Walt Whitman On Literature

Seventy years old, poor and orippled, Walt Whitman, "the good, gray poet," ives in a little room at Carnden, N. J. His exertions in the care of wounded and sick soldiers during the war were the inciting cause of the paralysis which has disabled him. The governrnent gives tiim no pension, however. But Walt Whitman'a brain is as clear as ever, and his opinions on American [iterature are worth hearing. With his old age the blood of his Quaker ancestry seerus to reassert itself and to show hirn serene, mellow and sunny. For years Walt says he has insisted on one thing, and that is the lack of distinctive flavor in American poetry. The wild strawberry and grape have each their "race," as the Scotch cali their peculiar flavors, and this is the quality that American poetry has always lacked. But certainly James Whitcomb Riley has developed this flavor. Concerning the modern American novel Whitman says: Against those I have read I might bring a grave charge. There seems to be a deplorable propensity among present novelists, even among the best oí them, toward the outre. I cali their characters delirium tremen s characters. They seem not content with the common, normal man ; they must take the exceptional, the diseased. They are not tme, not American in the deeper sense, after all. In all my coming and going among the soldiere of the late war I was everywhere struck with the decorum- a word I like to use- of the common soldier, lis good rnanners, his quiet heroism, his generosity, even his good real grammar; these are but a few of the typieal general qualities of the American farmer, mechanic, the American volunteer. I say that a novel or drama clatming to depict life is fal.se if it deals mainly or largely with abnormal grotesque characters. They should ba used merely as foils. I demand that the really heroic charaeter of the conunon American man orwoman be depicted in novel and drama. Tbat is the message the old poet sent to young American novelists. He has no sympathy with pessimistic notions of life, government or society. He continued, speaking of American novelists and dramatists: Tel] them to go among the common men as onft of tbem, never as looking down upon them. Study their lives, find out and celébrate their splendid primitive honesty and what I am pleased to cali their heroism. When our novelists sfaall do that, in addition to being true to their time, their art will be worthy all praiso from me or any other who is insisting on a native anti-class poem, nove) or drama. On being reminded that this was the theory on which W. D. Howells constructed n'vels, Whitman replied: It may be so. But even he has not sufflciently indicated the heroism of the common man. He has not yet touched, though I think he will, the exact life and emotion I mean. He has Dot lived sufflciently the Ufe I mean. Best of all was his closing message: Again I would say to the young writer, do not use evil for its own sake. Don't let evil overshadow your books. Make it a f oil as Shakespeare did. His evil is always a foil for purity. 6omewhere in the play or novel let the light in. As In some vast foundry whose roof is lost iu blackness, way up aloft o scuttle Iets the suulight and blue sky stream in.