versification of all possible sentiments proceeds from the depths of a comfortable armchair.
But I care less for the whole course of a man’s life than for his own distilling of its essence. Minute biographers have always seemed to me like those who, not content with the taste of a noble wine, should seek the stems of the grapes from which it came. Knowledge of the external life of a great man may satisfy the curiosity of the amateur d’âmes or the collector of anecdotes—and it may serve indeed to inspire great achievement—but it has nothing to do with the value or the real significance of his work.
External biography is even more than usually out of place in the case of Whitman, for he is a universal poet, a poet not of the part but of the whole, a poet not merely of America but of the world; and on the other hand he is a poet so personal, so individual, so intimate, that he could rightly say:
Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this, touches a man.[1]
In his songs, therefore, you may find the man’s whole message—all that he wished to say, to teach, and to leave to those who loved him, to his comrades, to mankind. The hundred and other hundred Leaves of Grass are the truly immortal portion of his soul.
- ↑ Vol. II, p. 289.
