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C H A P T E R F I V E Whitman,theMoralReformer [Whitman] was a theoriser about society before he was a poet. —Robert Louis Stevenson (“The Gospel According to Walt Whitman”) Whitman said of Leaves of Grass that it is “a book for the criminal classes.” When asked by Horace Traubel about the meaning of that statement, he replied: “It is a fact. The other people do not need a poet.” This is the brief dialogue that followed: [Whitman asked Traubel:] “Are you in the criminal class yourself?” “Yes, certainly. Why not? [ . . . ] Let me in?”1 Whitman’s statement that his work—his bible—is a book for the criminal classes, the ones in need of a poet, is somewhat enigmatic. It is not clear whether he meant that Leaves of Grass is a book intended for the reform of the criminal classes, or rather that it is a hymn of praise to “criminals.” Both interpretations are possible, and, in fact, I’d like to look at two theories that offer respectively those opposite explanations for Leaves of Grass. Whatever the case, in the last analysis, we are bound to conclude that moral reform was indeed the ultimate goal of Whitman ’s poetical-religious enterprise. In this final chapter, we will discuss the content of the new morality Whitman proposed, a morality that has its foundation on an idealized form of masculine comradeship. But first we’ll look at the theories of Arthur E. Briggs, Robert K. Martin, David Kuebrich, and David S. Reynolds that attempt to offer a rationale for Whitman’s moralizing attitude. Following our discussion of Briggs’s theory, we will take a detailed look at Whitman’s ethics of war. Poetry and Ethics: Whitman’s Moral Concern Whitman found in literature the perfect instrument for moralizing.2 In Democratic Vistas, he approvingly quotes the librarian of Congress: “The 118 Walt Whitman’s Mystical Ethics of Comradeship true question to ask respecting a book, is, has it help’d any human soul.”3 He goes on to say that even though all works of art are to be tried first by the aesthetic qualities, “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.”4 Zweig believes that Whitman, like many Americans of his day, was sternly moralistic. Where literature was concerned, “a book had to ‘do good’; it had to be ‘democratic.’”5 Indeed, in Democratic Vistas, Whitman reflects on the idea that while in the Middle Ages the highest thoughts and ideals had to be expressed in the plastic arts more than in literature (presumably due to general illiteracy), in the nineteenth century literature “is not only more eligible than all other arts put together, but it has become the only general means of morally influencing the world.”6 This moral instrumentality of literature Whitman hopes for will not merely copy and reflect “existing surfaces,” or bend over to “what is called taste—not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, the refined, the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic or grammatical dexterity.” Rather, he believes in a literature “underlying life, religious, consistent with science, handling the elements and forces with competent power, teaching and training men.” Interestingly, a precious result of this moral literature will be to achieve the entire redemption of woman “out of these incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of dyspeptic depletion—and thus ensuring to the States a strong and sweet Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers.”7 Binns expresses his conviction that there is something essentially Platonic in Whitman’s attitude towards poetry, for Whitman was, in his opinion , a moralist in the highest sense. Like Plato, Binns says, Whitman dreamed always of the Republic, and that dream was the moving passion of his life.8 In some personal annotations made in a scrap of paper (possibly in preparation for some future lecture or publication) concerning the need for a “moral conscience ” in society, Whitman declares moral sensitivity to be more important than any other kind of sensitivity: We cannot pronounce too strongly, the evident need [ . . . ] of the promulgation the bringing to the front again, among the consciences, & setting up, the greatest of all, namely the absolute, uncompromising moral one. The intellectual or critical conscience is amply attended to—the esthetic is not...

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