2005年NPR美国国家公共电台七月-Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' Marks 150th A

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In 1855, a book of poetry appeared that captured the soul of America, and expanded the possibilities for all poetry.

I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS was the first great American poem, and is being celebrated¹ this year with a new 150th anniversary edition of the original. From New York Tom Vitale has the story.

When LEAVES OF GRASS appeared in 1855, nothing like it had ever been seen and printed before: a dozen untitled poems spanning 83 pages urging the reader to join the poet in a new perspective. Excerpts² are read by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky.

Stop this day in the night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left).
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me.
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

It was the beginnings of free verse: long, exuberant³ flowing lines that didn't rhyme. Like his 19th-century contemporaries Whitman started out writing conventional poetry. But unlike the English Romantics and the American poets who tried to imitate them, Whitman wrote in the language and cadence⁴ of everyday Americans. Whitman was born in 1819 to a poor family on Long Island. He left school at the age of 11 to become a printer's apprentice⁵ and later worked as a newspaper editor. Biographer David Reynolds says by the time Whitman turned thirty what he saw around him changed the way he wrote.

Of course this was just before the Civil War and he was extremely upset about what was happening in this country at that time. He saw the division between the North and the South. He saw the enslavement of nearly four million African- Americans. But then when the Fugitive⁶ Slave Law came in 1850, he really bursts out in wrath⁷ and anger, and slowly we see his social passions, kind of exploding that kind of effete⁸ sentimental⁹ diction of his earlier poetry and suddenly we're in a new poetic¹⁰ universe now.

It was a poetic universe that embraced the diversity of the nation.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise
Regardless of others ever regardful of others
Maternal as well as paternal¹¹.
A child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with
the stuff that is fine,
One of the great nations
The nation of many nations——
The smallest the same and the largest the same,
A southerner as soon as a northerner

Robert Pinsky says Leaves of Grass is a literary landmark¹² not only for its stylistic innovations but also because it was the first poem to express national ideals in passionate¹³ verse.

It takes a lot of thoughts that people had all through the 19th century , thoughts that people had about the United States, the thoughts that there's a democracy of experience, that the interior life of every person regardless is equal, that they're all related. And he finds this bold unwavering way of expressing their thoughts that is both sort of idiosyncratic, and that is universal the way opera is universal.

The universality of Leaves of Grass goes beyond politics to a Zen-like appreciation¹⁴ of the miracles of everyday life. Scholar David Ronald says the poem has a healing influence.

Looking at the natural world, the mystery of it, the beauty of it, things that you and I could easily take for granted, a mouth or a hair, growing out of the back of his hand, to me that's what's just beautiful about Leaves of Grass, you can read this, you can sit there in the open air, and read it and then look around you and the world can seem new and fresh.

I believe a leave of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and the grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree toad¹⁵ is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn¹⁶ the parlors¹⁷ of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery¹⁸.

Whitman tinkered with Leaves of Grass for the rest of his life; he published five more editions, each retaining the earlier poems while adding new ones including the famous elegies¹⁹ for Lincoln "Oh Captain, My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", but David Reynolds who edited the 150th anniversary edition of Leaves of Grass, says none of Whitman's later poems matched the sheer energy of the originals.

You know Whitman even late in life looked back and then he said, “I miss the ecstasy²⁰ of statement of the 1855 edition, it has such a directness and such a turbulent force, and it really does. It's almost like a volcanic²¹ explosion of feeling and vision. ”

And it was an emotional call to frankness and tolerance²², as embodied²³ in the poem by the character of Whitman himself.

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs,
A cosmos²⁴.
Disorderly fleshy and sensual.
Eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no standard above men and women or apart for them, no more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

When the first edition of less than a thousand copies of Leaves of Grass appeared, Whitman's 19th-century readers weren’t buying it.

That 1855 edition didn't sell many copies. Whitman later said he had to give a lot of them away; it got some terrible reviews, it was called a stupid mass of filth²⁵, it did however, elicited²⁶ the response from Emerson that this was the most magnificent piece of wisdom that America has yet produced. Robert Pinsky agrees with Emerson.

Leaves of Grass, I believe like American Jazz, like certain American feature films, represents the best of our experiment, our effort to become a people, and a people but is not based on sharing some religion or some blood, but a people based on this idea literally²⁷ of freedom.

At the end of his life, Walt Whitman's genius was finally recognized, and his work was celebrated, first in England, then here in the United States. He died in 1892. For NPR news, I am Tom Vitale, in New York.