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Page 57
Just as a ray of sunshine across a room reveals, in air that seemed
clear, innumerable motes of golden dancing dust and filament, so the
bright beam of a great critic shows us the unsuspected floating
atoms of temperament in the mind of a great writer. The popular
understanding of the word _criticize_ is to find fault, to pettifog.
As usual, the popular mind is only partly right. The true critic is
the tender curator and warden of all that is worthy in letters. His
function is sacramental, like the sweeping of a hearth. He keeps the
hearth clean and nourishes the fire. It is a holy fire, for its fuel
is men's hearts.
It seems to us probable that under present conditions the cause of
literature is more likely to suffer from injudicious and excessive
praise rather than from churlish and savage criticism. It seems to
us (and we say this with certain misgivings as to enthusiasms of our
own) that there are many reviewers whose honest zeal for the
discovering of masterpieces is so keen that they are likely to burst
into superlatives half a dozen times a year and hail as a flaming
genius some perfectly worthy creature, who might, if he were given a
little stiff discipline, develop into a writer of best-readers
rather than best-sellers. Too resounding praise is often more
damning than faint praise. The writer who has any honest intentions
is more likely to be helped by a little judicious acid now and then
than by cartloads of honey. Let us be candid and personal. When
someone in _The New Republic_ spoke of some essays of our own as
"blowzy" we were moved for a few moments to an honest self-scrutiny
and repentance. Were we really blowzy, we said to ourself? We did
not know exactly what this meant, and there was no dictionary handy.
But the word gave us a picture of a fat, ruddy beggar-wench trudging
through wind and rain, probably on the way to a tavern; and we
determined, with modest sincerity, to be less like that in future.
The good old profession of criticism tends, in the hands of the
younger generation, toward too fulsome ejaculations of hurrahs and
hyperboles. It is a fine thing, of course, that new talent should so
swiftly win its recognition; yet we think we are not wholly wrong in
believing that many a delicate and promising writer has been
hurried into third-rate work, into women's magazine serials and
cheap sordid sensationalism, by a hasty overcapitalization of the
reviewer's shouts. For our own part, we do not feel any too sure of
our ability to recognize really great work when we first see it. We
have often wondered, if we had been journalizing in 1855 when
"Leaves of Grass" appeared, would we have been able to see what it
meant, or wouldn't we have been more likely to fill our column with
japeries at the expense of Walt's obvious absurdities, missing all
the finer grain? It took a man like Emerson to see what Walt was up
to.
There were many who didn't. Henry James, for instance, wrote a
review of "Drum Taps" in the _Nation_, November 16, 1865. In the
lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on
smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so
clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the
chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that
seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum
Taps" before its publication, said, "Its passion has the
indispensable merit that though to the ordinary reader let loose
with wildest abandon, the true artist can see that it is yet under
control." With this, evidently, the young Henry James did not agree.
He wrote:
It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a
still more melancholy one to write about it. Perhaps since the
day of Mr. Tupper's "Philosophy" there has been no more
difficult reading of the poetic sort. It exhibits the effort of
an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged
muscular strain, into poetry. Like hundreds of other good
patriots, Mr. Walt Whitman has imagined that a certain amount
of violent sympathy with the great deeds and sufferings of our
soldiers, and of admiration for our national energy, together
with a ready command of picturesque language, are sufficient
inspiration for a poet.... But he is not a poet who merely
reiterates these plain facts _ore rotundo_. He only sings them
worthily who views them from a height.... Mr. Whitman is very
fond of blowing his own trumpet, and he has made very explicit
claims for his book.... The frequent capitals are the only
marks of verse in Mr. Whitman's writing. There is, fortunately,
but one attempt at rhyme.... Each line starts off by itself, in
resolute independence of its companions, without a visible goal
... it begins like verse and turns out to be arrant prose. It
is more like Mr. Tupper's proverbs than anything we have
met.... No triumph, however small, is won but through the
exercise of art, and this volume is an offence against art....
We look in vain through the book for a single idea. We find
nothing but flashy imitations of ideas. We find a medley of
extravagances and commonplaces.
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