The men of old declared that the lands of adventure lay in the West, for they were bold to follow the course of the sun; and to this day the bold do not look back to seek romance behind them in the East.
Whether this be the whole truth or no, such is the notion that comes upon the wind when, journeying westward1 in mid-Atlantic, you begin to know the faces on ship-board, and to understand what it is that is in their eyes. Strange eyes and foreign faces have these voyagers—dwellers upon Mediterranean2 shores, peasants from the borders of the Baltic, or dumb inhabitants of the vast eastern plains, huddled3 now together in the ship. But in them is a hope which triumphs over the misery4 of the present as it has survived the misery of the past, and to-day that hope has a name, and is America. For America is indeed the hope of the forlorn and disinherited in every land to whom a hope remains5. From the ends of the earth they set out, and separated from one another by every barrier of race and language, meet here upon the ocean, having nothing in common but this hope, this dream which will yet weld them together into a new people. For the comfortable dreamer there is Italy and the[Pg xx] Past, but for many millions of the common people of Europe and of Italy herself—and the common people too have their dream—America, the land of the Future, is the Kingdom of Romance.
Nor to these only, but, as I think, to every traveller not unresponsive to the genius of the land. For it is the genius of youth—youth with its awkward power, its incompleteness, its promise. And the home of this genius must be the land not only of progress and material achievement, but also of those visions which haunt the heart of youth. America is more than the golden-appled earthly paradise of the poor, it is a land of spiritual promise. And more perhaps than that of any nation the American flag is to-day the symbol of a Cause, and of a Cause which claims all hearts because ultimately it is that of all Peoples.
And America has another claim to be regarded as truly romantic. Hers is the charm of novelty. It is not the glamour6 of the old but of the new, and the perennially7 new. Some four centuries have passed since the days of Columbus, centuries which have dimmed the lustre8 of many another adventurous9 voyage into dull antiquity10, but America is still the New World, and the exhilarating air of discovery still breathes as fresh in the West as on the first morning.
With that discovery there dawned a new historic day whose sun is not yet set. We instinctively11 put back the beginning of our own era to the time of Elizabeth, that Virgin12 Queen in whose colony of Virginia the American people was first born, to grow up into maturity13 under its statesmen.
[Pg xxi]
And if we see but vaguely14 in the greyest hours of our dawn the figure of the Discoverer, while beyond him all seem strange as the men of yesterday—if we behold15 our own sun rising on the broad Elizabethan hours—how fitting it is that the New World should be peopled by those who still retain most of the temper of that generous morning! The American of to-day with his thirst for knowledge, his versatility16, his quick sense of the practicable, his delight in the doing of things, his directness and frankness of purpose, his comradeship and hospitality, his lack of self-consciousness—with all the na?ve inconsistencies, the amiable17 braggings, the mouthings of phrases, and the love of praise which belong to such unconsciousness of self—with his glowing optimism, his belief in human nature, his faith and devotion to his ideals—the American of to-day is in all these things the Elizabethan of our story. America is the supreme18 creation of Elizabethan genius—its New World, to which even that world which we call “Shakespeare” must give place.[1]
The Romance of America is not only new, it is like a tale that is being told for the first time into our own ears. And like some consummate19 story whose chapters, appearing month by month, hold us continually in expectant suspense20, its plot is still evolving and its characters revealing themselves, so that as yet we can only guess at its dénouement.
I call it a Romance, for it is indeed a tale of wonder; but unlike the old romances its[Pg xxii] bold realism is not always beautiful. The style of its telling is often loud, its words blunt, its rhythm strange and full of changes. But it has a large Elizabethan movement which cannot be denied. Denounce and deprecate as we will, all that is young in us responds to it. The story carries us along, at times by violence and in our own despite, but so a story should. It may be the end will justify21 and explain passages that to-day are but obscure: no story is complete until the end, and America has not yet been told. It is still morning there: and the heart of it is still the heart of youth.
The unprejudiced and candid22 visitor will be provoked to criticism by much that he sees in the United States; but even his criticism will be prompted by the possibilities of the country. It is this sense of its possibilities which captures the imagination, and fills the mind with the desire to do—to correct, it may be—but in any case to do.
The incentive23 to action is felt by everyone, American or immigrant, and dominates all. Here for the first time one seems to be, as it were, in a live country, among a live people whose work is actually under its hand and must occupy it for years to come. In England things are different; the country does not so audibly challenge the labourer to till and tame it. It does not say so plainly to every man—I want you: here is range and scope for all your manhood. Only the seer can read that word written pathetically across all this English countryside whose smooth air of completion conceals24 so[Pg xxiii] blank a poverty. In America the very stones cry out, and all who run must read. And thus the whole American atmosphere is that of action.
The Chinese, that most practical of peoples, have an old saying that the purpose of the true worship of heaven is to spiritualise the earth. It is a reminder25 that materialism26 and mysticism should go hand in hand.
Now the American is often, and not unjustly, accused of sheer materialism. But by temper he is really an idealist. The very Constitution of the United States, not to mention the famous Declaration, is no less transcendental than the Essays of Emerson, nor less weighty with deep purpose than the speeches of Lincoln. All these are characteristic utterances27 of the American genius; they have been attested28 by events, and sealed in the blood of a million citizen soldiers.
And how, one may ask, could the citizens of a State which more than any other manifestly depends for its life upon communion in an ideal be other than idealists? Gathered from every section of the human race, this people has become a nation through its consciousness of a Cause; its members being possessed29 not of a common blood, tradition or literature, but of a purpose and idea sacred to all. If then the national life depends upon the living idealism of the people, the actual unquestionable vigour30 of this national life may be taken as evidence of the strength of that idealism. But, on the other hand, the nation’s present pre-occupation with its merely material success conceals the gravest of all its perils32, because it threatens the very principle of the national life.
[Pg xxiv]
Thus held together by its future, and not as seem most others, by their past, the American nation has been slow in coming to self-consciousness, slow therefore in producing an original or national art. Hitherto it has been occupied with its own Becoming; and to-day, to virile33 Americans, America remains the most engrossing34 of occupations, the noblest of all practicable dreams.
The spirit of the Renaissance35 has here attempted a task far graver than in Medician Florence or Elizabethan London: to create, namely, not so much a new art as a new race. It has here to achieve its incarnation not in line and colour, not in marble nor in imperishable verse, but in the flesh and blood of a nation gathered from every family of Man. And for that, it is forever assimilating into itself scions36 of every European people, and transforming them out of Europeans into Americans.
Vast as such a process is, the assimilation of all their surging aspirations37 and ideals into one has been hardly less vast. It is little wonder then that America has been slow in coming to self-consciousness. What is wonderful is her organic power of assimilation. And now there begin to be evidences in American thought of a spiritual synthesis, the widest known. As yet they are but vague suggestions. But they seem to indicate that when an American philosophy takes the field it will be pragmatical in the best sense; too earnestly concerned with conduct and with life to be careful of symmetry or tradition; directed towards the future, not the past. It will be a philosophy of possibilities founded upon the study of an adolescent race.
[Pg xxv]
It seemed natural to preface this study of Whitman with a sketch38 of the American genius. Doubtless that genius has other aspects than those here presented, and to some of these, later pages will bear witness; but the impression I have attempted to reproduce is at least taken from life. It is, moreover, not unlike that of Whitman himself as presented in his first Preface, and is even more suggestive of the America of his youth than that of his old age.
Every thinker owes much to his time and race, and Whitman more than most. He always averred39 that the story of his life was bound up with that of his country, and took significance from it. To be understood, the man must be seen as an American. As a Modern, we might add, for the story of his land is so brief.
Dead now some thirteen years, and barely an old man when he died, his personal memory seemed to embrace nearly the whole romance. His grandfather was acquainted with old Tom Paine, whose Common Sense had popularised the Republican idea in the very hour of American Independence: he himself had talked with the soldiers of Washington, and as a lad[2] he had met Aaron Burr who killed the glorious Hamilton, sponsor for that Constitution which when Whitman died was but a century old.
In the seven decades of his life the American population had multiplied near seven-fold, and had been compacted together into an imperial nation. It seemed almost as though he could remember the thirteen poor and jealous States,[Pg xxvi] with their conflicting interests and traditions, their widely differing climates, industries and inhabitants, separated from one another by vast distances—and how they yielded themselves reluctantly under the hand of Fate to grow together in union into the greatest of civilised peoples; while central in the story of his life was that Titanic40 conflict whose solemn bass41 accompaniment toned and deepened loose phrases and popular enthusiasms into a national hymn42.
Himself something of a poet—how much we need not attempt to estimate—he did continual homage43 to that greater Poet, whose works were at once his education and his library—the genius of America. None other, ancient or medi?val, discoursed44 to his ear or penned in immortal45 characters for him to read, rhythms so large and pregnant. It was the prayer and purpose of his life that he might contribute his verse to that great poem; and his life is like a verse which it is impossible to separate from its context. That he understood, and even in a sense re-discovered America, can scarcely be denied by serious students of his work. I believe that the genius of America will in time discover some essential elements of herself in him, and will understand herself the better for his pages.
Belonging thus to America as a nation, the earlier scenes of Walt Whitman’s story are fitly laid in and about metropolitan46 New York. It was not till middle life and after the completion and publication of what may be regarded as the first version of his Leaves of Grass—the[Pg xxvii] edition that is to say of 1860—that he removed for a while to the Federal capital where, throughout the War, the interest of America was centred. Afterwards he withdrew to Camden, into a sort of hermitage, midway between New York and Washington.
Though his heart belonged to the West, the Far West never knew him. Both north and south, he wandered near as widely as the limits of his States. He knew the Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and the Rocky Mountains; but all that vast and wonderful country which reaches west from Colorado towards Balboa’s sea was untrodden by his feet. A circle broadly struck from the actual centre of population, and taking in Denver, New Orleans, Boston and Quebec, includes the whole field of his wanderings within a radius47 of a thousand miles. He was not a traveller according to our modern use of the word; he had never lost sight for many hours of the shores of America; even Cuba and Hawaii were beyond his range.
But he had studied nearly all the phases of life included in the Republic. His birth and breeding in the “middle States” gave him a metropolitan quality which neither New England nor the South could have contributed. Of peasant stock, himself an artizan and always and properly a man of the people, he was of the average stuff of the American nation; and his everyday life—apart from the central and exceptional fact of his individuality—was that of millions of unremembered citizens. Whitman was not only an American type, he was also a type of America.
[Pg xxviii]
The typical American is not city born. Rapidly as that sinister48 fate is overtaking the Englishman, the native American is still of rural birth.[3] And, as we have said, Whitman was of the average; he was born in Long Island of farming folk.
But he was a modern, and the modern movement throughout the world is citywards. Everywhere the Industrial Revolution is destroying the economy of our ancestors and creating another; diverting all the scattered49 energy which springs out of the countryside into the great reservoirs of city life, there to be employed upon new tasks.
Modern life is the life of the town, and for many years it was Whitman’s life. But again every town depends for its vitality50 and wealth upon the countryside. The city is a mere31 centre, factory and exchange. It cannot live upon itself. It handles everything but produces none of all that raw material from which everything that it handles is made. Especially is this true of the human stuff of civilisation51. Men are only shaped and employed in cities—they are not produced there. The city uses and consumes the humanity that is made in the fields. And Whitman, who was drawn52 into the outskirts53 of the metropolis54 as a child, and as a young man entered into its heart, was born among wide prospects55 and shared the sane56 life of things that root in the earth. He was the better fitted to bear and to correlate all the fierce stimuli57 of metropolitan life.
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1
westward
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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perennially
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| adv.经常出现地；长期地；持久地；永久地 | |
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8
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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versatility
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| n.多才多艺，多样性，多功能 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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conceals
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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31
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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engrossing
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| adj.使人全神贯注的，引人入胜的v.使全神贯注( engross的现在分词 ) | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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scions
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| n.接穗，幼枝( scion的名词复数 )；（尤指富家）子孙 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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39
averred
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| v.断言( aver的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出 | |
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40
titanic
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| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
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41
bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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43
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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44
discoursed
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| 演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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45
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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47
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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48
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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49
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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50
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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51
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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52
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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53
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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54
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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55
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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56
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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