Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
History
Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
The process, so far, is indirect and peculiar, and though it may be
suggested, cannot be defined. Observing, rapport, and with intuition,
the shows and forms presented by Nature, the sensuous luxuriance, the
beautiful in living men and women, the actual play of passions, in
history and life--and, above all, from those developments either in
Nature or human personality in which power, (dearest of all to the sense
of the artist,) transacts itself-out of these, and seizing what is in
them, the poet, the esthetic worker in any field, by the divine magic
of his genius, projects them, their analogies, by curious removes,
indirections, in literature and art. (No useless attempt to repeat
the material creation, by daguerreotyping the exact likeness by mortal
mental means.) This is the image-making faculty, coping with material
creation, and rivaling, almost triumphing over it. This alone, when
all the other parts of a specimen of literature or art are ready and
waiting, can breathe into it the breath of life, and endow it with
identity.
"The true question to ask," says the librarian of Congress in a paper
read before the Social Science Convention at New York, October, 1869,
"The true question to ask respecting a book, is, _has it help'd any
human soul?_" This is the hint, statement, not only of the great
literatus, his book, but of every great artist. It may be that all works
of art are to be first tried by their art qualities, their image-forming
talent, and their dramatic, pictorial, plot-constructing, euphonious and
other talents. Then, whenever claiming to be first-class works, they are
to be strictly and sternly tried by their foundation in, and radiation,
in the highest sense, and always indirectly, of the ethic principles,
and eligibility to free, arouse, dilate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account