gradual evolution, depending not on a reform of society but on the moral improvement of individuals...
...In 1855, Emerson, praising Leaves of Grass, spoke of it as "the greatest piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced...
...he asks, did "this very ordinary journalist, this writer of mediocre accomplishment break with all his habits of expression—which were also those of his contemporaries and predecessors—and try to write as no one had ever written before on life and death, on God and men...
...Whitman remained directionless until an inexplicable "sudden crystallization" occurred...
...In youth, he was characterized by contradictions (of which he boasted complacently in Song of Myself...
...Others have been struck by Whitman's contradictions and changes, but penetrating readers intuitively recognize the poet's continual striving for balance and peace...
...Norton, who had great critical influence in his time, noted that "there is an original perception of nature, a manly brawn, and an epic directness in our new poet...
...To some critics, the surprise was unpleasant...
...and it encouraged Whitman to go on and secured a hearing for him by the world...
...we watch him change from the carpenter-bard (the stance adopted in the initial editions of Leaves of Grass) into the Sage that he wished to be taken for in his later years...
...How...
...the subsequent volume will be devoted to the poet's work...
...Asselineau skillfully traces Whitman's slow maturation...
...Others (of whom Emerson was the best known) greeted it with rapture and hallelujahs...
...At that time, the author notes, "he was hostile to any radical measure...
...The author concludes that the problem is insoluble: "His mind (in 1855) might be described as a supersaturated solution very rich in elements borrowed from life and from books...
...The development is not altogether unlike that of Wordsworth, who was a firm supporter of the French Revolution in the early 1790s but later became so steadfast a pillar of the established order in England that he was named poet laureate in 1843...
...From the first, the result of this crystallization—Leaves of Grass—proved astonishing to the literary world...
...This book is remarkable not so much for the discovery of any new facts about Whitman as for the assimilation, selection and sensitive interpretation of previously known information...
...Yet the character of the Sage was potential in Whitman from the beginning...
...It is an excellent example of the French conception of literary scholarship as a branch of humane letters rather than of science...
...Reviewed by Milton Hindus Editor, "Leaves of Grass: One Hundred Years After" This is a very perceptive and intelligent book by the Professor of American literature at the Sorbonne...
...The balance and moderation of his later years came after only a gradual development...
...childhood dreams, adolescent disturbances, ecstasies, memories of Long Island, scenes of Brooklyn, unsettling impressions of New Orleans, recollections of Carlyle...
...The mystery of Whitman's metamorphosis from a pedestrian newspaperman into major poet is Professor Asselineau's primary concern...
...His judgment comes closest to contemporary critical opinion...
...A more reserved, but still positive attitude was expressed by Charles Eliot Norton, who spoke of "this gross yet elevated, this superficial yet profound, this preposterous yet somehow fascinating book a mixture of Yankee transcendentalism and New York rowdyism [which] seem to fuse and combine with the most perfect harmony...
...As with Wordsworth, Whitman's change was accompanied by a decline in poetic power...
...Emerson and Georges Sand...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 11
