Leaves of Grass

Many critics criticize Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The Boston Intelligencer condemned his poetry as full of “bombast, egotism, vulgarity and nonsense". A few critics wanted Whitman to be punished. He deserves “the lash for such a violation of decency”.

It is beyond comprehension why some of the critics called Leaves of Grass a dirty book. We should remember that both R.W. Emerson and Thoreau admired his poetry. Thoreau aptly remarked: “He has spoken more truth than any American or modern that I know. I have found his poem exhilarating, encouraging.” Take for example the following lines:

I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love.

What a magnificent, sharp, noble and clear thought! The lines show a force of Whitman’s originality and spiritual observance. The beauties of the poems included in Leaves of Grass exist above precepts, intuitions that appeal to the heart:

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

The central effort and purpose of Whitman is to express commonplace thoughts in an extraordinary way:

I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooking you round the waist,

My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

One of his triumphs is true transcendental poetry. His achievement, in a way, is quite a feat as seen the following immortal lines:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

I am large,I contain multitudes.

Chukovsky rightly says that Whitman’s cosmic poetry gave him new sight with a broad and joyful vision of the world.