A History of American Literature Since 1870

Name: A History of American Literature Since 1870
Author: Pattee, Fred Lewis

Pattee, Fred Lewis

American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism

We are all docile dough-faces,
          They knead us with the fist,
        They, the dashing Southern lords,
          We labor as they list;
        For them we speak--or hold our tongues,
          For them we turn and twist.

Then suddenly without warning we have this:

        Free, fresh, savage,
        Fluent, luxuriant, self-content, fond of persons and places,
        Fond of fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
        Fond of the sea--lusty-begotten and various,
        Boy of the Mannahatta, the city of ships, my city,

               *       *       *       *       *

        Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a new world.

That is the problem of Walt Whitman, a problem the most baffling and
the most fascinating in the later range of American literature.


II

There can be little doubt that the primal impulse in the creation of
_Leaves of Grass_ came from the intellectual and moral unrest of the
thirties and the forties. Whitman caught late, perhaps latest of all
the writers of the period, the Transcendental spirit that had so
unsettled America and the rest of the world as well. "What a fertility
of projects for the salvation of the world!" Emerson had cried in
1844. Who "will ever forget what was somewhat vaguely called the
'Transcendental Movement' of thirty years ago"? Lowell had asked in
1865. "Apparently set astir by Carlyle's essays on the 'Signs of the
Times,' and on 'History,' the final and more immediate impulse seemed
to be given by 'Sartor Resartus.' At least the republication in Boston
of that wonderful Abraham à Sancta Clara sermon on Falstaff's text of
the miserable forked radish gave the signal for a sudden mental and
moral mutiny.... The nameless eagle of the tree Ygdrasil was about to
set at last, and wild-eyed enthusiasts rushed from all sides, eager
to thrust under the mystic bird that chalk egg from which the newer
and fairer creation was to be hatched in due time."[87] Whitman was a
product of this ferment. He took its exaggerations and its wild dreams
as solemn fact. He read Emerson and adopted his philosophy literally
and completely: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." "He
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of
goodness." "Insist on yourself; never imitate." "Welcome evermore to
gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide;
him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.
Our love goes out to him." "Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that
iron string." "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do,"
and so on and on.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

A History of American Literature Since 1870Pattee, Fred Lewis

History

A History of American Literature Since 1870

Pattee, Fred Lewis

American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism

We are all docile dough-faces,
          They knead us with the fist,
        They, the dashing Southern lords,
          We labor as they list;
        For them we speak--or hold our tongues,
          For them we turn and twist.

Then suddenly without warning we have this:

        Free, fresh, savage,
        Fluent, luxuriant, self-content, fond of persons and places,
        Fond of fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
        Fond of the sea--lusty-begotten and various,
        Boy of the Mannahatta, the city of ships, my city,

               *       *       *       *       *

        Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a new world.

That is the problem of Walt Whitman, a problem the most baffling and
the most fascinating in the later range of American literature.


II

There can be little doubt that the primal impulse in the creation of
_Leaves of Grass_ came from the intellectual and moral unrest of the
thirties and the forties. Whitman caught late, perhaps latest of all
the writers of the period, the Transcendental spirit that had so
unsettled America and the rest of the world as well. "What a fertility
of projects for the salvation of the world!" Emerson had cried in
1844. Who "will ever forget what was somewhat vaguely called the
'Transcendental Movement' of thirty years ago"? Lowell had asked in
1865. "Apparently set astir by Carlyle's essays on the 'Signs of the
Times,' and on 'History,' the final and more immediate impulse seemed
to be given by 'Sartor Resartus.' At least the republication in Boston
of that wonderful Abraham à Sancta Clara sermon on Falstaff's text of
the miserable forked radish gave the signal for a sudden mental and
moral mutiny.... The nameless eagle of the tree Ygdrasil was about to
set at last, and wild-eyed enthusiasts rushed from all sides, eager
to thrust under the mystic bird that chalk egg from which the newer
and fairer creation was to be hatched in due time."[87] Whitman was a
product of this ferment. He took its exaggerations and its wild dreams
as solemn fact. He read Emerson and adopted his philosophy literally
and completely: "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." "He
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of
goodness." "Insist on yourself; never imitate." "Welcome evermore to
gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide;
him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.
Our love goes out to him." "Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that
iron string." "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do,"
and so on and on.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

A History of American Literature Since 1870

A History of American Literature Since 1870

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