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WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING

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By Albert and ChasiÂŁS Boni

CONTENTS WALT WHITMAN CHAPTER I.

II.

FAQB

The Poet

The

of Democracy

Individualist

HORACE TRAUBEL III.

Forerunner of a

IV.

The Humanist

V. VI.

New

The Philosopher The Poet

Notes

Literature

...

39 62

of Democracy

of Socialism

...

90 iii

143

FOREWORD T^OES *-^ of

the spirit of

Is that successor his

utor,

Walt Whitman

the writers to-day?

Has he

live in

any

a successor?

biographer and literary exec-

Horace Traubel?

This question

is being answered in the affirmaby a rapidly growing number of persons. And those who have become interested in Traubel feel quite as strong an admiration for his work as they do for that of Whitman. Let me quote a typical opinion, that of Eugene V. Debs

tive

Horace Traubel has the distinctest personality of any man of letters now before the American people. He can be likened to no other author or writer, living or dead. Although a loyal disciple and devotee of Walt Whitman, from whom he undoubtedly caught his earliest and deepest inspiration, he goes far beyond his revered master. He not only brings the old Prophet of Democracy up to date but he traverses untrodden fields and explores new realms in questj of the truth.

Horace Traubel has the the analytical

mind of a

clear vision of a prophet,

philosopher, the daring imagi-

nation of a poet, the heroic soul of a martyr, and the unpolluted heart of a child.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL Horace Traubel's work has only recently begun to take book form. Soon after Walt Whitman's death, Traubel, acting as Whitman's literary legatee, began his remarkable biographical study, "Walt Whitman in Camden," but the first volume was not published until 1906, and only three of the volumes out of a probable eight have been issued. For twenty-five years, a^ editor of The Conservator, he has developed Whitman's literary and social ideals, besides engaging in other literary and journalistic activity. But his first prose book, "Chants Communal," was published in 1904, and his "Optimos," which brought together the best of his poems, appeared only in 191 1, and selections from his "Collects" in 1914. The larger part of his writings, and some of his best work, is still to be found only in the monthly Conservator, which he has now published for twenty-five years.

poems

It contains

not only those

that have appeared since the publication of

"Optimos," but nearly

all

of his prose work.

every month's issue besides the "Collect," there are

book reviews, and these are among the most sympathetic, and profound of Traubel's writings among the most remarkable series of book reviews ever published in the English lan-

several

original,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

guage.

The

larger part of

quotations are taken

from "Collects" and book reviews, and uncollected poems.

adequate appreciation of Traubel demands

FOREWORD that the value of the

work of Whitman should be

brought before the reader's mind, that his genius should be characterized and his limitations pointed out.

In discussing

Whitman

believe

have

avoided covering old ground and have adopted a

new

standpoint.

have sought not to

criticize his

poetry but to appreciate his philosophy.

In perhave made use of a new source, "With Walt Whitman in Camden," and have had the invaluable assistance of the author of that work which is probably the most remarkable and valu-

forming

this task I

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

able

human document

since Boswell's Johnson.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

WALT WHITMAN

now

of the greatest poets of

all

recognized as one time.

the tes-

timony of his contemporaries, such as Emerson, Tennyson, Rossetti, and Symonds, has been added that of the majority of later poets and critics.

Whitman

appreciated chiefly as the world's

foremost poet of democracy. first

were his inspiration ter

contended from

to last that democracy, the masses of

how

deeply

felt,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

^that

ever3rthing else,

was secondary

to that.

however, his fame as the poet of democracy

danger of being

fame

eclipsed, to

men,

no matlate, is

some degree, by

his

His exaggerations, his deand his crudities are all attributed to his democracy, while his marvelous poetic powers are supposed to arise directly out of the genius shared with other poets untouched by democracy. He is meeting the fate of Tolstoi, William Morris and as a lyric poet.

ficiencies,

many

whose social radicalism does not intermerely aesthetic part of the public. The

others

est the

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

vision, the inspiration,

and the message of all these from their art.

writers are supposed to be separable

They were great, we are told, in spite of their ideas. Yet Whitman's poetry and Whitman's democracy are inseparable. There was no Whitman outside of this, his great life principle. He insists upon And if we follow his this himself on every page. life

and

his writings carefully

interpretation

find that his

own

the right one.

In 1855 and 1856, within a year after the publication of his great work, "Leaves of Grass," Whit-

man wrote

three brief notices of

his

own

sig-

[They were published in thei "In Re Walt Whitman," which appeared] volume, in 1893, immediately after his death.] These ideas are the same as those spread throughout his poetry and prose. He describes himself (in the third person) as "no dilettante democrat a man who is part and parcel with the commonalty, and with imnificance as a poet.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

mediate

life."

"If health were not his distinguishing attribute

would be the very harlot of persons. left he flings his arms, drawing men and women with undeniable love to his close em-

this poet

Right and

brace, loving the clasp of their hands, the touch of their

necks and breasts, and the sound of their

voices.

All else seems to burn

affection for persons.

up under

Politics,

his fierce

religions, institu-

tions, art, quickly fall aside before

them."

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY He

pursues his self-description by means of a

contrast between his

and

its

own

democratic manner of

opposite, the aristocratic

person

who

life

manner:

does not associate with

literary-

—a man never upon to make speeches dinners —never on platforms amid the crowds of clergymen, or or aldermen, or congressmen— down on the bay with

people

called

at public

professors,

pilots

^rather

—or

in their pilot boat

on a cruise with fishers or riding on a Broadway

off

—

in their fishing-smack

—

omnibus side by side with the driver or with a band of loungers over the open ground of the country fond of Brooklyn and New York." As Whitman by this time had already made a place for himself as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, these democratic preferences were a matter of deliberate

—

choice, not of necessity.

"No

proceeds

breath of Europe, or her monarchies, or

priestly conventions,

or her notion of gentlemen

and ladies, founded on the idea of caste, seems ever to have fanned his face or been inhaled into his lungs." And he includes as "genteel persons" all who would make any claim whatever in that direction, the "college-learned," those "used to be served by servants," etc. The importance of democracy to Whitman is that

about,

must first be lived before it can be written and that the largest life can arise only out of

the largest association with people.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

Tennyson, who has lived an aristohe contends, can only write from that pitifully narrow and false viewpoint: "The spirit of the burnished society of upperclass England fills this writer (Tennyson) and his poet, like

cratic life,

He meets the nofrom top to toe. and gentry half-way. The models are the same both to the poet and the parlors. Both have the same supercilious elegance, both love the reminiscences which extol caste, both agree on the topics proper for mention and discussion, both hold the same undertone of church and state." Against the aristocratic note, which, as he points effusions

bility

out, has prevailed to a greater or less degree in all

Whitman proposes democracy: "Other poets celebrate great events, personages, romances, wars, loves, passions, the victories and power of their country, or some real or imagined incident and polish their work and come to conThis poet celeclusions, and satisfy the reader. brates natural propensities in himself; and that is the way he celebrates all. He comes to no concluprevious poetry.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

and does not satisfy the reader." Whitman comes to no conclusions, and denies any "special" purpose, his work is purposeHis poetry, as he says, ful to the last degree. sions,

But, while

"eludes and

mocks

criticism" because its purpose

appears exclusively in

its "results."

"Every sentence and every passage

tells

of an

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

and exudes an impalpable something that sticks to him that reads, and pervades and provokes him to tread the half-invisible interior not always seen,

road where the poet, fearlessly before."

Whitman

[My

an apparition,

moment

frequently says, he

move

nite

kind

"If

striding

not merely singing, then.

a message at every to

italics.]

has

As he

of his song.

a prophet or bard and wants

the reader to action, and to life of a defi-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;democratic

life.

Walt Whitman's premises are

then there

true,

a subtler range of poetry than that of the grandeur of acts and events, as in Homer, or of characters, as in Shakespeare poetry to which all other writing is subservient, and which confronts the very mcEinings of the works of nature and competes with them. It is the direct bringing of occurrences and persons and things to bear on the listener or be[My holder, to reappear through him or her." is

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

italics.]

Thus Whitman

not

satisfied,

and events. He wishes directly to create characters and to stir to action. In a word, he preaches, but he does not preach mere morality; as he says, he "animates to poets, to write of characters, actions,

life itself."

When we writings,

turn to "Leaves of Grass" or the prose

by himself

find that this description of

the true one; that

was

Whitman his

demo-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

and democratic view of the poet's func-

cratic life

tion that shaped all his work.

The

leading note in

all

his writings is his exalta-

tion of the individual (everyman).

The

following

perhaps, the most illuminating passage on this

is,

point

And

nothing, not God,

self

And

is.

greater to one than one's

any man or woman. Let your soul stand and composed before a million universes. hear and behold God in every object, yet underI say to

cool I

God

stand

Nor do

not in the

understand

least.

who

there can be

more won-

derful than myself.

The of

all

individual

both the beginning and the end

Whitman's writing and

all his

thought.

solves the central problem of philosophy

He re-

materialism as basic as when he says (in the "Song of the Open Road") that all religion and all solid things must fall away before individuals. The same thought is continued in the "Song for Occupations" fusing to regard either religion, spirituality, or

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

consider bibles and religions divine

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

do not

say they are not divine, I

say they have out of you

It is

the

not they life.

all

grown out of you, and may grow

still,

who .

give the

life, it is

you who give

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY List close

scholars dear.

Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you.

He is

recognizes that the material aspect of life

of equal importance with the spiritual:

Behold, the body includes and

the meaning, the

main concern, and includes and is the soul: Whoever you are, how superb and how divine your body, or any part of it

And

again:

I accept Reality and dare not question

Materialism

Whitman

first

and

last

it.

imbuing.

often uses the expressions of religion;

but his deep sympathy with the leading agnostic of his country

and his time, Robert G.

Ingersoll,

shows

that he used such expressions with a poet's license

and not at all in their ordinary meaning. There were few persons he admired more than he did Ingersoll, as may be seen from the following reference from "Walt Whitman in Camden" (Vol. IH, p.

497)

"The main thing appointed job

that he has done his divinely

the dear wonderful

sent by high heaven done it."

man

He was

save the race and he has

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

"But God?

God?

Well, there are other divini-

they are not of the hell and damnation sort they are not of the legs and arms sort ^the personal sort they yet remain, more firmly on their throne, in the ties

—

race, than ever: they continue their

Bob

supremacy.

(IngersoU) does not intellectually account for them:

has them in his heart: they are one part of his

—whether

noble protest

he knows

[My

or not."

italics.]

difficult

to believe that IngersoU himself

would have objected to All that

Whitman

merely

"divinities other than

spiritual, ideal,

rejects because

God."

or intellectual,

not sufficiently hu-

man, does not represent the whole man. In

many

passages this thought of the all-impor-

man recurs. we can never

Undoubtedly the

tance of the whole

—

following

which

—

read too often

the best:

When When When

the psalm sings instead of the singer. the script preaches instead of the preacher.

the pulpit descends and goes instead of the

carver that carved the supporting desk.

When

can touch the body of books by night or by when they touch my body back again.

day, and

When

a university course convinces

woman and child convince. When the minted gold in the night-watchman's daughter.

a slumbering

vault smiles like the

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

When

warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and friendly companions, intend to reach them my hand, and make as much

are

of them as I do of

men and women

like you.^

in this exaltation of life itself, of sheer

personality, as against everything that limits or restricts

it,

that

Whitman

develops his well-known

power and that abandon which confounds

poetic

merely rational analysis.

all

We can see this thought at its

best,

and

in a con-

densed form, in Whitman's description of the poet:

no arguer, he

judgment (Nature accepts him

absolutely),

judges not as the judge judges but as the sun

falling

As he

round a helpless thing.

most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.^ sees the farthest he has the

It is

unnecessary to dwell either upon the poetry

or upon the democracy of such passages as these.

But Whitman is more than a mere idealist of democracy he is a militant partizan. His revolutionary spirit is shown, both in his poems and in some

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

of his conversations with Traubel just before his death, to have proceeded very

general public realizes.

much

further than the

Could any rational revo-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

go farther than Whitman did

lutionist

sage

"To

in his

mes-

the States":

the States or any one of them, or any city of the

States, Resist

much, obey

little.

Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward

man's

resumes

its liberty.

(Whit-

italics.)

Not only was Whitman a tant rebel

and believed

was opposed

was a

rebel but he

in fighting.

to war, but the Civil

mili-

course he

War, being

di-

rected against slavery, was to him a righteous war, though he is filled with sympathy rather than hatred towards that South with which he was engaged in a life and death struggle.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

Slavery

^the

murderous, treacherous conspiracy to

upon the ruins of all the rest. On and on to the grapple with it Assassin! then your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more. raise

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

(Lo, high toward heaven, this day, Libertad,

from the conqueress'

field return'd,

mark the new aureola around your head. No more of soft stral, but dazzling and fierce. With war's flames and the lambent lightnings I

ing,

And your

port immovable where you stand.

play-

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

With

still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist, And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scomer utterly crush'd beneath you. The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous

knife.

The

wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yes-

terday do so much,

To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all

the earth.

offal rank, to the dunghill

maggots spurn'd.)*

That Whitman was a rebel both by temperament and conviction we can see also in his lines in which he pictures the "free city,"

Where Where

the

men and women

think lightly of the laws.

the slave ceases, and the master of slaves

ceases.

Where

the populace rise at once against the neverending audacity of elected persons, Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves.*

So we find that by opposition to laws Whitman means nothing less than readiness to enter into actual physical

combat against them.

All aspects of present civilization, since

all

are

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

come under the criticism of So Whitman demands that the individual shall examine each and every part of the culture that is handed down to him and be ready

connected, necessarily the revolutionist.

to reject

it all:

Are you not

some

some school or mere

coterie?

religion ?

Are you done with reviews and animating

Has

now

to life itself?

politicians, literats, of enemies'

still

not dangled long at the heels of the poets,

Does

criticisms of life?

not assume that what

lands? notoriously gone

His conception of

liberty,

and

still

his con-

ception of equality, prove that his democracy absolute.

God!

here?Â°

Consider only his exclamation:

I will accept

nothing which

their counterpart of

of Myself").

all

"By

cannot have

on the same terms" ("Song-

large part of his writing

may

be regarded as nothing else than an elaboration of this passionate declaration,

must admit that in all up to this principle of

his

and any sincere student work and Ufe he lived

social equality.

Perhaps even more fundamental in Whitman's thinking than this insistence upon social equality, is

his

faith in the future of

men; the

past

the present are not to be allowed to block the

and

way

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY What I

launch the

known I strip away, all men and women forward with me

into

Unknown.*

Nearly everybody feels the inspiration of Whitman's poetry. The majority admit the essential soundness and the depth of his democratic message. But many persons now believe that both Whitman and his social philosophy were limited by time and place. They feel that he was an extremist in his Americanism and that he grasped and appealed to the people of his time rather than to our generation. We shall examine the measure of truth contained in this view in the following chapter. The present book has been written because of the belief that if Whitman's message is to have its full effect, it must indeed be re-stated over and over again ^as Whit-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

man

himself proclaimed.

But before we try to pass beyond the farthest point reached by Whitman, before we enquire if any one has successfully attempted to develop his thought and enlarge the world he gave us, we must be sure that we do full justice to his work. And many of the conversations written down by Traubel show that he was not only far from being provincially American, but that he was equally far from ignoring the new civilization that was just foreshadowing itself in his later days and is only now becoming a practical certainty of the not distant future.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

Whitman's

Americanism exalted the United it was a great free space belonging to the whole world, where democracy could and would be most easily and quickly developed. In this great field neither Americans nor American traditions were to be preferred. They must take an even chance with the immigrants and their civilizations so far as these were suited to survive under the free and democratic conditions of humanStates chiefly because

ity's

newest area of development.

When

—

one of his visitors in 1888, the date of Memoirs" proposed that immigra-

the "Traubel

—

tion should be restricted

Whitman made

this vig-

orous protest:

—

In that narrow sense I am no American count me Restrict nothing ^keep everything open: to Italy, to China, to anybody. I love America, I be-

—

out.

America, because her belly can hold and digest socialist, peacemakers, fighters, dis-

lieve in all

—anarchist,

—

^hold and America could not do this as between our institutions and

turbers or degenerates of whatever sort digest

all.

If I felt that

I would be indifferent any others. America is not

she

all in all

—the sum

total

only to contribute her contribution to the big

scheme.^

thought occurs more frequently in Whitman's

conversations during the period recorded by Traubel

(in

"Walt Whitman

Camden") than

this:

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

—

America is for one thing only and if not for what? America must welcome all Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not.*

—

that for

Both Whitman's democracy and his Americanism and to him they were one and the same thing led him to a standpoint that embraced the whole world and all humanity. "Real democracy," he declared, meant "a world democracy" (Vol. II, p. 317) and he asked "Can any sound man believe in a (Vol. patriotism that means 'America alone?'" Ill, p. 160.) Here is another passage where the same thought occurs:

—

No man that he

a democrat, a true democrat,

asks only, what is

best for

—

man the whole Camden only ? No

best for

zen of

who

forgets

Who

interested in the welfare of the race.

America? instead of what of

—

^no,

man?

man And if

Is a

indeed.

citi-

not of

Camden, not of New Jersey, nor even of America. No—no—no—no: a man is no democrat if he takes the narrow in preference to the broad view. He may talk of democracy, of the people, but false

—nothing but nuts

it's all

—

lie

all

crackling under a pot.'

Not only was Whitman thoroughly in his outlook, but as a

democrat he

international felt that

the

peoples could be relied upon to bring about a world

and that there were already premonitory symptoms of a "general, divine war," which would federation,

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

overthrow the tyrannies that stand in the way of this great consummation. In his poem, "Years of the Modem," he asks

What

whispers are these,

lands,

running ahead

of you, passing under the seas ?

Are

all

nations

communing?

Is there

going to be

but one heart to the globe?

humanity forming en masse? for lo, tyrants tremcrowns grow dim; The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a

ble,

general divine war.

The perform'd America and Europe grow dim,

retir-

ing in shadow behind me.

The unperform'd more

gigantic than ever, advance,

advance upon me.

In his internationalism Whitman was both pracand uncompromising. For example, he had no

tical

feeling against the

Negroes.

believed

they

would be eliminated like the Indians, and that their blood would become mingled with that of the whites. In these views he faced what he considered to be the truth entirely aside from his personal feeling about it. For he was an ardent admirer of mixed breeds. He describes and lauds the "creoles" of New Orleans, and then concludes: have considered the problem from all sides. It wonderful the readiness with which French and

I is

— :

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

—

Negro, or Spanish and Negro, will marry interand the results are always good. It is the same with the Injun and Nigger ^they too will ask lock

—

no questions:

they,

achieve

too,

equally

fine

re-

productivities.^"

So we

Whitman's internationalism was, But it was also practical. He realized that if the nations continued to build up artificial barriers hostility would result, while free intercourse would lead inevitably towards a worldstate. So he rejected national egoism or nationalsee that

indeed, universal.

Traubel records him as follows:

ism absolutely. "I

for free trade

—absolute

federation of the world.

free trade: for the

"But isn't it our first duty to take care of ourselves "Yes that's right," replied W. our America?" "Take care of your family, your state, your nation

—

from a certain standpoint: some people seem ordained to care for one man, for a dozen men, for a single nation and some other people of whom I hope I am one to care for them all. All sounds so damned much better than one don't you think ? The

that's right

—

whole business done at once instead of a little patch of it here and there! I don't want the brotherhood of the world to be so long a-coming. I can wait till but if I can hurry it it comes it is sure to come by a day or so I am going to do so." "

—

It is true that

—

Whitman

bases his international

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

conception of Americanism largely on the exist-

ence

—

^at

least in his

—of an empire of unoc-

days

cupied land in this country (Vol.

we cannot doubt

II, p.

deeper roots than

this.

If he

had

But had far

34).

that his internationalism

lived to reach

our conclusion that the world cannot go on indefinitely making small farmers out of its surplus population, there is

no ground whatever to suppose that

he would have deserted his democracy or his inter-

some very definite evidence for believing that his economic and social ideas would have become more radical and more Socialistic, the direction in which they were nationalism on this account, and there

tending in his later days. For one part of his creed of Americanism, as

America was destined to do far more difficult problems This is in the ^future than it had in the past. another* view that is constantly repeated in his conhave

seep,

was

that

greater things, to solve far

versations with Traubel: «•

America

is yet to achieve things of which these dream! All the real problems, the fundamentals, are yet ahead of us will have to be tackled by us or by our children or theirs: not skin-ticklers, like the tariff, but life and death challenges which will line us up fiercely on this side or that.^^

men

little

And Whitman

—

indicated very definitely

what the

nature of these "real, fundamental problems" was:

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY we

Against the things

I see other,

call successes

counter, tendencies working

—an

increased indisposi-

do the honest labor of the money powers against the fraternity of the masses. Either one of these might, both of them are sure, to ruin the republic, tion of certain classes to

world, and the solidification of the

nothing appears to contravene them.

So when Traubel always to the

last

talked Socialism to

degree responsive.

him he was Traubel re-

ports :

"Walt, you'll be a revolutionist yet!"

I said:

was grave over it. "I have been: haven't I been?" Then he shook his head: "I see a stirring time coming but I won't be in

—

it but you'll be in it you're in have to fight big enough for us both I'll steady your right arm you'll feel me with you." Then he added: "I do not forget what you drove

already

you'll

—

day before ^that what want too: what you youngsters want is you want what I want too: I never had it driven at me in just that way before, but now that you have done it realize that you are nearer right than I have been in some of my suppositions." ^* so hard at

yesterday

^the

Whitman was

fully alive to the existence of the"'

though in America

non-existent in his youth,

it was almost and was only beginning to

become important in "the gap between the

and the poor" was "grow-

"social problem,"

his old age. rich

realized that

— :

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

ing worse and worse" and was fully prepared for a revolutionary solution (Vol.

II, p.

Indeed he

282).

seemed on the very verge of Socialism, though ^wholly opposed to the idea of a Socialist Party. He explained himself on this last point as follows

The

it is

not embrace

some day will

—^perhaps

now

fortunes

be the

wrung from

is all

—

that's the

It is getting to

it.

will

have to look out

That

was not up then

labor question

times] as

all

live

[in Civil

War

reason I did

be a live question

—then

question

—

somebody

especially the bodies with big

the sweat and blood of the poor. it so.

Yet

do not

feel as if I

belonged to any one party .^*

At this time (1887) there was no Socialist movement of any moment either in America or England. But even if there had been, we have every reason to believe that Whitman would have refused it his support, however strong might have been his 53^1pathy with its principles. For he was personally a fervent individualist: not an organization man, he was opposed to all movements of a partizan character no matter how democratic or popular they might This is one of the characteristics in which he be. differs most profoundly from Traubel.^ The reason is

not far to seek.

Nearly everybody in

this

coun-

try claimed to be a radical democrat in those days;

and usually with considerable plausibility. Americans who were privileged and regarded themselves

;

THE POET OF DEMOCRACY

numbers a generation ago now the outspoken opponents of democracy are numbered by the millions. Yet we must necessarily take Whitman as he was when he lived, not as he probably would be if he were alive to-day. And, after all, he was not a The nature of his socialist but an individualist.

as such were very

few

individualism

shall

chapter.

discuss

the

following

THE

TXT HITMAN

INDIVIDUALIST

believed without qualification in

democracy and equal opportunity. In the deepest sense he was a social democrat. But he did ' *

not contemplate social solutions for political prob-

lems and was even unaware of the existence of a social

was

problem

until his later years.

His outlook

subject, necessarily, to the limitations of his

generation.

Moreover, an ultra-sympathetic nature

Whitman's is influenced not only by the conditions and opinions of its time, but still more deeply and subtly by the human types, the characteristics and feelings these conditions had produced. Consequently he was an individualist not only in his politics but even in his feelings and his subconscious self. The people of his time were nearly all individualists of one kind or another therefore he was like

;

the ultra, arch, universal individualist.

Two

of the dominant notes of his work

ciently characterize his social

suffi-

^his

in-

and comradeship are the soluproblems, and his optimism, which

sistence that love

tion of all social

philosophyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

THE INDIVIDUALIST

was

so extreme that it apparently excluded the need for any great social change.

offered

"fervid comradeship"

"the

counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and

vulgar American democracy" and exposed his meaning fully

when he

said that this comradeship

to rival in intensity "amative love," that

was the

attraction between the sexes.

Such a simple and exclusive solution of humanby the regeneration of the individual

it/ s problems

precludes faulty

all

social

interest

in or effective criticism of

Whitman

arrangements.

existing institutions

and

attacked

culture ceaselessly, but he

never reached the conclusion that opinions,

feel-

and character of the individual are themselves largely the result of social conditions and that a

ings,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

universal "fervid comradeship" cannot arise with-

out a revolutionary change in the social system.

And Whitman's optimism it

reached a point where

threatened to extinguish that "divine discontent"

which underlies

all

progress.

see this in the

lines

And

I or

you pocketless of a dime may purchase

the pick of the earth.

And

to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times. And there is no trade or employment hut the young man following it may become a hero,

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

And

there

no object so soft but

[My

the wheel'd universe.^^

The

lines I

have placed

makes a hub for

italics.]

in italics clearly preach

The need of an democracy was certainly not fully realized by the individual who held the key to the whole universe on such easy terms as these. We see the same thought again in the lines contentment to the poorer

classes.

industrial or social

They go! they go!

know

that they go, but I

not where they go,

But

know

something

If all are in the

know

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;^toward

that they go toward the best great.^'

headed for the

wrong

best, if

direction, then

why

nobody

should

ourselves about the future of democracy?

cord with this universal toleration

going

trouble

In ac-

Whitman has

kind word even for the reactionary and anti-democrat.

In theory, that

though he

is,

he will not blame them

ready to have them

killed,

as his

War

(above

unqualified endorsement of the Civil

quoted)

demonstrates.

Indeed

doctrine of universal love

optimism are largely

and sincerely

felt,

but

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

both

Whitman's

and that of universal

They are deeply him tangled up with

theoretical.

find

the current metaphysics of his generation, which

he evidently adopted bodily and without any serious

THE INDIVIDUAUST

That is, his social panaceas of love and optimism represent genuine intellectual conclusions and convictions, but they do not disclose his deepest nature, his personality for they were shared with countless other Americans of his day (and ours) who neither brought any such message as his nor were ready to receive it when it arrived. Intellectually Whitman seemed to accept even that thoroughly undemocratic doctrine of metaphysical idealism, which was implicit in the American criticism.

;

thought of his day, as

see in the

following

passage

The culmination and pression,

and

fruit of literary artistic ex-

its final fields

of pleasure for the

human

soul, are in metaphysics, including the mysteries of

the spiritual world, the soul

itself,

and the question In

all

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and

al-

of the immortal continuation of our identity. ages, the

ways

mind of man has brought up here Here, at

will.

stand on

common

least,

of whatever race or era,

ground.^'

This reads to us to-day as if it were written a In another passage there is a

thousand years ago. regular

summary

of the leading abstractions of past

ages, the very abstractions

which are the center of

attack for the democratic philosophy of our time:

And manent

to the consciousness of the soul, the per-

identity, the thought, the something,

before

—

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

which the magnitude even of democracy, art, literature, etc., dwindles, becomes partial, measurable something that fully satisfies (which those do not). That something is the All, and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the buoyant, indestructible,

soul,

space forever,

sailing

visiting every region, as a ship the sea.^*

This philosophical Absolutism,

this finality,

has

been found to be the most serviceable of intellectual tools for leading the people ties

of real

life,

away from

the infini-

makNobody has

for confusing their minds, for

ing them satisfied

—with

abstractions.

more strongly on the good of material life, possibilities of the future on this than did Whitman. He simply failed to

insisted

on the boundless earth,

see the contrary implications of the current meta-

—which he had made own. We must not leave the impression, however, that Whitman was —even metaphy-

physics

his

in his

retrogressive^

sics.

The

all is

that his personality

really important thing to be noted after is

always larger than his

—

and nearly always dominates them. Only a few pages further on from the passage I have just

ideas

quoted he returns to his thoroughly revolutionary

—diametrically opposed to

thought

For you too (America) as for ,

gle,

all

the traitor, the wily person in

all

permanence

lands, the strugofifice,

wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the

scrofulous

demonism of

THE INDIVIDUAUST

greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long

postponement, the

fossil-like

lethargy,

the ceaseless

need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections and invigorations of ideas and

men."

[My

italics.]

when addressing

and other Greek writers, Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Kant and HeSimilarly,

founders of

religions,

the

Christ

great

gel, l^esays:

Ye powerful and resplendent ones! Ye were, in your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the feudal and the old while our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New World's nostrils not to enslave us, as now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own perhaps (dare we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy, what you yourselves have left! On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, must we mete and measure for to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic despots of the west '"'

—

It is difficult

indeed to escape the impression from

and other passages that Whitman believed that we are on the verge of an entirely new civilization and a new age far in advance of the America of this

—

his day.

stands for outright rebellion, for the

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

populace "that rise up at once against the never-

ending audacity of elected persons," for "the ceaseless

need of revolutions, prophets, thunderstorms,

new

birth, death,

projections and invigorations of

the ideas of man," and for the destruction of the old culture.

But when we ask what of the old civilization

cept a sort of

knew

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

to be put in the place

find nothing definite, ex-

America he Asked by Traubel

idealization of the

that of 1840 to 1890.

whether he saw a way out of our social problem he replied, "I look forward to a world of small owners." Traubel asked him whether a world of no owners at all was not better, and insisted on an an-

swer.

Whitman

first

haven't thought best

Could

admitted

out:

made

"I don't know.

said:

sounds best: could it be work ?" But he finally

"I have to believe

don't believe

if I

that I couldn't believe anything."

(Vol. Ill,

315-)

The

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

even in this instance was not ism only as an ultimate society tical relation to the immediate future. probably his real feeling

"Sometimes, is

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

That

this

indicated by a state-

later

I think, I feel

the next thing coming.

ways yet

Whitman admitting communwithout much prac-

question at once arises whether

was ment made a few days

almost sure, Socialism

shrink

from

looks like our only hope."

some

THE INDIVIDUALIST In a word,

Whitman admitted

the probability

of Socialism, but assumed no positive relation to-

wards

it.

How then,

did he propose to bring about the great

revolution he expected?

show

The means he chooses

that he failed entirely to realize the true nature

For he refuses to put his modern popular movements and calls instead for "orbic bards" in place of the modern "cause," he preaches a modernized revival of Hebrew proof the change to come. faith in

;

phecy.

is,

in fact, almost a hero-worshiper, almost

a believer in the great man theory, though the hero with Whitman is a prophet-bard instead of a statesman-soldier. shall

In his future America "the Presidents

not be the

common

referees so

much

as that

great race of poets shall" and in preparation for this great function.

he claims,

Whitman's own scope of

life,

"the amplest of any yet in philosophy."

Yet, in apparent contradiction, this spiritual autocrat

and law-giver

a democrat.

"For every atom

belonging to me, as good belongs to you."

Here we

see into the very heart of

Whitman's

His role as the prophet of a new democracy makes him take himself as the standard and the leader. No words can describe He contains all his greatness and imiversality. social philosophy.

religion of

characters and experiences in himself.

are "as good" as he.

That

is,

all

But others

are essentially

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

There are in reality no individuals in Whitman's world, only the indimdiiol. The only difference between persons is difference in size, as he definitely states. Individuals are all commensurate,

alike.

larger or smaller, better or worse,

development," that

is,

and

"size is only

requires nothing but time and

Essentially all persons have the

opportunity.

same

Their differences arise chiefly from varying experiences. And these experiences are potentialities.

due to the accidents either of geographical location

Hence the

or of emplo)rment.

crucial importance

ascribed to geography and to occupations in

Whitman's

writings.

Man

uals, there is only

And

There

Whitman

Eire really

all

no individ-

in his varying occupations.

feels the

employments, under-

stands them as perhaps no poet or writer ever did before.

All

human

differences

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

^with the exception

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

temperament ^being they become traced to occupations, the source of the most profound and endless romance. But the strength of Whitman's social philosophy of

general

differences

also its weakness.

be essentially

alike,

As individuals are supposed to human relations are supposed

to be essentially alike, type.

Whatever

and

all

are reduced to one

their occupations, all

human

be-

and no variation of any moment. Even difference

ings are, or should be, comrades,

of this relation

of sex

not to sub-divide this type-relation.

It follows that

Whitman's concept of

social rela-

THE INDIVIDUAUST tions

and of society

as simplified and defective

Human

as his concept of individuals.

beings are

two by two. The manifold forms of interdependence of the members of larger social groups and of communities are entirely secondary and must not materially modify the "comrade" relationship. Society as an organized community is related

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

really non-existent.

And,

finally, this

romantic interest in occupations

tion.

him frequently into an ultra-conservative posiFor he assumes that in America every occupa-

tion

leads

desirable

"Every employment

as every other

adorned."

This

occupation. is

the essen-

and work. It is on of a par with the effort Carlyle and the Tory democrats to keep the lower classes contented by telling tial social

philosophy of his

life

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

them that all work is honorable ^though, of course, Whitman's motives were the very opposite to theirs, and he was led into this radically false view by his intense sociability and the traditional theories of abstract democracy of the small property holders.

the end of his life he failed to recognize the

overwhelming influence of conditions. When he "My leanings are all towards the said to Traubel radicals: but I am not in any proper sense of the word a revolutionnaire. ... I have always had a :

latent toleration for people

essential position.

who

choose the reac-

193), he expressed his Individuals, in so far as they

tionary course" (Vol.

— WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

32 differ

fundamentally, are prcxiucts of their

own

Temperament and mental idiosyncrasy and

wills.

not occupation decide whether a or a reactionary.

They both

man

a radical

freely "choose" their

course, and so (doubtless) the truth lies somewhere between them. This was the general view of Americans in Whitman's time and is the prevailing view even to-day, though obviously it is

true only of differences within a given social class.

many

logical" called

it,

passages

social

Whitman

philosophy,

returns to this "ideo-

Marx would have

the diametrical opposite, that

is,

of the

view that prevails to-day, not only among Socialists, radicals, social reformers, business men and econo-

among the majority of the population many countries. Underneath politics, we are told

mists, but even in

memoirs as well as in Whitman's prose and poetry, are "spiritual" forces; "The spiritual subtle, unseen, influences back of ever)rthing else finally arbitrate mainly discredited they invisible, the social order. That strange, inarticulate, force in Traubel's

—

is.

—

not less operative in the institutions of society

in politics, literature, music, science, art

(Vol.

the physical realm."

II, p.

Yet one of the main currents thought, as

see

even in

the above quotation

—than

84.)

Whitman's the context from which in

taken, is his recognition of

the importance of the material world.

How

to account for this seeming contradiction?

are

Whit-

THE INDIVIDUALIST man

often recognized fully the importance of the

—

but he usually gave a preferred position to the psychological and only rarely did he harmonize the two. And, morephysiological side to the individual^

over,

when he

did harmonize the

two

—

aspects of our

nature he rarely applied this inclusive standpoint to the economic problems of society, to the material

things logical

upon which both physiological and psychodevelopment are so largely dependent. His

discovery of the vast importance of the material

universe was somewhat of a novelty in his time.

failed to

work out

all

the implications of this

very revolutionary discovery, because he was forced to spend a large part of his energy in defending

even the half-way position he had reached.

At times he recognizes the importance of economic forces. But forthwith he apologetically explains them as only one among countless other factors.

see this in the following passage

One of the painful facts in connection with this human misery a fact insisted upon by the men who know most and who know what to do with their

—

knowledge is that the evil cannot be remedied by any one change, one reform, or even half a dozen changes and reforms, but must be accomplished by countless forces working towards the one effect. Hygiene will help oh help much. But how will we get our hygiene ? I am quite well aware that there are economic considerations, also, to be taken into account.

—

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

It strikes

again, as

always has struck me, that

the whole business finally comes back to the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;not

body

good

back to wealth, to poverty, but to the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the sane,

strong body

sufficient

body.

would agree with me, as I agree with the scientists, that a beautiful, competent, sufficing body is the prime force making towards I think all the scientists

the virtues in civilization,

life,

history.

think I

now

see better what you mean when you speak of the

economic problems as coming before all the rest and though I have not stated it in that extreme way myself I

do not doubt your position:

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;real

have great faith

science: the science that

in science

the sci-

ence of the soul as well as the science of the body

(you know, many the soul)

Here

men

of half sciences seem to forget

^^ .

a bundle of strange contradictions.

physiological

all

important,

The

he says, hygiene

a recognition of the very Yet wealth and poverty, he holds, are of little account, and he gives to economic considerations a wholly subordinate role. The same contradictions appear at times in his scarcely less so. basis of the

This

economic view.

views with regard to social evolution. able passages

human

racy:

he seems to deny the evolution both

individuals

thing great

In innumer-

and of human society; everyand eternal, even democ-

spiritual

THE INDIVIDUALIST Take Democracy, for

instance:

the average American, thinks he has a

The American, new idea. The

is that even our proud modern definitions of democracy are antiquated can be heard reflected in the language of the Elizabethan period in England in the atmosphere created by Bacon, Ben Jonson, and the rest of that crowd. I would not like to say there might not have been latent in the utterances of that group of men the seed stuff of our American liberty not to speak of the still older suggestions of it to be found in Greek and Roman

truth

—

sources.''^

need scarcely be pointed out that there was and could be no real democracy in Greece, Rome, or It

Elizabethan England.

Whitman's

social philosophy

was

still

the Utopian

individualism of the eighteenth century.

be-

lieved in the "Idea" of the bard rather than in the

movement of ceiving'

the age.

far

was he from con-

social evolution that as late

1872 he

actually said that "our political organization is firmly

established as far ahead as we can calculate." And he failed altogether to realize that even "science" and "democracy" would have to be revolutionized and socialized, before they could serve as the basis

of a real social democracy.

There are other passages where he gives us to understand that in America all political and social evolution has ceased, our constitution and political

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

institutions

having reached perfection.

In America

are "the only stable forms of politics upon the

earth" and in the United States "no innovations

must be permitted on the stern severities of our liberty and equality." No more fatal fallacy is conceivable than this idea of Whitman's that the America of small property owners that he knew was already leading the world into a new civilization. America may indeed come to lead the world, but this can only be in proportion as she moves as far away as possible from the civilization of small farms, in which she was merely repeating the early experience of other countries,

she

towards that organization of industry where

may yet become a

real pioneer.

He was blind

the obvious truth that, while the geographical and

physical conquest of the continent by the pioneers

paved the way

for

civilization,

reduced

the

pioneers themselves in large measure to primitive

mere primitive men. In many essenways their tasks and manner of life were the same as those of the barbarian pioneers of ancient Germany, for example, and of all other pioneers since the dawn of civilization. Whitman was thus functions, to

tial

led to a complete reversal of the fundamental eco-

nomic truth. For, as a matter of fact, in so far as the Americans were mere pioneers they were necessarily centuries or even millenniums behind the Europeans.

THE INDIVIDUALIST Yet here again, fortunately,

Whitman

times

inconsistency.

clearly recognized the evolution of

and the influence of this evolution over ideas A good illustration is in his changing views about Emerson, who was undoubtedly the writer and philosopher who most influenced him. In 1872, he wrote in a letter: society

and

ideals.

Emerson has

just

been

this

way

lecturing.

maintains about the same attitude as twenty-five or (1842-1847, the period of Emer-

years ago

thirty

seems to me pretty thin. Immense upheavals have occurred since then, putting the world son's essays).

into

new

relations.^'

Yet on several occasions during Traubel's conversations in 1888 Whitman used terms of the most extreme praise with regard to Emerson referring to him as being "always right" and "almost ulti-

—

mate."

This seemed to be a lapse into Whitman's earliest feeling for Emerson, acquired before the war, and

on October 4th of the same year (1888) we find him taking up once more the view of his maturity, After having read a little from that of 1872. Emerson he said

I read,

an old feeling came back to

ing returned after the lapse of that the

book

little,

many

just a

little,

—a —a feeling

years

antique.

feel-

Then

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

And

and some evident thought:

after a brief pause

here and there signs of preaching

—

^just

little

it:

don't you perceive it?^*

One might Emerson

say that Whitman's reverence for

—and

that

all

—was

Emerson stood for

such as to make a very severe test for his moral courage; and few

men have more

clearly

had the

courage of their convictions in most directions. perceived, in 1872, that

Emerson

lectual leaders of past generations),

mean

less

and

less to

(like all intel-

must begin to His

us as the years go by.

was

consciousness of this fact

equally strong in

1888, but he hardly had the courage to give voice to his conviction.

awe was

that

justified

tellectual

was nothing less than intellectual feeling that felt for Emerson

—

Whitman

both on the ground of the

attainments

Whitman's purely inferior.

trusted his

and capacity and because

intellectual

Nevertheless

development was far

Whitman

feeling about

would not match

latter's in-

might Emerson, even

have he

his intellect against him.

We can only conclude either that Whitman never fully realized the great truth that all ideas

and

ideals are mortal, the products of social evolution,

and

—or

lose their significance with time

that he

did not wish to face this truth, in view of possible application to his

own work.

its

Ill

HORACE TRAUBEL, Forerunner of a

New

Literature

A WHOLE new world has been born since Whit^

man's days and Traubel George D. Herron. *â&#x20AC;˘,

"Whitman this.

of this world," says

himself would be the

Traubel walks

first

in the light of

to recoghize

a social vision

which had not broken upon man even when Whitman went out into the larger quest."

work of Whitman and Trau^ bel will strikie the reader on nearly every page. But the differences are no less vital. The most fundaSimilarities in the

mental distinction

undoubtedly the fact that Trau-

bel is a Socialist, a part of the democratic

movement,

"the outspoken advocate and herald of ism," as a

German

critic

Traubel says that

expresses

Whitman

commun-

it.

felt that

to stand for

any particular movement, no matter how just it might be, was to limit himself, while he feels, on the contrary, that

a writer

ought to be able to keep

all

strong enough, he

of Whitman's breadth of

— WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

and yet be a partisan of a cause on which and of all the future of democracy humanity depends. vision

—

he believes

—

With is

fundamental contrast of viewpoint

this

impossible that Traubel should be a mere disci-

ple of

Whitman's.

When some one compared Mase-

Whitman recently, Traubel made a protest which shows how he feels about such a relationship:

field to

Some one has spoke of John Masefield as the Walt Whitman of 1912. Which means don't it? that Walt Whitman was the John Masefield of 1855. This is like killing two men with one shot. But why kill anybody ? Why kill Whitman with Masefield or Mase^° field with Whitman ? Why not let them both live ?

—

course there can be no question that Trau-

bel's chief significance to the

the present has been that he interpreter of

general public up to

the foremost living

Whitman's work and

the chief continuator of

many

life,

as well as

of his ideas and

lit-

But Traubel has developed along both lines. And, moreover, he already stands to a large and growing public for another thing as important as this noteworthy development of Whitmanism; he is probably the leading writer in this country, if not in the world, whose work is completely saturated with Socialism and, indeed, grows erary innovations.

exclusively out of Socialism, in the broader sense of

the

word^

seems that in Traubel

we have

at last

HORACE TRAUBEL

a forerunner of those Socialist writers destined,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;not

ture

writers of the

dentally Socialists (of Socialists

who

are pre-

are ever to have a Socialist cul-

rank

first

whom

who

there are

are inci-

many) nor

are able writers incidentally, but So-

cialist-writers or writer-Socialists,

eminent in either capacity.

who

are equally

If Traubel is indeed a

forerunner of the literature of the future in this sense, his appearance has

an almost revolutionary

For as Herron has pointed

significance.

out, the

purely literary product of such Socialist writers as William

writings)

Morris

(as opposed to their social

did not spring from the social move-

ment.

The

contrast between Traubel's standpoint

that of Morris has been self,

when he

and drawn by Traubel him-

says of Morris:

His speculative Utopias were wonderful. But he They were not made for mortal men and women but for immortal superpeople. I don't mean by this that he went too far. He went far enough with his dreams. But he didn't go far enough with his facts. He felj that he was dreaming beyond truth. But I can see all kinds of truth beyond any possible, dreams. I have such faith in the democracy that I expect to see it so expanded as to make the best man's best dream vulgar and couldn't have lived in them.

belated."'

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

The

inspiration of Morris arose out of his be-

what can be done with the people Traucomes from what the people are doing with themselves. He is not an idealist, he is liefs as to

;

bel's inspiration

realist.

Nothing can better suggest Traubel's view of erature than his

own

lit-

passionate reaction against

the literature and the writers of the present day.

recent address to contemporary poets

magnificently

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;both

his

own

shows

position and the nature

of this reaction:

You who put words on yourselves You to whom a trust is given have

as chains.

betrayed

believe in the sacredness of the word. to live.

want words

be creators. Some writers that they can't say "and " or "the" or

want words

are so vital

it.

There are some writers

"but" without thrilling you.

so dead they can't say immortality without a funeral. I

want the

How

living word.

can I get

it?

using words instead of being used by words.

speaking out of

By not trying Words are

heart instead of out of books.

to write.

Words

way

are

living.

Words

are

are the fog

the cant of our religion.

the sophistry of our law. lose our

Words

We'd be safe if our peril. Words are in.

By By

wasn't for words.

the obstacles in the

you want to be understood don't talk. Whatever you have to say, don't trust it to words. way.

Try not

to try.

... To be considered

clever.

To be

HORACE TRAUBEL a best

To go

seller.

into

many editions. To be inTo be asked to write

vited to lecture in colleges.

for the magazines.

you use words

erary four hundred.

word^?

life

You

Giving them to

Making them Not trying to ing

be in demand. That's what as to be listed in the litWhat are you doing with

for.

or giving

counterfeit or keeping

get life from words?

them to death? them genuine? But rather giv-

words?

writers

to write.

life

who

are trying to write.

Then you can

ing take care of

a work of

itself.

You

art.

write. .

Live.

You

Stop trying' Let the writ-

are not to produce

are to produce a

work of

life.

You've got to give up everything to get life. The whole language if necessary. The whole fabric .

of delicate grace.

rhymes and

All the flowers of speech. All the niceties of

lilts.

All the

manner and

They must all go. All You've not only got to be free of

the assurances of routine. effort

must

go.

the alphabet.

And

not only free of the traditions.

But you've got to You've got to cease trying. You've got to get where you have stopped caring or not not only free of the cliques.

be free of

effort.

caring.^'

You wonder why the people don't care for what you say. I'll tell you why. Because the people are more interested in how you live than in what you You don't talk out of your lives. You talk say. out of books.

You

You are begYou don't build

are not creators.

gars and borrowers and stealers.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

You

from foundations.

You

walls.

only hang flowers on the

are decorators.

That

the reason the

away from you. You first turned away from the people. The poets meet together and tell each other what a poor lot the people are.

people have turned

How much little

the people need to be educated.

the people

How

know

How

of essentials in the spiritual

great a gap there

is between the culand the culturally damned. How glorious it would be to have a world of poets rather than a world of people.". Poetry is no place for a man. It is only a place for a poet.^'

realm.

turally saved

Traubel

is neither

a privileged educated

He will

a poet's poet nor the poet of class.

not confine his

work

a people's

poet.

to themes usually con-

sidered poetic, he will take in all the deeper larger interests of

and

man

Before books and after books is the human soul, Before the beauty and eminence of that which is written is the superior beauty and eminence of that which is written about, Before the magnificence of the greatest book comes the majesty of the meanest soul.^Â°

And in

the

human

which we are

soul, in

a period such as that

living, expresses itself tnost fully

some relation with the social movement of the and is necesssarily most deeply concerned with the tremendous social revolution that is impending in

times,

HORACE TRAUBEL am

the courier

hailed as

regeneration.

and promise of

social

Drilled not by schools and traditions but in the

stem

clash of revolt.*"

might be supposed that Traubel's radicalism merely the now familiar radicalism of half the

It is

poets and writers of the day ; but he

vague and well-meaning radical,

not merely a

a militant His criticism of Masefield, a typical

revolutionist.

would apply to

radical,

the

all

rest.

complains

that they are not democrats in their inner being,

but merely strive to become democrats, and do democracy the honor of making it their ideal: It

seems

like literary

slumming.

Like the humor

who

put off their laces for a night and go into the east sides or south sides of cities for experience. You can't enter the temple by such a door. of the people

Starving yourslf to death starved to death.

not the same as being

.'^

Traubel does not believe that there

any such

thing as poetry as a separate entity apart from

His view amounts to a complete we have hitherto considered as poetry and art: all

the rest of

life.

rejection of nearly everything that

Do you

help

to live?

That

the question I

ask the author. ... All other possible questions stand

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

I do not ask any man: Are; That will determine itself. I ask you know how to live ? Living is the

aside for this question.

you an every

artist?

man Do :

only sufficient

All other art falls short.

art.

you pour yourself out generating conviction ?

to the

world

in floods of re-

what Spinoza said of religion. To deny it. ... I don't get enjoyment out of poetry whether or no. I get it out of life. If you can get life into a poem or a picture or a song, I enjoy it. I don't enjoy it as a poem or a picture. I enjoy it as life. If you don't bring me life you bring me nothing. If you bring me art for art's sake. If you bring me beauty that's its own excuse for being. I still say no. I can't get on to it. I say of poetry

define

know

life for life's sake.

know

own

life as its

But your detached mechanisms and your segregated graces miss the mark. All the poems excuse for being.

may

die.

And

all

poetry

when

may

left.

What

it is

something somebody says or writes I can't say. That thing working that way in my blood may be poetry in action. But if you ask me to put it to the proof I yield the case. I

that happens

don't

I like

know what a man is. How should I know what You can't confine poetry to words. But

poetry is?

you can confine then poetry

life.

creation.

may

phrases.

you enjoy

life

then you enjoy poetry.

into things. ries

put

itself

Gets behind things.

on ahead.

the maker

put

itself into

If the poet

Creation

into processes.

The

Goes to

poet gets

roots.

Hur-

Participates in the infinite reactions

HORACE TRAUBEL of phenomena. called jpoetry

...

doubt

what

47 traditionally

to-day will go by that

name

in the

future.''

Traubel

perfectly

aware that

his

work

not

all

poetry in the old sense of the term, but suggests that it

may

What

be more welcome than the old poetry:

can

be ? you say

your poems are not poems

but they are good to have around.'*

Traubel's admirers do not claim for his poetry the same inspired lyric quality that is foimd in Whitman. But they claim that it has other qualities. It is even more profoundly emotional, more completely and exclusively human. We cannot do better

than to quote a

Weekly on

critic

of Traubel in T. P.'s

this point

His poems are

in the

Whitman form.

Rhymeless"^

and apostrophes, in simple, direct and often vehement language. We seek in "Optimos" in vain for purple patches and conceits such as abound in "Leave of Grass." Walt Whitman was called the "Good Gray Poet," but his poetry was never gray. Traubel has the same passion for humanity, the same loving faith in common, average men and women, and, although he chants his sentiments well enough, you never expect him to surprise you by bursting into song. recitatives, rhapsodies

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

In spite of the high-seriousness of his poems, I more originaHty and even more poetry in his prose

find

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

quaintly flickering prose with

^that

sentences,

little

and

its

swift, vivid

readiness to give a helping

hand to unliterary idiom and the

fallen language of

a modern masto us from America with quite such an inspired ring about it since "Leaves of Grass." I wish some English publisher would have the sense to publish it and our

"Chants Communal"

the streets.

Certainly nothing has

terpiece.

come

"Chants Comits wisdom. munal" pumps wisdom with the quick monotony of a mitrailleuse pumping lead, but every time it hits the mark it restores the faculty of life. Traubel would

people the sense to absorb

make

the deadest soul enthusiastic about

we wish

when he

to understand

life.'^j

what Traubel means

says he does not regard himself primarily

as a poet, let us read the reasons

why

he did not

choose to regard a writer he admired as

much

he did Tolstoy as being primarily, a writer Tolstoy was not a great writer.

He was

some-

thing else great before he was a great writer.

was a force

And

first

And

all.

then a force again.

He was He never me to live.

then perhaps later on he was a writer.

a greater writer for being a great force.

seemed

to write.

I never thought of

of him as living. cians.

seemed

him as writing. I always thought The whole men are not techni-

They spend no time

trying to be artisfs.'*

HORACE TRAUBEL The

great

thought (I

men who

ten down, then,

in the great

whom words

What

are the merest tools.

lives,

write, to follow Traubel's

purposely dropping the term "great

writer"), are those for

and their

and writing

has chanced to be writ-

the smallest part of such

men

while they themselves are mere drops

ocean of humanity.

all-important fact mere

In the face of this

words and phrases

fall into

comparative insignificance

The written life has made light of the unwritten life, The song that was sung has taken the place of the song that was left unsung: have united in the praise of words, in the adoration of the pageantry of phrases.

Who

can account for the mysterious emptiness of

words? ...

Words

are stuffed and choked with their stale

air.

And I can already brush dust off the newest words. When tried by the test of words life is bound

fail.

Words never

lead the soul,

words always follow the

soul.

Words

are the appeal and the record but

hand that

life is

the

writqp.^^

In Traubel's view language and literature should be not mere vehicles of thought but vehicles of life

and

action.

They must not only have

them, they must have

life

behind

before them, and visibly

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

affect the life of the reader or' listener.

poet

"the master whose words are no

The real more mere

words but events and persons." Used in this way, as a means of communication from one active individual, to another equally active, words may be the most pregnant form of action:

You

say words do nothing. I see deeds that are

count.

call

empty and

words to acI see words

that are iulU^

So Traubel admires most of are vital first

human

forces

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;even

all

those writers

rank from a merely literary standpoint.

work

human beings,

lives in

such forces he classes

and Wendell Paine,

erary.

Not

not in books.

Their

Among

Paine, Robert Ingersoll,

Phillips

and

Ingersoll

ously vital

Tom

who

they are not in the

human

professional.

horrent to them.

were all marvelBut they were not litThe polite arts were ab-

Phillips

forces.

They always made

that manifest.

who

put the way a thing's done above what is done have never regarded them seriously. What did Paine ever do for the

that the esthetic historians

literature of the

They ask me

concerned with

world?

that as that.

if it

they've done for the world.

can take

its

chances.

The

Phillips?

Ingersoll?

had some point. I'm not only want to know what

The

world's literature

fact is that,

though they're

HORACE TRAUBEL all

dead, they're

all

very

much

they've had plenty of time to die.

alive

And

still.

Especially Paine:

had time to spare. And they're still potent. them what you choose. It's always worried some people whether Walt Whitman should be called a They're willing to call him something. And poet. something big and worth while. But poet? No. They shrink from desecrating so sacred a word. So he's

Call

Phillips men I'm talking about. and Ingersoll both survive. They're walking deleThey stir up strife. They keep the waters gates. from stagnating. Being dead is not conclusive. For they still live. I'd rather be a moving factor in the average life than an essay in a book. Some reputations continue in a book. They have ceased to be entities. They have receded into a record. Phillips was eminently impractical. Everybody said so. The practical man is so proud of himself. The business man. The man of business in politics. He wants to do things. He says he's the only one who can do them. But I notice he makes as many mistakes as anybody. ... If a dream has any defects If a fact has any defect it's it's in seeing too far. But nothing's so much a in not seeing far enough. And nothing's so much fact as an inclusive dream. a dream as an inclusive fact. Give a man like Phillips time enough and he's more practical than the

with the three

What the possinow or it's useless.

best executive of his generation. bilist

What

does he has to do right

the impossibilist does he can take

with because

it's

bound

his

to be useful in the end.^'

time

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

In Traubel's view then, as in that of Whitman, the poet's sphere

the universe, or rather, to avoid

any suggestion of abstractions, the poet's world is the whole life of men ^and not those chosen im-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

ages, objects,

or states of consciousness

feelings,

with which poets have hitherto been exclusively concerned.

There can be

little

question that Whitman's ex-

periments in extending the realm of poetry to em-

man

brace the whole life of

(every

trifle

included)

sometimes appear as mechanical and as failures even to his most ardent admirers. Such failures occur less frequently

with Traubel, although he also seems,

occasionally,

to restrain a sort of transcendental

opinion that

all

hitherto

the distinctions that mankind has

made between

significant,

the significant and the in-

between beauty and ugliness, are worth-

less:

For now

see that

to discover

why

ugliness

that

one

all

the effort I spent trying

lives are beautiful or

and

all

beauty

ugly has shown

finally

must

lapse

transfiguration.*"

Traubel's

universality

humanism

appears

better in his social philosophy than in his esthetics,

and

especially the fact that

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;^when

tizan

the cause

willing to be a par-

sufficiently great, in his

absorption in the daily life of the people, and in his

HORACE TRAUBEL

no sameness or uniformity there, but a life that is always new and infinite in its variety and power, even under the tragic limitations of our present civilization: romantic feeling that there

Some

artists think

they can't be artists

Every great

partizans.

artist is

a partizan.

they are

The

lit-

fellows are afraid the revolution will master them.

tle

So they run away from

it.

can master the revolution.

Whitman that

idealizes while Traubel realizes the life

in the people.

The big fellows know they So they welcome it.*^

commonplaces of

Whitman

life.

idealizes the actual

Traubel realizes the

nitely greater beauty of the possible life that lies

undeveloped in the

at present

common man, a

life

infistill

which

either entirely suppressed or is only

beginning to express

itself.

For example, he

feels

the deepest interest in all the literary channels by

which the

life

of the people comes to expression,

such as the popular newspapers. if

may

be doubted

any professional journalist gives a more serious

or a broader attention to nearly everything with

which the newspapers deal. Traubel comes into intimate contact with a great

many

persons, as

many

as he can possibly

manage

to meet, whether casually or through mutual

sym-

many

indi-

But

pathies.

viduals

direct contact with very

impossible for an industrious writer, and

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

the great majority of books deal either with the past

or with an abstract or literary view of Hfe, so that Traubel, or any

man

in his position, is naturally

reduced in some measure to a third means of meeting other minds and becoming acquainted with the lives

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

of other persons

^namely, the periodical liter-

ature of the day. It is needless to

really

lutionary

say that Traubel's view of what

significant in the

news

thoroughly revo-

go about looking for good news.

Yes, good

News of the growth and News of the fulfilments of revolt of the people. the people. That's my good news. And I insist upon news.

News

of the people.

Nothing less than this interests it Avherever I am. me. ... I read the papers for good news. Not news. And I don't care who you are, I want good news.

good news of you. I don't ask you what you Those I ask you for good news. upon whom all culture is founded. Those who plant and raise the trees but are kicked out of the orchard. They are my good news. And when I see them ready at last to take what belongs to them they become my better news. And when in a farther day they assume the earth they will become my best news. That's the only kind of news my heart is hungry for and is ready to receive. ... I don't want news of your aristocracies whether of parlors or philosophies. That news is always bad news. I want news of the streets I ask

think of me.

HORACE TRAUBEL and of peoples.

know

That news

always good news^

the peoples can't always invite their oppressors

They won't be invited out. They have to be thrown out. That news is good news. I don't want to see anybody hurt. But I won't see my good news My good news comes first of all.*^ hurt. out.

Traubel has not "adopted" the standpoint of the is and always has been in every way one

masses, he

of them, and quite naturally feels as they do I

repeat myself?

peats

itself.

But the

I do.

evil, too, re-

long as the evil repeats

itself

will repeat myself.*'

As long

as the evils of the time are in the fore-

front of the people's consciousness they have ever

a fresh interest

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;to the people.

While Traubel, then, is one of the people, he claims that it is open to every one to be in the same position if he so desires. For the sentimentalist who cries out, "What can I do?" he has no use. To this man Traubel answers by pointing out what he himself has done, and has been ready to do, for the cause

What can I do? I can give men refuse themselves to

myself to

other I

do?

life.

can gather the fragments of

gether into one coherent

life.

What

life

when

What can

life to-

can I do?

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

without income. Walk on my one hundred per cent, of myself. what other people think of me. Care

Believe in man.

Give

uppers.

Not

care

first

what

life

first

I think

Not

of myself.

declare against

the sins of the world and go on sinning.

Give up property

ning.

for

private interest against the total

Not be

Not

afraid of slander.

Stop sin-

Not stake human interest. bad when I am

people.

feel

Expect to find all my neighbors arrayed against me. Remain contented when no one I can starve. I can die. will come near me. That is what I can do." misunderstood.

The same

thought, with similar autobiographical

illustrations, is

continued in another "Collect":

had a particular thing to do in the was an atomic accident. I never conceded that there could be uses for stars and no uses for people. So I started myself This put me in the going. I assumed myself. line somewhere. Gave me a place. Set me right always

felt I

I did not feel that I

world.

with

my own

consciousness.

Made me

realize myself.

worry from that time on over what I could and could do not do. ... I was one of the stillest I did not

palest boys in

crowd.

And

or ever maybe blurt out what or

else.

have have

said,

seen

did not always

But I Whatever the surface of the stream may underneath everywhere you would surely

destiny.

thing

thought of myself assumed myself before everyI

this

inveterate

humbling pride.

HORACE TRAUBEL

Things have been against me. Most things for most of the time. But this has been for me. When the outlook was clouded the inlook was clear.

When

was nothing else left this was left. I was often without a cent. But I was never without this. There may have been reason for it. But it endured and was triumphant. It was my flaming immortal fire. ... I got to that stage very early and am likely to stay very late. I looked innocent as death but I was guilty as life. I had no intentions. I had not cleared myself up. I had not debated myself out. I did not know what I was to do. I did not have schemes to try upon society. I left all that for time and events ." to take care of. All I did was to assume myself. there

Here are some more autobiographical lines, with by Traubel on the twentyfifth anniversary of his monthly publication, The the same moral, written

Conservator:

So I kept on while my betters were doing the recognized things I was left with what was discarded: I took my place in the ranks I was happy it's best :

all

to just serve unseen:

much fun being the rose as the root: down there in the ground! It's not half as much fun eating the fruit as having been the cause of the fruit: oh! how I like it It's

not half as

oh!

how

I like it

being a ray of the sun! It's

yet totally

wish to be something very necessary to be required but denied

unknown

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

58 That's

how

invisible:

I've traveled my voyage: under cover: never named by those who make out the

lists

mere atom, maybe, yet a necessary grain of sand: perhaps the most needed item of all yet unspelled in words.

Yet there bel's feeling

no admixture of humility

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;^though

about himself

desire to be at one with the average

excludes

all

The hidden

egoism.

Trau-

his passionate

man

woman

continues:

cause: the veiled omnipotence: the cur-

tained fuel of the flame:

Oh!

that

was what

wanted

for that: that would be

to be: I'd give

all

gladdest reward:

Not heavens with the saved nor hells with the damned but mere days with their simple men and women I came from them I've stayed with them I've never :

left the level:

now

we're

still

equal mates:

Talking of the same ideals matching ourselves against :

the same forces: stirred by the glow of the same victories.

by his by his intimacy with Whitman, by his work, by his associations, by his daily life and by his whole experience, Traubel is fitted for the role he has assumed, that of poet-prophet of democracy. If his writing is separated by a whole world from the circumstances of his birth, then,

character,

HORACE TRAUBEL

that of other writers, with the partial exception of

Whitman,

it is

different life.

because his Hfe has been an entirely His moral appeals are not those of

the professional moralists,

who

drive their reader

through a blind sense of duty to a far-off goal, but of a pioneer who has actually seen a new country and can convince every open-minded and sensible hearer that

reason

why

in all

it is

ways better than the old. The draw nothing from the past

his appeals

and look wholly to the future

us the personal experience of one

because they give

who

his life almost wholly into the future.

ample that

typical "Collect,"

ing for the Cause?"

enough

show

has projected

Take for ex-

"What Are You Do-

few passages

that while there

nothing

will

left in it

of the old morality, Traubd's writing shows a depth of conviction, and radiates a power, perhaps beyond

any message that has been

at all adapted to our

time or has proved even tolerable to

modem

ears.

writes

What self.

are you doing for the cause?

For

all.

Not

the race going.

you

Not for your-

to keep yourself going.

What

keep

are you doing for to-morrow

do yesterday for to-day? I don't say I say for any cause. I don't ask you what you are doing with tasks I might set you. I ask what you are doing with tasks that you yourI know what you do in eating and workself set. You do ing at your trade and sleeping at night. that

didn't

for what cause.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

that in order not to die. Everybody does that. I ask you what you are doing in order to live. I know what you say. I read what you write. I have heard your promises. But this is not enough. This hardly tells

me what

want

to learn.

know what you do know what you

with what you have to do. I want to do with what you don't have to do.

Every man somehow belongs I

say that?

Then

Yes.

I say

Do He

to himself.

first

something more.

also belongs first to the race.

stands for per-

There he's for himself. He stands for service and progress. There he stands for the race. sonality.

can't interpret his

But

guess them. the reach of

moods or

their

his impulses.

purport

interior

That

vision.

are you doing for the cause?

can

beyond

why I ask: What And that is why I

say: I shall not say what cause. The cause has done everything for you. What are you doing for it?

You

are doing nothing for the cause.

making a

living.

are personal.

But you are not making

You have

You life.

are

You

not surcharged yourself with

Making good because some one else makes bad. That is your code. Letting any one do the work of progress. You the general inspirations.

doing nothing.

That's the code.

You

encourage

But you don't go on with them. My ears know your voice. I can tell when you are around, though you say nothing. Little as you know it, I follow you through all the intricacies of your psychic retreats. Do you think you can cover your

them

to go on.

HORACE TRAUBEL Right or

tracks?

left,

up or down,

in or out, across

or around: wherever you go I tally you.

you take inevitable

within

horizon.

You

attendance?

Every step

Do you

say: I

mean

resent

the

same

And you say: I am with you, only You say: You can count on me, too, soon. You say: You can depend on my

thing you do.

not so

fast.

but not too

good

will,

but not too far.

up money or

You've always some rea-

Some Some

son for holding back. service.

reason for not putting

reason for withholding

Somebody is always too violent Too exacting. Too inYou want at the same time to be and not

your confession. for

Too

you.

evitable.

to be.

What

extreme.

You do everyYou work for the cause as the sun sheds light. You don't wait to hear some one else say the word first. You say it. ... I never are you doing for the cause?

thing for the cause. .

spend a minute trying to find out what my duty is. There is no duty. I'm just driven. There is no duty. I must keep on. When I say cause I say sun and stars and earth and air and food. I say love and those I love. I say that which makes life and is made by life. If I hesitated an instant there would be no cause again. I don't want you to say: I'll ask my wife or my husband or my father or my mother or somebody. I don't even want you to ask your own spirit. I want you to act. / want you to answer before the question is put. I want you to spring before the .

challenge is issued.

[My

italics.]

IV THE HUMANIST "Men, All Men, and Nothing but Men" ''

^HE

foundations of Traubel's social philosophy

are not ideas at

but a passionate, persist-

all,

ent and sincere interest in

compose the osophy, as

social whole.

we have

seen,

all

the

human

units that

Whitman's social philwas based, in part on his

on current metaphysics Traubel's is based almost wholly on social instinct. ^the only admixture of metaphysics being what he has taken over from Whitman. Whitman was prosocial instinct, in part

;

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

foundly interested in "the All," "eternity," "the

and so on. Traubel is touched with Whitman's dogmatic optimism and interest in "eternity," but his metaphysical side is less developed and is altogether dissolved and lost in his social feeling. For Whitman's "All" he substitutes "people," or soul,"

"the crowd." If we seek a phrase to cover Traubel's philosophy, we must call it a practical or concrete humanism.

Human beings they are

are not only the goal of his thought,

its sole subject.

But he does not carry 62

this

THE HUMANIST idea out to

its intellectual

does not

equal interest in

does).

absurdity as

—as

often does.

all

does not

human

—

interest in all parts of

a rule

beings

as a rule

human

Whitman

—

profess an

Whitman

(as

—profess an equal Whitman

nature (as

seems to do). Yet, while Traubel turns his back on

or formal philosophy, he

all

systematic

sub-consciously logical

—more so than Whitman. He does He reserve no need for himself— Whitman and Emer-

and systematic

not contradict himself.

finds

that privilege

son did. is

The reason

for the difference

vital contradiction

osophy and his

between

social philosophy, as

and he sees

that there

his individual philit

was

able there should be in their time. steadily

inevit-

sees life

whole.

course Traubel's philosophy

that of the

writer and not that of the professional philosophers

—with

their conscious systems.

in the spirit of the

But he acts

entirely

new pragmatic philosophy when

he rejects the claims of ordinary

logic,

and, like

other inspired writers, substitutes a sub-conscious

"organic" logic of his own.

does not try to

think in those long-continued chains which so often result in

dogmatism, even in the minds of the masmethod. Like Emer-

ter philosophers that use that

son he allows

all

life that

moment

spontaneously relates

of thought and feeling to

itself

to a given

come

to expression at that

moment.

In his "Col-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

64 lects"

formally logical in so far as he never

considers any position except in connection with its

opposite, but his chain of reasoning never pro-

ceeds farther than

this.

Here

his logic

Let

all

of life as far as possible into each mood, but do

not endeavor to ings of these

tie

together the thoughts and feel-

moods

into a system; for there are

natural periods and rhythms in our thinking, as in

the rest of our

life,

and the attempt to

substitute

mechanical logic for this natural habit would result in the loss of the best fruits of our mental activity.

This pragmatic habit of thought ess of all poets

and great

the logical proc-

litterateurs, as distinct

from professional philosophers, but Traubel has it more consistently than have most other writers. He is consistently free from dogma. He has no system into which he might be tempted to force the facts. But neither does he contradict held to

himself.

Traubel' s almost complete freedom from doctrine

and dogma

due to the fact that he

exclusively in actual persons.

phy

based on his plea that

And we

all

interested

his philoso-

should not reduce

other individuals to any formula, nor allow ourselves to be so reduced

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;not even

"being free from formula."

to the formula of

says:

There's never any doctrine so dangerous to you as your doctrine.

You may

escape every other men-

THE HUMANIST

But that will throw you. Don't mistake a fragment of life for the total of life. That's first. Then don't drift with anything. Not even with God. Not even with the eternal verities. Not even with love. Start knowing for what, proceed knowing why, arrive knowing when. Of course this theory has its dubious elements. I can see how we must sometimes go on knowing nothing. How an inner impulse prepossesses us and compels oyr wholesale abandonment to a passion. The finest wisdom may consist in not comprehending that which you apprehend. In not

ace.

being able to explain that which can't be denied.

not putting into words that which surges in your blood.

In not making demonstrations which are not

evidences.

But then we go farther. We may say if we must go on a journey we can't

again that even justify

we may

That though

still

remain master of the voyage.

I can't realize

the sea or the sky or the

ship or the port I'm going to I

may

still

stick to the

In painfully imshackling ourselves from drifts mustn't shackle ourselves with masteries. Get-

wheel.

may become a creed. And being free may become another creed. ... I want to be in the stream. I want the big stream to be in me. I want to take I want everything to take account of everything. account of me. I want life so orbic I can put my arms about it in an embrace of revelation. Yet I also want life so atmospherically liberated I couldn't include it in any finite definitions. I don't want any ting free

man

woman

all

hashed up into meaningless

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

inconsecutiveness.

woman

tied into

Neither do I want any an all-consistent knot.*'

man

The unprecedented width of Traubel's mental horizon

due to

this refusal to adopt

any exclu-

sive doctrine:

not enough to say your motive was clean.

It's

willing

answer.

to .

admit

that.

I'm

But that Wouldn't be an

Remember

that nothing can be left out without

peril to what's left in.

Every atom of rejected truth

a threat leveled at the structure you have raised. You can't make up a decision alone from what you see. It's just as much your business to include what Until I see. It's not only not wise. It's not honest. is

you have been as hospitable towards what displeases you as towards what pleases you you are debarred from expressing judgment. This is the law and com-

mon all

sense of

all

conviction.

fair controversy.

faith.

matter

how

This

the spirit of

the foundation of

dispassionate

you may

all

super-

appear to be you are warped and corrupt. demand that you study me. Unyou do study me you are neither my friend nor

ficially

I've every right to less

enemy.

you

stand.

You can't know where I stand or where You are adrift. Your feet may be on a

But you're adrift. Before you can say: I you must know what I mean when I say: I believe. And you are required to wait till I've said my last word. As long as I seem to have somerock.

believe,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

THE HUMANIST thing to add you must

to live

life as

pose to live your

make room for me. You've got own life if you pro-

well as your

life full

free as possible

whether of words, not allow his

and

ligion,

own

and whole.**

from

or systems, Traubel does

ideas,

favorite ideas to

will not permit

become a

re-

even the chief object

of his thought and care, "the

weigh the ultimate

forms of authority,

all

human

race," to out-

the living individual:

reality,

"You

say everything must be done to preserve the

race.

say only one kind of a race

Here indeed

serving."

spoken" which "upsets

all

"the one

worth pre-

word

clearly

the figures of the schools"

an expression of Traubel's). our revolutionary poet fails to succumb

(to employ If

to the

ultra-modern "welfare of the race" theory, or to the idea that "society" pect

him

vogue;

bow

,God,

should not ex-

to the earlier religions,

now

less in

should not expect him to succumb to "sci-

ence" or to "natural law," to "altruism" or to

"God" I think

God

has written a

new

will

and made

his

heir,

(Brother, you self,

may

feel as I do,

too, that only heir).

and become your-

some time off run things for a while myself.

think the natural laws have taken

and

left

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

(Brother, you

may

and the natural laws you as they do for me).**

feel as I do,

will stand aside for

Against "natural laws" or theological paradise, Traubel asserts the individual

no bounds of any kind

self;

he will accept

either for himself or for

others

Only Only Only Only at

to let things go.

bounds for myself by not trying to see at all. hear divine voices by not listening for voices

to stop fixing

to see the farthest to all.

to be myself without making an effort to be myself at all

Only

to get

ing

Only

to get

call-

back,

quickened

Only

beyond the cry of the strongest voice

where no chase can any longer dog

feet.

wrench

despoiled

self

from the

free

habits of the ruly.

Only

be as

The

before I become a social asset or an

industrial fact.

tial

fraternity of a world lawlessly

to salute the

superior to law

.^Â°

cult of "altruism" is probably less influen-

to-day than the dogmas built upon "science,"

"natural laws," or "the race," because

highly thought of than

upper

classes,

but

less

formerly was among the still

far

from

extinct.

THE HUMANIST

Traubel adopts Ellen Key's denunciation of this

outworn dogma of

religious ethics:

She daringly denounces the theory "that it is always the death of the soul to sacrifice others, and the life of the soul to sacrifice oneself."

Depends upon whether

Upon whether

big thing along in the end. others

may

All depends.

sacrificing yourself helps the

not be best for

all

sacrificing

in the end.^'-

A far greater danger to individual liberty, because it

usually unexpressed,

undue change.

upon

the tendency to lay

or institutional Traubel does not contemplate a social sys-

stress

institutions

tem where the individual

will give

way

before any

institutions whatever, either those already existing

The

or others likely to be created.

individual is

power away." The new society primarily is to be built not upon new institutions but upon new individuals, or even upon existing individuals, who when free from their shackles will be quite other than what they are: "to sign no single

declare that the social order

by another I

know

to be superseded

social order:

the quality of your folly

when you go about

the streets looking in the dust of noisy oratory for the complete state: I

know very pears

will

when the complete state apappear because you bring it to others,

well that

not because others bring

to you.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

And

know

upon

you

that

your

back

will not carry it as

but

something

a burden unscroUed

within.''^

Existing institutions often seem to have such

deep foundations and to have spread so far that appears impossible to remove them, but this

illusion if we put all our force back impeach the great frowning instiThey laugh at us. We seem so harmless.

Nothing

impossible

of ourselves. tutions.

But give us a

little

time.

will laugh at the insti-

an institution to a man anyDo not doubt your own inspiration. Are way? you afraid to be identified with your heresies ? Your The best part of heresies are what takes you on. a man is that far-away thing in him which all his nearby friends warn him against.''^ tutions. .

The

What

man often prove to be the One group of such ideas germ of that revolution in human

boldest ideas of

soundest and greatest. constitutes the

nature which

not only indispensable to bring

about that general revolution in institutions as Socialism but

The

Socialist needs to revolutionize

doing

itself.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;he

nature

it.

Or human

rather he is

giving

known

the very essence of the change

nature

human

nature.

revolutionizing

not revolutionizing

a chance to be human.^*

human

THE HUMANIST

Traubel's conception of the individual, that

human

nature and

possibiHties,

its

that of every thoughtful Socialist,

from the prevailing view.

ferent

human

nature as

would indeed be ized.

The

little

which must be is

radically dif-

If he regarded

ordinarily regarded, there

hope of

Socialist idea of

its

human

being revolutionnature, however,

from that ordinarily accepted in that it views the great bulk of man's impulses as being good from the beginning, certainly as being the source of at least as much good as his conscious reasoning. differs

Traubel embodies this thought in one of his strik-

Go Where

ing and typical poems, "I

Heart

Goes" where my heart goes where else should I go ? With or without reason, I go with my heart: Whether urged to go or warned to stay, I go with I go

heart:

In the face of everything bitter and sweet, false and true, I

go with

heart:

Joyously into any shadow, victoriously towards whatever defeat, I go with my heart:

Being afraid sometimes to risk what I must become, yet being more afraid to remain what I am: Often denying love to go with love, denying light to find light.

Acknowledging the world I leave but ready and eager for the world I go to. .

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

you don't go where your heart goes where do you go? if you don't go to love where do you go? And if you go east while your heart goes west what will fill up the mocking gap between? And you arraign the heart: you have discovered that If

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

the heart

And you

a stumbling guide:

say that the heart needs eyes, which I say,

who

too:

And

sees

better than I

I say that the heart has eyes,

do? which you do not

say, too:

(Oh

such eyes as the heart has! has

The same thought

reason goes where

its

way.

my my

heart goes.

can't see.

our systems apply love?

But

reasonable.

enmity,

they apply

law.

caste,

I don't

heart can't go.

want

Let the

Don't be afraid of the heart.

Reason reasons but reason

Seems Reasonable to Me"

reason to go where

heart have

eyes? only

recurs again in a typical "Col-

lect" entitled "It All

life

such eyes as the heart has

jthey

If they profit.

do they are

If they apply

apply anything that

Then they are unreasonable. No stolen was ever reasonable. No stolen opportunity

neglects love. dollar

life.

stolen prestige.

used by one to lord white of your skin.

your right arm. brain.

The

Nothing that can be

over another.

The

The black or

strength or weakness of

genius or the mediocrity of your

volubility or the reticence of

All advantages and disadvantages.

your speech.

All talents and

THE HUMANIST superiorities.

They

are

them stand the

test.

The other thing

The

test.

adjust

your

total opposite.

love.

None

unreasonable.

all

to your logic.

73 of

alone stands the

You may not be able to But you can adjust it to

J""

In proportion as conditions allow the free de-

velopment and expression of a man's impulses, these impulses serve as connecting bonds between him

and other human

come

superfluous.

being's, so that all

veloped person leads a

other bonds be-

This emotionally or socially delife in

productive, that

every

way

fuller

a more reasonable

is,

and life.

Free relations with others gradually take the place of institutions, authorities and duties:

Walt Whitman says: "What others give I

The duty

give as living impulses."

The impulse

on you.

Duty

as duties

claim

your claim on yourself.

the major tyrant.

sanity.

Duty

the irrevocable in-

the knife that severs.

But when

duty you will repeat it after me. We have wars because we have duties. And hates. And the quarrels I say

of brothers with brothers.

And

ences.

They

And the And

partizan schools in art.

the blind atomists

belong.

When we

brawls of peace. pettifogging sci-

cosmic chance.

breathe that

little tworemnant word of abled theisms the world flies apart. It's cut in two at the center. Duty is judgment. Duty is the sword and the bullet. It's standing armies and navies. It's threatening policies

all

syllabled

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

and balances of hypocritic power. I put you in jail. When you say

Duty

jail.

of fatherhood.

It's

Yet Traubel

It's

the refutation of love.

the lover to do with duty ?

I say

duty

you put me

the infinite inquisition.

new

When

the denial

What

has

â&#x20AC;˘"

believes that the

more developed man

though more ruled by his heart than by his head, will no longer be governed by the same emotions that rule him now. He will pass beyond mere love and hate: of the

society,

In the farther intimations of the spirit I am not wholly myself until I am set free from both hate and love."*

But he does not commend those non-resistant sentimentalists

who

are without love or hate only

because they fall short of both: I don't

know

that I

want

to mislead the tyrannies.

I hate them.

want

want them

to be understood

using hate as an inexorable weapon of

annihilation.

scared off or killed

not to be bought off.

I say

off,

fooled

off,

over and over again

crowned wrong of my era: I hate you. and again: I'll stop at nothing to drive you off the face of the earth. And I say again and again I will let the king live but I will raze his

the

And

I say again

throne.'*

THE HUMANIST

Indeed the poet proceeds to reassure

all

those

who

feel that a wrong impression might be created by his continued use of the much over-used term,

"love," by saying that in the last analysis, if a choice must be made between two evils, he prefers, "hate" to "love" and the "bad" to the "good": I

I would

afraid of being thought too well of.

rather be thought bad than good if I had to be thought

Hate balances the disturbed

either.

lacies

Hate It

bel's

the

physical world.

fancies

Love

and

fal-

overlooks.

omnivisual."'

might appear to the casual reader that Trauwork, in which the emotional aspect of human

nature

regarded as predominant, could scarcely

be held together by a coordinated social philosophy

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;^beyond the

revolt against all authority

generous view of scribed

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and,

human

nature I have just de-

Traubel himself makes no

indeed,

claim to such a philosophy.

of other poets, theless all his

and the

His system,

like that

largely unconscious, but never-

work has a

logic of its

own.

The

starting-point of his thought is "life" I

put everything aside for

Wages. life.

All go for

Your

resistance

life. is

life.

Property.

resistance against

This leads at once to the question: Traubel mean by "life"?

Honor. upon

revolt is based

life."^

What

does

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

In an editorial entitled "Music and gives us the beginning of an answer activities are to be

viewed as intimately

activity is to be accepted for its

only in relation to

life as

Sex" he

"All of man's related,

own

and

sake but

a whole"

Music must be saved by something not music. The That is why they are as a rule poised and equable. But the interpreting musician often loses himself in the mazes creative musicians contain that something.

way

to them.

of his sentimental

titillations.

Translates

into rudimentary emotion.

all

life

Gives

Does

not hold on to things.

That ties

Like giving

it.

Sex may be

divine.

May

taking big chances.

along with

devilish.

Sex They are

carry fatal penal-

way to sex. Sex is You cannot trust sex Music bad as art for art's

alone or music alone.

for sex's sake.

for music's sake.

sake.

Musicians, the interpreters, seem to say: "There life.

music."

There

when

comes to the communal things, to social prophecy, they seem There is only to say: "There is no good and bad. no

only music."

that

"My business has I am a musician. Music is my Hfe." But

musician said to me:

nothing to do with public service.

Music absorbs everything. sometimes music may not be a man's

life.

Music may

be a man's death."^

In the same

way

logic,

and those closed systems

of thought that ordinarily monopolize the name,

THE HUMANIST philosophy,

are criticized

away from

leading

music) as often

(like

than towards

life rather

not sure of things.

feet

it:

only sure of myself.

go their own way. ...

refuted every

day I live. By every man I meet. By institutions and systems. By cataclysms and sea-tides. They all refute me. But I do not refute myself. I do not see why you should not be happy in spite of reasons. I do not see why any sort of a reason, why any accumulation of probabilities, should set aside, should refute

as a

man, you as

brother,

comrade or

One laugh may put all the planets to flight. One word fairly spoken may upset all the figurers lover.

I acknowledge the telescope and the But nothing can bring anything as near You can bury me with my own flesh. But I can resurrect myself with affirmations.

of the schools. microscope. to

quibbles.

You may have to have reasons. I don't. I am not made good in an argument. Nothing does so little for

as tradition and legality.

the idea that one thing

Nothing so

little

so because another thing

is so.Â°*

Argument, that is, means an appeal to tradition and legality. There is no doubt that this has been true of the systems of logic and philosophy of the past.

one's

The way

own

to escape such logic

deepest inclinations

and

to follow

intuitions,

the supposition, of course, that one's nature

oughly social

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

^like

Traubel's, or like

under thor-

most natures

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

society

which allows a free and natural de-

velopment.

No one is lost who stays with himself. And no one is found who wanders from himself. There is no practical and unpractical. There is no reasonable and unreasonable. There is only a man and his vision. There is only what a man is and what a man sees. And if he fails to follow what he sees he deserts himself.** Traubel's logic

may be called reversed logic, work-

ing always from the conclusion, and in is

this, too, it

the logic of pragmatism:

The good conclusion is to me a working hypothe... I do not ask myself: Which idea is true and which is false? I only ask: Which idea serves me best? By serving best I mean humanizes me. Makes me more useful as a man and more fruitful as a comrade. By serving best I mean builds me up

sis.

and spreads me out reach.

Hfe

Gives

in efficiency.

direction

only asset.

And

Gives

vision

and

and consecration. yours

the same.

on top of me crushing me I If I feel it under my feet eternally am a success. ... I keep myself ahead

If I feel the universe

a failure.

succoring

of the facts.

The

facts are too slow for me.""

But enough of Traubel's method of thinking.

The

substance of his thought

equally revolution-

THE HUMANIST Having

ary.

rejected the claim of logic as a suffi-

cient guide to life,

he also refuses to postpone his compre-

direct experience of life while seeking to

hend the "universe," and he objects vigorously to the typical philosophical attitude which insists that, first of all, the universe must be explained "I do not wait for the universe to explain itself," he says,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"Maybe

Why

the universe cannot be explained" should I put question marks into the sky in

place of stars?

my main

It is

est the natural I

can

cite

rades.

The

live

live.

live near-

nearest people.

can cite my comCause explains enough, though it

But

justifications.

The

don't explain

laws.

business to

can discover.

live nearest the best life I

all.""

men

function of

to understand, not the

universe, but one another:

"People intoxicate me.

eyes see people (I don't acknowledge things)."

I see

need to see all I see enough your eyes as you look at me

I see

my own

I don't

I see to

tains

face in the glass

the roots of trees

I see to the tops

moun-

way I see to the bottom of seas can watch the seed in the ground grow: don't need to see everything that which I see leads

If I look in the right I

to that

which

I don't see:

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

There are roads ners

I can't travel:

can see round cor-

feet never turn:

hand touches you

fingers play in

your hair

I see that everything leads to you:

ears hear your voice

in the tones of It's all is

I can listen to the your common speech:

so mysterious

much

veiled

invisible

yet so

much

also disclosed

might see all and know nothing: I might see nothing and know all there's no one path The reasonable people ask me every day How do you I

explain this and this? I don't explain it: I see it: I follow it: it takes

down somewhere and very

very far

where That seems

far

up some-

to me to be all I want I don't want analyno: I want to see: If I could tell you about a thing ^that would be taking it apart the dissector can do that If I see a thing that is putting it together: only :

sis:

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

love can do that:

Even in the

.*'

the theory of evolution, which has served

hands of most of

its

expounders to enlarge

the universe and belittle man, to

used by Traubel

magnify man I don't

propose to hand myself back to the resiI propose to pass myself forward to

dual gases.

the impeccable gods.

."' .

THE HUMANIST Yet Traubel's optimism,

undoubted philosophic basis one)

Whitman's, has an (if

an unconscious

I say that a

man

not an atom in an

bring you a great secret.

atom

infinity.

say that infinity

but an

in you.Â°Â°

"There there

telling

how

big a

man

because

nothing by which to measure a man," he

And here again Traubel is followed by newer anthropocentric philosophy (pragmatism). His optimism seldom relapses to the absolute, transcendental optimism that is so common with Whitman. Its usual form may be seen in continues.

the

these lines:

There all

gain:

loss

we move

but

all lose:

there

no gain but

together.'"*

Traubel here concedes, as against Whitman, that there that all

may

be a loss in the imiverse.

where one

loses all lose

He insists only

and where one gains

gain.

But even more fundamental make-up than his sub-conscious

mental and philosophy is his courage in asserting himself and proclaiming Like Whitman he seizes, not so the joy of life. much with his mind as with his whole being, the central truth of life

in Traubel's

logic

WHITMAN, AND TRAUBEL

Duty won't put a man anywhere. fathers

and mothers

Or books

said he should

where. Is

called sacred.

ditions of the schools.

Or what his and should not.

the rigid arbitrary tra-

Only joy

will

put a

man

any-

reasonable?

What

make?

difference does that

Suppose I am the most illogical of men. I am also the most joyous of men. I can't prove life. But I can live. I can't give you reasons. But I can give you life. Fortunes are made for somebody's fun of it. RevoIt's

life.

It's

action.

It's

joy.

lutions break out just for everybody's fun of

when

the disturbances are over the fun of

enjoyed by

it.

And

can be

all.''^

Traubel's attitude towards the future society, and indeed his whole work, as well as his philosophy, are all based on this humanistic optimism, and it is this that makes him an absolute rebel against present-day society. His whole position rests on what people have sometimes called faith, but it is

not necessary to use that term.

should rather

be called the courage of one's impulses (as

speak

of the courage of one's convictions), or rather the

courage of humanity's impulses, in which in

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

our varying ways

all

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

share.

From this point of view nothing is sacred except human nature. Human nature can take its natural forms only in a free society. And the only way we can bring about this new society is to unite in re-

tHE HUMANIST fusing

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;as far as

we can

^to

allow our natures to

For example

be coerced into existing molds.

Nothing

live in as

pleasure.

Nothing

so obvious to the world

must come before

that business

after a while will be so obvious as the idiocy of this proposition.

dearest comrade says:

busy I can't write you. No one has to be so busy he can't write me. tion is that love can be adjourned but can't be adjourned. But look out if .

love.

It's

...

fatal.

land and scatter There they are, too

winds.

red and too pale, worshiping

body'U

supposi-

that business

votaries to the four

fat

and too

away

thin,

too

like contrite as-

they'-U tell you, and everywould be blasphemy to interdivine procedure. My God. It makes me

tell

rupt this

The

And

a temple.

cetics in

its

you adjourn go into every busy

I'd like to

office in the

I'm so any business

you, that

sick to see this arrogant infamy.''^

From

profoundly revolutionary foundation, which amounts to a denial, in the name of human nature,

this

of each and every principle upon which

our society

supposed to

revolutionary ideas

may

rest,

all

of Traubel's

be logically traced, whether

relating to individual morality or to society.

But what

shall

say of Traubel's religious ten-

Traubel's Conservator was originally an organ working for a broader religious unity, and Traubel himself was at first very much under the

dencies?

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

influence of religion

Emerson as well as Whitman.

But

his

ultra-rational rather than transcendental

or mystical.

Like Tolstoy he

still

has a tendency

to retain the older terms, but in his "super-rationality"

he even passes beyond Tolstoy. He quotes "To define God would be to deny

Spinoza's saying,

him," but he uses the term in such a

way

as very

and to deny the "God of our fathers." He deals with "God" as he does with "love," making them both no more important than clearly to define

their diametrical opposites:

am no more afraid of Satan's bad than of God's good: And but for me neither could have been and but for my good health the two would never merge And the good health of my body and of my soul is the good health of the spheres And Satan could not damn me alone God would have something to say about that: And God could not save me alone Satan would have something to say about that: And it is whispered me that I am to be neither saved nor damned anyway. But that I am to save or damn myself to all eternity I, in whom God and Satan, for purposes not all seen, eternally melt beyond severance.''* I

Then he

practically

makes God a man among

men, a brother rather than a father:

THE HUMANIST Therefore

say that

brother not

Therefore

God and

king

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

say that this comrade universe

men and women and

all

would be no disgrace

as I

for

all,

children equals .

God

to be as loyal

expected to be to God:

The debt must be paid both ways is

have taken God to be

of God, share and share alike.

And

until

no balance

on either side:

left

The debt of God to me so vast accruing and my debt to God piled up in mountainous eras of time. I meeting God perfectly equipped and worthy of God .

forever

God meeting me

forever.

perfectly equipped and worthy of .

They say I am too familiar with God, They say that I talk of God as if he lived next door, They say that I use God's name as freely as if it was my name or my child's name or the name of my bosom friend: I

am God.

accused .

being

on speaking terms with

And what God does for me is too wonderful to be set down with figures in an argument, And I do not question but that what I do for God is

I have

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;he I

insignificant item.

made God common is

to the

commonest earth

the genius of every day and the crowd

have made God he was

ruler.''*

brother where once I was told

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

Not only does Traubel refuse

to put his God above man, but he refuses to give his God a su-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;as we have already seen

perior position to himself

Let

be self-approved: prayed to God for myself and went hungry and thirsty with a full meal: Now I pray to myself for God and though my lips receive neither food nor drink I am fed on richest

Once

returns.

pray to

lock out the priest, I prohibit God, I forget

soul,

how

read the books, I

refuse

presences but that presence which issues

all

in myself.

Myself alone in prayer to myself alone. I pray for prayer alone and self alone ever and .

ever.

The nearer you

bring

men

you have brought God

each other the nearer

man

What God

can do for you is of least importance: what you can do for God is everything. You have hurried to accuse God: I accuse no one: You have hastened to pardon God I pardon no one.^^ .

Nor

his treatment of Christ

ential (as reverence

reviewing a recent work on

"The

any more rever-

ordinarily understood). Christ,

Bouck White's

Call of the Carpenter," Traubel says:,

THE HUMANIST He

realizes the crimes of institutional Christianity.

I have no doubt Jesus But he won't be a lonesome figure. be Jesus. And there will be others. There

But he wants will

to save Jesus.

be saved.

There

will

And there will be name. And there will be men bearing everybody's names. They will be saved too. And no one will enjoy a special heaven or an isolated apotheosis. Jesus will take his chances. His human chances. Not his god chances. His man chances. Just as you will and I will. He will not be set apart. He is set apart to-day. Jesus will never again be honored as a savior of saviors. He will only remain He will not be a god. He will be a a savior. will

man

be a

man

bearing your name.

bearing

brother.

In his treatment of the problem of body and soul, as well as the problem of sex, there also appears, at first sight, to be just a touch of the old religious

asceticism or metaphysics, which site

all

is really

the oppo-

that Traubel stands for:

body, too, demands worship.

But there was

something before it. ... I do not preach the unseen at the expense of the seen. ... I follow the lead of my body till it becomes soul. I follow the lead of my soul till it becomes immortality.''^

Here the body seems to be made inferior to and more or less separate from the soul, but other pas-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

sages remove the impression.

This uncertainty

probably due to the history of every language, which

makes

extremely

and almost impossible two terms, body and soul.

difficult,

to avoid the use of these

The matter

is clarified,

"Optimos"

since the issue of

asked myself

soul after

And

How

maybe

all ?

however, in a poem published

can there be any body and

there's only me.

no longer call you body: there must be another name for you: And so I said to my soul I will no longer call you soul: there must be another name for you.''' so I said to

body

I will

Nor

ment of

there any asceticism in Traubel's treat-

sex,

and

in this

a perfect disciple of

Whitman

Now

I say

we must

all

gather ourselves on the side

of reverence.

Answering with a triumphant yes the questions of the ardent blood.

Think what

means

to treat your passions as if the

soul could not get along without them.''"

all

poets

who have written

Traubel realizes fully that the

effectively of love,

and

flesh

spirit,

especially in this relation, are absolutely one: If

you

will tell

me why

other things will submit to

be denied and sent away but

why

love will never

submit to be denied and sent away.

THE HUMANIST you win

me what

tell

the dreams of lovers

made

flesh are for,

you

will tell

for.

me what

the flesh of lovers

me what

love

made dream

will tell

for I will

tell

you what

life is for.'"

Love between the sexes nothing in

to give

way

before

life:

And

so I do not doubt that the corruption in a with love is purer than the saintliness in a

without love.

man man

no matter who you are, should go with love to the ends of love and not be afraid.'^

And

that you,

"And pay

tinues, his

know

showing that he

treatment of sex

ment of "love"

that only those

who

are rich enough

should attempt the journey," he con-

tolls

life

no mere

leveler.

Nor

ever abstract, as his treat-

in general sometimes appears to be.

no theory of love

will tolerate

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and to-day

it is

theories that are the levelers:

We story.

are

speak of the sex problem as if it was all one But there are as many sex problems as there

And man meets

people.

time a

each case stands a

woman

alone.

Every

new sex problem

Every time a boy makes love to propounded. a girl it is a first time. There's always something which never entered into the solution before.*^ .

THE PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY "The

T TTE *

now

are

Collective People"

prepared to grasp the most im-

portant part of Traubel's thought and work,

.his social philosophy.

Fully as basic in his character and philosophy as his

Socialism,

sistence

his extraordinarily eloquent in-

on the absolute

inviolability of the indi-

vidual, the ultimate import of

You

can never

human

personality:

know what you amount to till you Till you have made immense

count yourself up. claims.

you have been

Till

pudence.

Voltaire said

guilty of colossal im^

God

did not exist

would have to invent him. You say: exist God would have to invent me.'*

Nor

does Traubel

If I did not

fail to reconcile his

apparently

contradictory affirmations of the inviolability of the individual and the all-importance of the masses

Let

my own

my own kind of a

kind of a man. I would rather man than any other kind of a 90

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY

man. Than any genius. Than any saint. ... I don't want to be happy. I do want to be myself. I want But I want nothing all that comes to me as myself. Every man that comes to me as some one else. .

Demands

belongs to himself. ereignty of his

own

first

all

the sov-

soul.

Makes no compromise. Yet acquiesces in the crowd. himself, yet is owned by the crowd. Willingly

Owns

defers in crowd things to the decision of the crowd.

Never confuses the one claim with the other. Regarding the boundaries between the two with cate honor.

Even with a

cruel austerity.

deli-

life

Yet acknowledging again that the line drawn can't be drawn. Leaving the matter unsolved. Intimating rfither than insisting upon the distinction. Feeling rather than seeing the way. Any kind of a man can be lost in a crowd. But to be found in a crowd that demands a man of men.'* and other

lives.

the

masses

same time Traubel's attachment to as unqualified as

dividual man.

the~'

his devotion to the in-

does not lose himself in the

But neither does he lose his relation to them, nor allow this relation to become merely

masses.

idealistic.

as his

The

individual has his significance solely

life directly

proceeds from and goes out to

other individuals and to the great masses of

men ^

But I want I've met the sayers of democracy. meet the democrat. They say the people may be

to all

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

92 right

sometime but not

are.

I take the people as they

yet.

don't ideaHze them.

They're the sure ma-

my foundations. I They give me faith. They're terial in

upon them.

built

I've never modified

the one result.

I've

them

don't give

faith.

not built upon me.

changed

purposes.

I'm

definitions.

I've always

wanted

I've not always agreed with myself

how the result was to be brought about. I've wanted people without anything else. I've wanted to make less of countries and more of people. Less of books. Less of arts and sciences. Less of beauty. Important as all may be. Less of all of them and as to

more of

all

the people.

People

first.

Before

the wealth and splendor of state.

Before

saviors and savings of society.

all

Before

all

the

all

incomes and

what I was born into the world for a quarter of a century ago. That's what I've stayed in the world for. That's what I'm going ambitions.

That's

to pass into the future for.

The

reconciliation of individual self assertion

—which contradiction to many — devotion to the masses

all

for Traubel.

direction

say this one thing.*'

and

His

and

seems an insoluble

in reality

no problem

sole self-expression lies in that

every communion with the crowd

always able to find something for himself, to

further his

own

development.

He goes

he recognizes no separation, but

farther, for

feels himself the

jVery child of "the collective people"

•

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY am

the

not

bom my

body of

tive people.

crowd. I

I if

of the seed of

mother.

father planted in

born of the

can't conceive of the

collec-

man and

can only see the

man

As I can man when I

in the

was

If I

left to talk of

person or of myself I'd feel as

look

have

If I hadn't the people to talk about I'd

nothing to say.

also

in the crowd.

crowd

the

No.

they were set off from each other.

mystically see the again.

some one

was without a

Some of you have money in bank and live on that. Some of you are famous. You live on fame. But I? What have I got? Only the people. subject.

I live on the people. And so I say everything that's worth while lives on the people. Every product of the brain or the heart that's worth while lives on the

people.

Philosophy, religion, the inspired canvases,

the visions of seers

Nor does Traubel

they

care

all live

where

on the people. *°

this deepest feeling

of his soul leads him, he gives himself over to

with utmost abandon' is

—not by an act of

faith,

done entirely of his own spontaneous

for

his

initiative,

without internal struggle, but by an act of will act that is in

—

an no degree forced, but an expression of

whole nature.

After describing the eloquent -

sermon of a Negro minister, which contained the refrain "I don't know where I'll be, but I'll be in the procession of the 'Lord," Traubel says of himself:

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

know where I'll be but I'll be in of man: I may be first or last: what difference I may be much or nothing: Look for me: can you find me? in

I don't

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;in

throng

the

does

make?

there: in the

moving

winding

endless

the procession

pano-

rama:

Look

in the farthest back place: there you'll see me: where the crush is greatest: there I'll be: Not with the artists: not with the famous: no: with the crowding jamming nondescripts there I'm not proud or humble I like the touch of the tmknown: I'm at home with unlettered things: the :

university scares I

me:

reach for a spot where

life is

the street:

part in the

mix of

commonest: I find I drop out of

sight

But I'm never out of the procession: I never step aside, letting it go on without me I'm with it for good and all: :

may be tired: I may be jostled: I may be hurt: may even be angry but I never step aside.*^

It is true that his

"people" to

sound

advocacy of the cause of the

occasionally expressed in such a

like leveling

way

populism or the regimentation

of State Socialism rather than the individualistic Socialism of a free society.

of this

when he

says

have an example

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY Now Now

gave genius back

all its prestige,

was contented

be alone with love

In the average practice of men.

But such passages are rather passing moods than permanent elements in Traubel's philosophy, for his insistence

on the absolute

inviolability of every indi-

vidual portends an increase of the role of genius, the unshackling of

goes to waste

the latent genius that

now

the masses of the people,

an acceptance of "the average

rather than

of men."

all

among

idealizes "the

practice

crowd," not in order

to reduce the individual, but because

that the individual can only have his

he believes

maximum

de-

velopment in the most complete democracy, and because the masses of to-day, precisely on account of their present lack of culture, are the only force

through which the traditional culture of the past can be effectively opposed.

The

meaning only in lasting meaning only

individual finds his present

the crowd, just as he finds his in the race:

makes me

feel so big to feel all

mothers back of It

pushing

me feel so little to my farthest children,

makes boys,

illimitable future.

fathers

and

ahead:

feel all the girls

dragging

and

into the

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

For having

all

the earth to myself would be nothing

did not have the people inhabiting the

earth.*ÂŽ

When you corner anything. Even virtue. When you comer pictures or books or curios. When you corner ideas. When you jealously comer your dreams. When you eat too much while others eat too little. When you dedicate any of the sources of to anything but the

life

common

Then

privilege.

you have sold your soul for dirt. If your love stops with your family. If you can love your own children and not love the children of others.*'

Dependence on the people or on the race

way

a limitation of the individual but only his nat-

ural fulfilment:

was sent here I don't know what was not sent here to be free: sign myself it

know

away than be signed away.

so terrible to be tied to things? to not be able

to lose yourselves in It

cut loose, I can't be dismissed : I can no

I can't

for:

would be more phan.

nowhere as nobodies?

terrible

cosmic

or-

.Âť"

excellent concrete illustration of Traubel's

conception of the relations of society and the individual

found in

his treatment of marriage.

Mar-

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY riage

neither the exclusive concern of the indi-

vidual nor is

purely a social institution:

Nothing can take the place of love. Nothing in marriage and nothing outside of marriage. If love is dead within marriage that moment the marriage ceases.

And

if love come to life outside marriage that moment the marriage begins. This is not a question as if between free love and some other kind of love. It's a question as if between loving and not lov-

ing.

It's no.

And

who do love to wherever and however.

mistake for people

live together the life of love

no mistake for people who don't love to of friendship wherever and however. You can quote the law either way and it has no weight. Love alone fixes the standards of behavior. Every real marriage abolishes every law. No individual has any right to say that such a thing is exclusively his business. Nothing is exclusively a man's own business. If he lived detached. If what he did had no general results. Then it might be his But nothing he does or thinks or says is business. so personal as that. It all reacts in some way on Everything has such reactions. Even your others. Even your habits. Whether you get rest when diet. you sleep. Whether you breathe right or wrong. It all has the remotest influences. That may not mean that the community should pass laws to control us It only means that it's up to us, the so intimately. it's

live apart the life

individuals, .

"Marriage

recognize the is

bottom a

communal

obligations.

social institution."

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

"Hence the mistake of the say

"Marriage

must recognize tion of sex."

this question to

"We

institution."

be at bottom a ques-

I'd say love here instead of sex, as I

said love there instead of social.

far has been chiefly experimental.

I'd rather

libertarians."

bottom a love

Marriage so

,Â°^

Traubel provides a place for the genius and the

exceptional individual; that place

says finely of Lincoln

crowd by staying

in the crowd.

"He emerged from

in the crowd."

^''^

But

the

cannot be

denied that he gives far greater attention to the people in the mass than he does to any individuals

who have become like Lincoln, are

all

Nor does he make!

differentiated.

exception even for those

men

of the people who,

most representative of the

revolutionary Socialists, Traubel

This

posed to "leaders."

H. G. Wells and "The Great State"

says of

well

shown

people. is

op-

what he

others, as the authors of

These anticipators and specifiers want to go ahead and say: Come on. What they should do is to Let's go on. stay in the press of the fight and say: You persuade more people by comradery than by tutorship.

You

as a prophet.

who

are

Nothing

potential as is

a friend than

offensive to a

man

not himself inherently a follower than to be

followed by others. finds himself followed

The

instant a genuine leader he sneaks to the rear. I don't

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY want

to be the light of the world.

want

add

light to the light of the world.*''

Traubel believes that the feeling of to-day that there must always be

somebody to lead is due solely which the masses of men

to the servile condition in find themselves:

You ters.

And

have got so in the habit of serving under masYou have been the subjects of kings so long. of parliaments and presidents. And you have

such false awe of professional men. Of men who talk and write. Of the merely ornamental arbiters

That you imagine

of social values.

pass over the border into the

new

professors will migrate with you.

You

cial federation.

the leaders and

That you

be compelled to look to them for the to think of

when you

that

life

deify leadership.

will

still

articles of so-

You

are afraid

heaven as a democracy."'

down the monuments. The great men. The leaders and superiors. The geI shake them down in a niuses and the marvels. common ruin. In order to rebuild greatness. In orI

The

pulling

masters.

what so far has been all brought all values upside down. I turn ideals and instrumentalities upside down. In order Now man is below all the that man may come up. der to bring out of out of some.

rest.

Then

all

turn

the rest will be below man.Â°*

Traubel's attack on leaders

really

clearest definitions of his democracy,

one of the for if self-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

loo

government is to mean anything it must mean that the people do not follow. And what else does a leader

mean except a person whom people follow?

objects as much, then, to spiritual leaders as to

political leaders, for

feels that their influence is

mainly to demoralize individual

initiative

hand, and, on the other hand, to egoists out of the

few who

make

on the one perverted

offer themselves as

leaders

When

the great artist appeared with his miracles

thought of the plain facts of I

ashamed showed my back

to this

my own

life

and was

wonderful performer and

returned as one dissatisfied

among my

fellows.

And

even the children were less than children, and the men and women less than men and women. This was worship: this was my reach from the mud

was

go into the dust and ask for having lived This strange awe before power and skill ^this shudder of despair, this knave confession and fool regard. This was what came in the travail of my passions, to heaven: this

life that it

pardon

when power was

let

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

loose without love.

This was the largess of authority, and entail of the despot."

this

was the legend

Perhaps the world has never had a spiritual leader man so much exalted and so universally recognized as Shakespeare. Without sharing in

or great

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY any of the petty

loi

Shaw, without taking anything whatever away from Shakespeare or his work, Traubel makes this eflfective criticisms of Harris or

protest against Shakespeare worship

All the priesthoods

agree about Shakespeare as

The

they do about the Bible.

theological, literary,

university, journalistic, scientific, medical, priesthood'.

They

all

a club. jectives.

say the same thing. And they say it with They say it with armed and vitriolic adIf

inquisitorial

you defy

their creed

you are subject to

Your

reputation's gone.

denunciation.

You have no historic perspective. You take yourself too seriously.

You're no scholar. You're unesthetic.

You're in revolt against culture. ... I don't blame Shakespeare for being puffed up by gaseous adulation into a historic monstrosity. He had nothing to do with it. But I don't find myself drawn towards such an irritating and arrogant tradition. Every new Shakespeare book excites in me this old Shakespeare resentment. I was going to say I want a place in the sun for greatness but not for the great man. But maybe I should say I want a place in greatness, which is

the general sun, for the people and not for the

incidental genius of a master.

one too big makes

man

all

of the schools

now:

speare?

You who

you

to.

What do you

I don't

I only

likely to light the

less

than to be in the way. right

Then again making little. The great

the rest too

way

honestly think of Shake-

ask you to

are reading

tell

me, though I'd

yourself, for

you must.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

102

as the orthodox inform us, the Bible and Shake-

If,

speare are enough, then pastoralism and feudalism are

Then we might

enough.

are

But

dead.

all

as well all be dead.

Then

pastoralism and feudalism

are not enough, then Shakespeare and the Bible are

Then open your doors and Then we might as well all be

not enough.

let

air in.

alive.

are

the fresh

Then

all alive."'

Traubel attacks our present civilization in the

name

the people.

This civilization consists,

largely, in the false voices of leaders

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

spiritual

and

temporal

They are the story.

You

They have

false voices.

told your

Or, rather, told an invented story as yours.

will find

most of

their arts

and

literatures.

They have lied about you. They have lied against you in lying for you. They have got everybody

And

crooked.

they have been believed

even you have believed in them.

in.

You have

esced in their terrible picture of yourselves.

Why, acqui-

You

have assented to yourselves at their estimate. You have never trusted yourselves to your own voice. Any other voice was better than your own. Any .

fool voice.

Any

corrupt voice.

bishop's voice or baron's voice.

welcome

You

you than your own

allowed others to say

say

it.

Now

say

it.

If I fool

Any king's voice or Any voice was more voice.

for you.

They did not

you must let me say it for you. I will you then send me where you sent

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY

103

I will say it for you for a little bit. Merely you are ready to say it for yourself. Just overnight, maybe. Just while you are getting good and ready, maybe. Just to fill the gap. Holding you up not to your own scorn but to your own pride. Not to tell you I can take charge of your affairs for you. Telling you only that you must take charge of them yourselves. Not flattering you. Not praising you for what you are not and have not done. No. Rather accusing you. Rather pointing out what you may become and what you may do. Let me say it for you. And even if I do not say it for you you have got to

them. until

live

for yourself.

And

living is better than saying.*'

Civilization is represented ers of the past

dying

by the

and present.

lies

of the lead-

Against this dead or

civilization stand the living

men

of to-day

Everything goes back to the people. I'm not inI'm interested in people. Mountains and moons and trees have no meaning to me till terested in suns.

they are peopled. insignificant

but people.

sing a song I

Your

philosophies and dreams are

they are peopled.

till

ture I see people in

it.

If I didn't hear the people or

see the people I might as well be deaf

you so

tell

many

know nothing

comprehend nothing but people. If you hear people in it. If you paint a pic-

there are so

many

acres of ground and ask

think of that? think of people.

say: If

I don't

and

blind.

rivers in a country or

me:

What do you

think of that: I only

you name the great men

me and

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

I04 ask

What do you make of them ?

nothing of them

answer

make everything of

If your theories don't give

make

the people.

Or your

Or your sciences. Or your vast cities. Or anything you build or pride yourselves upon. You say the sculpture of Greece, the paintings of

governments.

Italy, the

Our

music of Germany.

I say people.**

present civilization in

its

so-called "higher"

is held as a burden that the people carry and not as a treasure they inherit

aspects

What pack have you

got on your back ?

What

load

own? What's that burden under which you are bent? Symonds wrote to Walt Whitman "Do what I may I can't get that Oxare you carrying

not your

tljat's

ford pack off

my back."

round on our backs. against people.

and most of

Think what we've carried

All the creeds exciting people

All the laws making least of most

least.

All the

jails

executive mansions for sinners.

ous to

all.

a wonder

for saints 'and

all

the

All the arts treacher-

The churches alone are full of death. It's we ever survived the churches alone. Not

to speak of the colleges founded by

and for the

aris-

They have all been on our backs. And books that made light of the people. Millions of

tocracy.

the

dead books mountain

Traubel's

high."'

revolutionism

spares

nothing.

attacks not only our civilization but nearly all its

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY

105

much vaunted "education," its heroes, and even its saviors, who after all are only a sort of products,

its

sanctified leaders:

Every time you try

to live for yourself

interferes to live for you.

some savior

The church

will live

your body. You iind all the saviors waiting to live for you. Refusing to let you live for yourself. Taxing you to death to crown themselves for life. You have thought of the saviors dying that you might live. Think again. And

The

for your soul.

state will live for

you

will see yourself dying that the saviors

life is

may

live.

no more die for the people than the people die for me. Look the saviors straight in the face. Defy them. Refute them by an appeal to your own treasure. Every time you save yourself you destroy a savior. Do you want to be saved by another? What is the price of salvation? Your body and soul are the price. You are to give up everything. That is the price. Not give up everything to all. No. That would be a fair price. Give up everything to the saviors. That is the price. That is the pirate fee. What is left after you have settled with the saviors? The saviors are left. But nothing the people's

is left

of you.

life.

The

saviors used to succeed.

you may notice that the saviors succeed

when

the people

ceed the saviors

fail.

owners and bosses.

fail.

The

When

Now

saviors only

the people suc-

Saviors belong with kings and

When

the people at last object to

being ruled or owned or bossed the saviors will disappear with the saved.^""

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

io6

The mere

fact that civilization

so largely in-

an evidence that it is in so far dead. The people must question ^and question suspiciously every iota of "culture" that is handed down to them, whether from those above them today, or by their own ancestors, the miseducated masses of past generations: herited' is in itself

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

So people mustn't be

telling people all the time in

hushed tones that tradition chances out of nine confided

day

in.

to see if

it's

be respected.

Ten

rather to be distrusted than

the very least

we must

test

every

has grown any with time overnight.

Nobody has more

love for the Declaration than I have. keep on asking it questions. And I always expect it to answer my questions. So with any body of procedure, legal, ecclesiastical or literary. With any pre-assumption of the sciences or the arts. I ask questions. And I want answers. I always say to everybody Ask questions. I want the crowd to ask questions. The mob. They didn't ask so many at the start when the United States got under way. They've been asking more and more. And they've got more still coming. We can't afford to give masters, bosses, su-

But

periors,

rulers,

ment's peace. nights.

compacts, kings, presidents, a

We'd be

And we'd be

guilty if

sinners

mo-

we let them sleep any we let them loaf any

They must give an account of themselves. Not a few. Not to committees, commissions, judges,

days. to

assemblies

not to any special set self-selected, chosen,

or appointed.^"^

: :

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY

107

I have already illustrated the mixture of deep sympathy and irreverence with which Traubel hanThis dles the sacred things of our civilization.

very strongly brought out in his recent

spirit is

poem, "Hello, Central!":

y Hello, central! Hello, central And the answer came back Along the mysterious wire traveled the voice of the !

invisible to the ear of the unseen.

What do you want?

words hurried dream what do you want ? What did I want ? I wanted religion the

out of

me religion And I waited,

I said so

give

hearing the click and buzz of strange

sounds: feeling the sting of the current flowing across

Give

ligion,

And

my It

religion, I said it

and then

came

re-

said

asked

questions

they were the questions of

heart: but they went unanswered:

was not

religion

a creed

Hello, central

number:

answering

was theology :

was

heard the mumbled prayers of a priest I

I cried

wanted

you've given

the

religion: you've given

wrong

the

church. I called

up information: What's

religion's

number?

asked

Information said: ligion: I only

I don't

know

know anything about

the church.

re-

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

io8

Was

I to

sick

despair? was I to

where was

religion

sit

down and

cry myself

Hello, central! central again: try, justice: try equity:

me honor and equality! my name called how did they inow my name?

give I

heard

what did

well,

want ?

was again answered without getting an answer: I don't seem to know what you want, the answerer said:

And to

the answerer said

know anything about

Apply

the state

right

I don't

and wrong

seem

^"^ !

and sanctities America was to be saved by a new class of heroes. They were to be leaders who brought new ideas and a new inspiration to the people. These were to be democratic ideas, but the inspiration was to come from the few to the many, from a natural born elite. Traubel, on the contrary, renounces heroes, leaders, prophets and bibles, new or old. He will go to this renunciation of saviors

to the poet-prophet idea of

Whitman.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

the people to get inspiration just as

much

as to

them how to be worthy democrats. They will tell him how to be a worthy democrat, and he will pass on the bring

to them.

will not tell

message to the world. In reviewing Bernard Shaw's "Socialism and Superior Brains" Traubel shows even less respect than Shaw does for all that now goes under the

name of education and

culture

PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY

109

your superior brains? You go to school. to use good English. You can't do anything. But you can talk nice. I can make a shoe for your foot.- Can you make anything for my mind? No. You can only talk good English. You can only You can't help fol de rol about philosophy and art. people to live. You can't even help them to die. Do I see your superior brains? I know the hyena can

You

I see

how

learn

bite.

know

the craft of the fox.

know

the poison

your superior brains? You weigh more pounds than I do. You go away in summer and loaf somewhere at your ease. You know how to spend money. You don't know how to make money. Honestly. By some form of human service. But you of the snake.

know how

Our

I see

to spend.^"'

present education

and

culture Traubel re-

gards as a mere by-product of class

rule.

does

many of the really stronger way from the masses into the

not deny that a great characters find their

ruling classes, nor that a more than proportionate number of the weaker ones remains among the mass, but mere strength is not necessarily worth

anything whatever to society or to the race:

We strong strong

do everything

men man

produce the weak men.

are either seduced or destroyed. is

given only one alternative.

decide to be weak.

Then he may be

left to

The The can

be honest.

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

He may

decide to be strong.

verted to the class of those

Then he must be con-

who

exploit.

zation leaves only honesty to the weak.

robbery to the strong.^"*

Our

civili-

It leaves

only

VI THE POET OF SOCIALISM

A -^

S a

radical Socialist Traubel is not satisfied to

attack existing institutions

ular standpoint, but sees that is

from a

to revolutionize all civilization,

ized

and must develop a program

tendencies of social evolution. Socialist

vagliely pop-

a people's movement it

must be organ-

in accord with the

believes that the

movement has such a program and he

fully

accepts that movement, though without allowing

himself for a

moment

porary forms.

to be submerged by

its

tem-

even concedes the need of a

rigidly logical doctrine,

and only

protests against

materialism or any interpretation of Socialism that is

exclusive or narrow:

My material

economists give

for the mystery.

only another

They have not begun

they think they are through seeing. not only anti only anti to

profit.

all

Not only

to see.

Socialism

anti exploitation.

physical lordships.

word But is

Not

Socialism goes be-

low all foundations and above all superstructures. It can be proved to a cent. And it baffles all demonstration. I understand what the too too Socialist Socialists III

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

112

They say: Why don't you stick But you've got to stick to something else before and after you stick to figures.^"'^ You may sneer all you choose at the Socialism that's up in the air. It still remains true that you breathe the air. You may say anything you please of our dreams. It still remains true that nothing ever became Well what are you a fact but through a dream. doing with the technique of Socialism? You want to learn it. Then you want to forget you ever knew anything about it. You want to use it as an instrument. But you mustn't adopt it as an end. The techsay to

all this.

to figures

nique of Socialism

like the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

technique of anything

Techis an invention then it can be diagrammed for good. But if it's an evolution then it must have variations and elasticity and submit itself to the constant expansions of else.

It's

often best observed in the breach.

nique makes cowards of us

human

the

spirit.

If Socialism

all.

Natural selection will dispose of

Hughan

"The tactics are So they always will be. Once they are made they become a tyrant institution. They are only safe in the making. They become a menace when made. You and I, too: the dogmatist. still

in the

Jessie

making."

So they

says

are.

are only useful in the making.

ever get

made

on the truth. You can't exempt your historic movements from this law. Socialism will always only be safe in the making. When it gets made something'll have to happen to get it making again. Some people already have Socialism made.^"* we'll be a check

THE POET OF SOCIALISM

113

Traubel will accept no substitute for the Socialist Recognition of certain facts

reality.

ism, neither

not Social-

the acceptance of any formula, nor

adhesion to any fixed social tactics or individual

And

course of conduct.

clusive instead of

Note the

an inclusive movement

radicals.

they're not drifters.

wood

of thought

all he rejects that which makes it an ex-

aboye

interpretation of Socialism

take

for granted that

Yet some of the deadest dead called radical.

Radicals get into

They group into classes, cliques, machines, orthodoxies. They commit themselves to incidental follies. They test the whole of life by a piece of life instead of a piece of life by the whole of life. They ruts.

advise the people but they refuse to be advised by the people.

feeling

You may assume

drift

and

all

that

all

institutional

revolutionary feeling

mas-

But that don't follow.

There's radical drift

as well as conservative drift.

There's drift towards

tery.

as well as

away from

themselves

may

the past.

Your

libertarians

—^pawns

be slaves of a process

in a

routine.^"'

It is

unnecessary to point out that such a liberal

Socialist as

Traubel will pay. a far higher and more

willing tribute to the great individualists

only they are democrats

—than he

—provided

will to the

dog-

matic or partizan Socialists, however eminent.

may

be doubted, for example,

the character of

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

114

that uncompromising anti-Socialist,

John Bright, has

ever received a fuller appreciation than this

He was

for getting rid of

all

the rulers everywhere

The final touch was never given to Bright's nerve. He was never poor. He was never in prison. But he was better than ever having been poor. He was capable of being poor. and

all

And

the ruled everywhere.

he was better than ever having been in prison. capable of enduring imprisonment. Being

He was

may

be a necessity. Being in jail may be a misBut being ready to face and accept adversity is the supreme gift of personality. Bright had no earth himger. He was for England giving up what she has rather than for seizing more. He had no money hunger. He was for everybody having enough money. He didn't seem to know how they could get enough. But he was in favor of it. He was not

poor

fortune.

afraid to be called a sentimentalist.

To remind

gran-

dees and ecclesiastics that their powers and their gra-

were all drawn from the blood of the people. go the route. But he talked the route. He acknowledged that we may be able at a given time to go only part way. But he insisted that we could always see all the way. Bright didn't seem to realize what privilege was built on. But he recognized its victims. He protested without knowing just what he was protesting against. But he made his charge in

tuities

didn't

a spirit so righteously aflame that flesh

of the guilty.

its fire

had so much

that he fought like a soldier.*"*

scorched the

faith in peace

THE POET OF SOCIALISM

115

While Traubel must be regarded as a liberal he is also one of the most radical; indeed, he turns out to be quite as much a fighter as a Socialist

lover

make mistakes. We are going to We are going to do you some injustice. We are going to be stern. We are going to use words that are going to

be hot.

overshoot and words that undershoot the mark.

That

Fight.

cause

our word.

hate but because

love.

away anything from anybody. away everything to everybody.^"'

to take

give

In a review of

Emma

do not fight beWe do not fight

fight to

Goldman's book on An-

archism, while disagreeing with her on

some funda-

mental points, he yet puts a high value on her work

and

life just

because she

a fighter against existing

institutions

Emma

Goldman

evangelization.

choose.

One

one of the voices of the new of the stirrers of

Stirrers of strife are stirrers of

strife, if life.

you

Stirrers

of love.""

In one of his most eloquent "Collects," Traubel regards himself also as a "stirrer of strife."

One

passage contains as bold and defiant a challenge to the ruling classes as can be found an5rwhere, though it

by no means a unique passage in Traubel's

writings.

says:

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

ii6

you without apologizing instead of apologizing I might be so gentle you could not understand my rebuke. That would please you. But I am so honest you can't misunderstand me. That I hit

without hitting you.

pleases me. self into the

business

not to platitudinize my-

favor of the court.

always in contempt of court.

member

a ruly

outcast.

me.

know

that

peace. I

I .

to be

I am only at home as an when the police are after when I have done wrong. I

of society.

only right I

matter with me.

nounced

not shine as

only at ease

when

My business I could

all

am endorsed there is something And I know that when I am right. For I am a disturber of

the de-

the

break in upon you with

I turn

brutal taunts.

myself into a question mark and follow you wherIn the I am in the food you eat.

ever you go.

you wear. In every cent you spend. You buy a box of cigars but I lean over your shoulder and say something to distress you. I make you My presence I ask you for figures. report to me. I come and go before your fills you with hatred. eyes planting revolt. Little by little, here and there, clothes can't

by words that warn and challenge, I succeed in stirring up the waters under your ship. ... In order that all of us may be what all of us must become the We few of you must be reduced to the ranks. night like the of hours all the don't go round through other any or o'clock one It's loyal watchmen crying o'clockâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and all is well! We don't cry: Sleep on! .

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

THE POET OF SOCIALISM We ill!

cry:

The

It's

cry:

one o'clock

117

—or any o'clock—and

all is

Wake upP"

only kind of radical Traubel cares about

embodied, for example, in Wendell Phillips.

was

the militant radical, the agitator, the type that

the

great abolitionist he writes: Phillips was no beg your pardon revolutionist. He was no by your leave man. There was no now you see me now you don't in his propaganda. He was always all there. He was never round the corner. He was never missing. He had no important friends to pay court to or ornamental dinners to stuif with.^^^

j^There can be no question that with attacks

on the ruling

His hope

element of sympathy. converts

them

all

classes there is

— for

their

of Traubel's

mixed a deep

always to make

own

sakes-reven

though he confesses he has been often disillusioned in this direction and is aware that the democratic movement can have no hope of winning over the privileged class as a whole. is justified

And, whether his hope is so just and pierces

or not, his attack

so deep that

tends to force these classes to a

realignment along the line of the deeper issues,

which

—

a vast gain

^no

matter which side they

finally take.

Yet Traubel does not spare the ruling

class.

accord with the most profound truth of the whole

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

ii8

Socialist philosophy,

personal.

he makes

gives

system in the abstract. in

men

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;though he never goes so far as to say that

class-consciousness

man:,

of his attacks

all

no attention to the social He attacks it as embodied

all

that is embodied in any

Labor is finding that it has been too generous. It wondering why it should fatten you with plenty and starve itself. It has been comparing the rosy cheeks of your children with the pale faces of its You have charged the costs of culown darlings. ture to labor. Every college represents an enforced tribute. Labor is not going to borrow the weapons of earthquakes and waterspouts. It is simply going to swarm on its own roads, occupy its own homesteads, enjoy its own pleasures, work out the measure and shape of its own will, and leave you to fall in line in the one way that will secure you against annihilation. Labor is not going to destroy anything. It is is

not going to destroy even you. everything.

It is

say you are useless. to prove

It is

going to use you.

going to use

Labor does not

Labor says you are

you against yourself labor

useful.

And

going to make

use of you.^^' It's all

nonsense for the

man down town to call the

man who

his brother.

with

man

his brother.

at the

man up town to call For the man at the

bottom

his brother.

a victim to call the

The man who

my money

in his pocket.

man who

the

top

For the the victor

brother goes round

More than

that,

with

THE POET OF SOCIALISM my

dreams

in his soul.

portunity for

life his actual

makes

119

possible op-

opportunity for

life.

He's

He's not my brother, I say. couldn't be his brother under the same condi-

brother, he says.

And

tions.^^*

Whether

the proffered "brothering" on the part

of the ruling classes takes the shape of telling the

wage-earner

how

use his leisure

to finance his family or

how

equally insufficient

it is

Don't ask the workingman what he can

live with.

Ask him what he can live without. Don't ask him how much food he needs to be really alive on. Ask him how much food will keep him from really dying. Don't let him figure it out for himself. You figure it His income must not be the wages of He's not to choose. He's to be chosen for. Good people, bad people, indifferent people, are studyAll this tabulated sympathy is a ing the question. species of negation. It sounds like: What can I do for you my good man? No matter how innocent we out for him.

your

sin.

may be we

bill.

suggest guilt.

Let us

say:

We don't say edit

your

bill.

Present your

What

the working class creatively to help itself to?

you can

Can

live on.

You only want to know what they You say nothing as to what belongs to

You

only speak of what they can be allowed.

tell?

them.

No.

The working class, you see, are not to have what they produce. They are to be given an allowance. A living allowance

hay

to feed the horse

on to-night

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

120

so the horse can

can cut off

work

cut off his source of

So he must be kept for manhood.

life.

If he can't

in condition.

Far from

that.

You

don't

industrial serfdom.

You

for us to-morrow again.

sources of supply.

all his

you do you work you must. If

Not

in condition

In condition for an

want him

be good

You don't want him to be too bad off. Then he'd die. You want him to live so you can live. If he dies you die. Or you work. Which is worse than dying. So we must discover some way of preservation. We want to take care of a man Then

off.

he'd get cocky.

so he can do the most

work

possible with his chains

on."=

Our it's

fight is

a fight for leisure.

Remember

that.

That's true.

But

our fight for leisure. want to do things. We need

not leisure's fight for us.

It's

We're fighting for that time and space. That time and space is what we call leisure. We need room to move round in. That's what we're fighting for. Not for meals and clothes and houses. That's only the incident. We're after life and more life. We're after expansion. We want fresh air and sunlight to grow in. That's our fight.

time and space to do them

in.

don't fight to possess goods.

fight to stop

goods from possessing us. We don't want to posOnly, we don't want the other fellow to possess sess. either. We want possession vested in all not in one. I

only need to

owning

own when

others own.

can be safe without a cent.

If others stop .

sion of the intellectual well-to-do that he to save the soul of the intellectual

pauper

That is

illu-

chosen

offensively

THE POET OF SOCIALISM There's no

gratuitous.

vation to spare. salvation to

man

so rich he has any sal-

man

There's no

pay for

121

so poor he has no .^^'

his keep.

While Traubel occasionally writes to the ruling he thought it might be persuaded to con-

class as if

sent to the social revolution, he never promises the

people that they can gain anything without the

stubborn resistance of that

class.

Thus he

advises

the people:

Keep

to the road

do not turn back

no matter what

happens, do not turn back:

There's poverty ahead and starvation ahead and bat-

ahead and death ahead:

tle

ing.

I refuse to see noth-

You have

challenged the masters of the people and

they are everywhere out to meet you:

The

god of money, the lords god of trade, the god of the land, are out to meet you.^^''

lords

And "^

again

They

Strikes are desperate expedients.

are war.

What's the use pretending? Let's tell our real names. There is war between capitalism and labor. Desperate, unequivocal war. challenges.

compromise. stop

till

Now

But they don't

the object

war's over.

The war

on.

capitalism challenges.

won.

Capitalism will

Now

labor

They may

forgive. There'll be no Labor will say when the have nothing to do with

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

122

Capitalism has had most of

fixing the date.

Labor is yet world war. '

It's

to get

most of

its

say.

its

This

say. is

not a quarrel between two races.

It's

Take

a quarrel within the whole race.

higher plane.

a war between ideas.

It's

to a

still

That which

has been but is not to be. That which is to be but never has been.^ Every morning you see fifty .

things in your paper about the war.

It's

not called

war news. But it's war fact. If we printed all this news on a page or on pages together under a single what it intrinsically is every would catch its dramatic suggestions. reading He would see that we are living through the immensest epic of the ages. He would read by the light of this display head indicating

man

the decrees of fate. Thermopylae, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Sedan, alone or together, would conflagration

Most They hear the noise of the conflict but they don't know' what it means. Even when they are wounded they don't know what hit them. Evep when they prematurely die they don't divine to what they are sacriThey look upon boycotts and strikes and lockficed. outs as evidences of peace. No. They are evidences of war. And this war instead of being the mildest is the severest of wars. Old wars were horrible in form and trivial in substance. The new war is terseem cheap beside

people are blind.

rible in

this

overarching

They say

crisis.

nothing's going on.

substance and innocent in form.^^'

As the

social

war

involves suffering on the part of

the oppressed so Traubel has a right to

demand from

THE POET OF SOCIALISM the oppressor that he too it

may

be against existing

make a human

123

though

sacrifice,

nature to expect

that this appeal will be heeded in social cir9les

where

material allurements are so great and where training

has been so radically wrong.

may come

Whichever

class

from, every genuine Socialist must be

driven mainly, not by the material advantages he

can hope to obtain in the near future for himself or

by the feeUng that his work for Sohis present mission in the world

his fellows, but

cialism gives

him

and promises the greatest present opportunity both for self-development and for social service:

course I have a mission: and you?

had no mission what would I have? and you? had no mission I would have no life: if I had no mission I would have no love:

If I

mission

the course I sail:

There are the

mission

dream:

indestructible

stars I steer by: there are the

rades I steer by.

com-

With masters against slaves, with money against men do we know what our mission is? With drawing lines everywhere instead of wiping lines out everywhere: do we know what our mis.

sion is?"*

Traubel thinks, however, that class lines exist, and must be recognized if they are to be wiped out, that everybody

involved in some

way

in the

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

124

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

class struggle

not actively, then, passively.

one does not take an active part in bringing about the new society or in defending the old, one is at least

among

either

There

exploited.

Then they

tell

The

us about the innocent public.

nothing to do with.

the

no innocent public:

innocent public suffers. innocent public.

among

the exploiters or

Suffers for something

Don't believe

There

it.

There

only the guilty public.

has

no If

that innocent public wasn't guilty there'd never be If that innocent public wasn't the guilty

a strike.

stubborner of profit there'd be no economic injustice.

have

Don't talk to its

face hung

Traubel

way

the

me in

about the innocent public.

rogues gallery .^^^

not a Socialist

movement happens

who

drifts

whichever

to be going for the

moment. He is a Socialist only so long as the move^ ment is true to itself. For example, he condemns the mere reformer inside the movement as well as without the man, that is, who in advocating cer-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

tain relatively small social changes believes, or preis working as a new society

tends to believe, that he practicable towards

fast as is

I want Socialism to be sternly narrow so it may become prophetically broad. I want it to be cruel so I want it out of feeling to not care it may be kind. whose feelings it hurts. I want it to refuse to have

THE POET OF SOCIALISM anything that

125

has to get wearing a mask.

It is

have I want it an earth voice. I want it to have an earth scope. I want it to get what belongs to it as soon as it can. But I want it to wait as long as it must. I don't want entrusted with an earth mission.

to abbreviate itself to the dimensions of a political

Nor do

platform.

I want it to withdraw into some I'm not afraid of banners. I who

hermit isolation.

believe in symbols. stripes.

have

who

feet

don't discredit the stars and

I'm not sorry to

credit the red flag.

earth. I

whose brow

But after all I am a quarreler. the spot where I belong. There

is in

the heavens.

I plant

myself on

I challenge

the con-

ventions.^"^

It must not be supposed that Traubel despises any reform or is unwilling to accept any concessions.

only unwilling to

make

concessions himself,

or to accept, even in part, any existing social injus-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;which

tice

he would consider as making him an

accomplice in social crime, a "compounder of the felony."

You

me say that you are defeated, You may make concessions. But I make no concessions. Do you think that when will never hear

dear comrades. will I

look at your children I can

Your masters have

make

concessions?

you to bed whipped. Will you get up to-morrow morning defiant? Your temporary report

sent

made

to defeat.

Your

final

report

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

126 is

made

to victory.

You asked for ten per cent. You You asked for something. You

asked for nine hours. got nothing. ing of the

But I more

That

fiber.

is,

And

nothing except a little stiffenso you think you were licked.

you that strengthening of the fiber is worth you than ten per cent, or than nine hours. Defeat? This world is your world. But you have thrown away the title. And no admitted defeat will pick up that title for you again. But the defeats that you will not admit will in the hour of your riper courage return you your rejected heritage. I would rather have a whole-hearted enemy than a half-hearted friend. I would rather entertain a bad idea with all my heart than a good idea with half my heart. I would rather that capital was all right and labor all wrong than that labor should compromise with half a claim for the sake of peace. I would rather have a world full of honest tyrants than a world I would rather have full of dishonest courtiers. strength in my enemy than weakness in myself .^^^ tell

Traubel Socialism means a vast social movement and not a mere political party. He is not willing to appeal to the public for the party

on the

opportunistic ground that the victory of Socialism will

make no sweeping changes and have no

effect

on cherished institutions and ideals, ism and the home, nor does he believe that the changes which it is to bring about can be guaranteed to keep within any fixed limitations whatever such as patriot-

THE POET OF SOCIALISM We

shouldn't take our gospel to the world and

show how

try to

127

going to shake up things. it's going to shake up shouldn't say: Don't be foolish and be should say: Be wise and be afraid.^^' little it's

should show

We We

things.

afraid.

With

how much

these views, Traubel naturally does not care

for the compromising, dilatory, non-Socialist re-

One

former.

of the best of these in America, Brand

Whitlock, he trenchantly characterizes in less than four lines:

Whitlock

them give

come but give

They may take time but

I say:

time.

them

one of the thousand year men.

says these millennial results will surely

won't

time.

Here we have not only the typical reformer's view but also that of the genuine Socialist as opposed to

him.

Could more be said in so few words?

In these days of destructive and criminal "patriot-

ism" directed as

much

against other countries as for

the benefit of one's own, there

no better

test of the

true revolutionary spirit than one's attitude

Here

question.

flinch.

with

full

When

this

elsewhere Traubel does not reviews Gustave Herve's "Leur Patrie" as

approval and asks: will the

whole

Socialist

movement consent

to stand unequivocally against patriotism?

are

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

128

one race or

either

are not one race.

either a brotherhood or

are one race,

patriot

are

are not a brotherhood.

are a brotherhood, then the

out of place.

belongs to another world.

Unfortunately, not to a world that the world has out-

Hardly

lived.

that.

To a world

living.

outlived.

But

to a

world that we are out-

that the Socialist certainly has

But the

Socialist patriot?

say to the Socialist patriot?

What can an anomaly.

without a reason for being.*^*

When Traubel wrote these lines the present war had not begun and Socialist "patriots" were not yet in a majority as they are

war,

not everywhere.

now

in all the countries at

This situation, together

with Traubel's profound and instinctive antipathy to war,

makes

his views in the present great con-

between the nations one of the best possible He has handled it at tests of his whole position. flict

great length and from It

many

angles.

needs hardly be said that Traubel has seized

once more to point out that no real democrat can be a mere nationalist or patriot, a mere American, for example this occasion

If I say I'd choose my country wrong to any other country right you slap me on the back as a patriot. But if I say I'd choose any other country right to

my say:

country wrong you shoot

Now's the time

to shut up.

as a traitor. I say:

You

Now's the

THE POET OF SOCIALISM They ask me: Would you they ask me: Would you

time to talk out. be a

129

German?

What

like to like to

had nothing to do with what I am. I want to have nothing to do with what I'm to be. When it comes to races, I don't want to choose. Or men, I don't want to choose. If I choose then I'm lost. Then I've set one above another. That's war. I'm for peace.^^^ be an Englishman?

can

say?

In another passage Traubel shows foundly opposed democracy tionalism which rests

He I

upon

how

pro-

to that militant na-

assertions of superiority.

says

want

don't

When

to be superior.

hate superiority.

When

the German's superior I become anti.

the Englishman's superior I become anti again.

man may

be right in

wrong.

I might agree with all his theories.

dissent

from

superiority

But

And

his superiority.

the more I despise

But Traubel

all his ideas.

his superiority's

the

But

right his

it.^^°

radical than

most

Socialists.

a communist, believing in the equal division

of goods, and this belief

based

—as

in the case of

Whitman and Tolstoy

—on a

sameness of persons.

People being essentially equal

and

alike, there is

belief in the essential

no reason why one person (or more power or "means"

nation) should be given

than another, no reason

why one

should "use" another at

all:

person (or nation)

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

130

We'll have no peace as long as a shred of the old combat and victory is left. As long as

theories of

anybody anywhere has to

fight for anything.

gle will never be outlived.

by another must

This

But the

Strug-

sacrifice of

one

stop.

the very opposite idea to that of Kipling's

"White Man's Burden." It is seen again in Traubel's sympathy for many of the ideas of Tolstoy:

The main

emphasis placed Not somebody. Not on

thing in Tolstoy

is his

on people. On everybody. on the virtuous. Not on selected democracies. But on the mob. The ragtag and bobtail. The discredited.

Tolstoy contends for

This

all.

the psychological or spiritual basis of com-

munism as we see it in the founders of religions. The Socialist who is not a communist, on the contrary, believes that the value of individuals

and of

humanity varies exceedingly.

In this

respect the Socialist is at the opposite pole

from the

societies to

communist.

Traubel sometimes goes so far that

he draws as little distinction between the various He social systems as he does between individuals. says: I can't follow the hairsplitters

and the quibblers.

The document worshipers and the constitution monFor the people always come back to me. The gers.

THE POET OF SOCIALISM cry

plaintive

They're

all

draw

lines.

Just about equally wise.

Just

of the people.

people.

131

about equally foolish.

can't

Just about equally deceived.

Just about equally brutalized.

But here Traubel does not state his own position For in another passage, written about the same time, he suggests that, while he is altogether correctly.

not uncritical of America, he distinctly prefers the

American social system, because of advance towards democracy:

its

greater

For America to put on airs about its democracy is Europe to put on airs about its culture.

as bad as for

are still in a wretched tangle. All of us. We have every reason for all being dubious of our perfections. Yet all also have good reasons for being thankful to each other. The worst of us has contributed something to the fund. The best of us haven't contributed enough to brag about. And as the effort of the bad to be good is often nobler than the effort of the good to be better we can say of nations that the treasure of the worst may stand for more than the treasure of the best. Our United States have

made a

state.

well as ahead. cratic.

people.

It's It's

of faults.

full

It discredits the

itself

eyes.

It's

one thing when

It lies it's

its

about

another.

peering into the future.

upon extensions of

back as

people as well as trusts the

It contradicts itself.

shows

It looks

anti-democratic as well as demo-

It's

itself.

Still it

has

calculating

democratic practice.

say

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

132

we have a

state administered by the people, conby the people, made as they please and unmade as they please by the people, is to go ahead of the figures. That's what we want. But that's not what we've got. In economics the people want the earth. But they've got very little of it. In politics they want the state. But they've got hardly any of

that

trolled

There's too much between. Just as The people want the church. But they

in religion.

it.

And

ple

want

literature. all

And

art

and sometimes

and

I think they

have

can't

The

science.

peo-

have noth-

ing.

Traubel's self-imposed task in this passage

America; he does

state the case against

to disclose his belief that

the

present

it is

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

moment

that

in this

the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

^if

was

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

country

way

in a

greatest

towards democracy are being made. criminate between nations then

efforts

does dis-

only in favor of

America.

war

claim

Traubel's strongest attack on the present

when he is

assaults those non-Socialists

who

being fought for democracy and against mili-

tarism.

points out that

when

these persons are

not Socialists they are not really democrats themselves, since

costly

But worse.

they stand for another and a far

war:

war is your economic peace is war goes this peace goes lower.

terrible as this

Low

as the

THE POET OF SOCIALISM Savage as

133 Treacher-

battles are profits are savager.

ous as strategy is the system is more deceitful. You are horrified because the -Germans laid tribute on It was horrible. But horror don't become For you have exacted such tribute that this You can is in comparison a mere mote in a sunbeam. be shocked by a formal war. But here we have a war worse than war. And here you are unperturbed. You shudder over a battlefield. But you regard pov-

Brussels.

you.

erty

with equanimity.

terests,

profits: they're all

Coupons, dividends, in-

deadlier than

They're the blow in the dark.

rifle

balls.

They're the assault

in the night. You who denounce the Zeppelins approve of profits. The Zeppelin murders while the people sleep. So does your income. And you are

For the people For women and children. For the too old and the too young. But who does your income spare? When you get that which you have so concerned for the noncombatant.

who

can't fight back.

given no equivalent for,

Yet

who

spared ?^^^

in spite of his intense reaction against the

present war, Traubel's optimism stands the will not take

motives that led to the conflict are worst, the results

is so.

The

may

be of the best.

among

And

the social function of the people to see to

The war must be

"to a revolution"

test,

a pessimistic view even of war.

the it

that

is it

fought, not to a finish, but

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

134

What

are the people going to get out of the

Is the clock to

going that way. grieve with

back?

set

I see everything

sorrows.

going on.

make use

war?

never see anything I don't

of them.

I can't

war wholly wasted however I look at it. I can see it wholly wicked. Wholly horrible and wholly Wholly stupid and wholly impossible. inexcusable. Yet I gather up its ashes and scatter them across the earth and know that they must bring us returns. I'm not making the worst of the best bargain. I'm mak-

see the

ing the best of the worst bargain.

I can't conceive of

a worse way to get anywhere. I can't imagine a more I can't conidiotic method of humanizing society. But I'm coct a more devilish scheme of growth. still

resolute.

I still

say granting you your barbarism

I'm going to get something thing for the people.

civilized out of

it.

Some-

That's' the only civilized thing

anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Anything you get for Anything you get for the masters of the people. those who isolate land and the product of labor from the people. Anything you leave in the possession

That's

Anything.

rulers.

all

That's

robbery.

That's all

thing you get for the people. get.

deserve

matter

it.

how

That's

little

all

blasphemy.

barbarism.

But any-

matter what you

the people want

or even

all civilized.^^*

social rebel like

Traubel would be expected to

carry his spirit of revolt to the foundations of institutions

for a

and

in all directions.

moment

Nor

does he hesitate

to say that his attitude is destructive,

THE POET OF SOCIALISM and must be destructive

may finally

struction It

may

135

in order that a larger con-

result

be necessary to sweep half our world away It may be neces-

in the interest of the other half.

sary to stampede

repeal

ties.

all

values.

laws.

abrogate

annul

all

all treaties.

respectabili-

."Âť

Without following Nietzsche in his ethics, Trauan equally radical and an almost identical position on the question of good and evil, a posibel takes

tion destructive of the very

foundations of the

whole moral system of to-day:

used to be worms that never

wood

be kindling

for

hell.

die.

used to

used to be told that

our hearts were rotten. Most everybody used to be taught that. It was put into literature. The painters represented it in pictures. The pulpits thundered it. No wonder we succumbed. The idea that there was no bad and no good never entered our .

skulls.

surrender.

just acquiesced in the

...

If a

man

believed he

common moral was good, why

what wouldn't he do? What outrage wouldn't he ... I was not only in revolt against being bad. I was also in revolt against being good. I wanted to be free of both obligations. ... If people ain't bad what are we going to build a church on ? Or a stage ? Or social regulation ? If people ain't bad what would perpetrate?

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL

136

we do

with our policemen and armies and navies ?

made more

people

of love than of hate what would

become of all the people who live on hate? We have up society on the supposition that people are bad.

built

This theory of their goodness undermines the social order.

You

under.

We've nothing

are taking the foundations out from to stand on.

through your good to you. ... I know that if you give people half a chance to be themselves they'll not try to be anybody else. ... I can understand that my coat may be incorrigibly bad. But I can't understand how I can be incorrigibly bad. The human stuff is I see

made

through your bad to your good.

I see

to last.^'"

Recognizing neither "good" nor "evil," but only or anti-social conduct, Traubel refuses to

social

accept that kind of democracy which consists only in efforts

towards democracy, however sincere or even

"heroic" that effort

woman

may me

be that she found

it hard to democrat but found it difficult to mix with the crowd. She asked me Do you ? I said it was not hard to be a democrat. I said it was hard to force yourself to be a democrat. I said it was not hard for the crowd to mix with the crowd. I said it was hard for an alien to mix with the crowd.^'^ The most interesting person in history is myself. And the most interesting to you should be yourself.

said to

be a democrat.

She wished

to be a

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; THE POET OF SOCIALISM And

to every a democracy.

man

dispensable to

all

brings us

all

Then we have

should be himself.

When and

man

every

137

sees that

responsible accordingly,

in-

That

face to face.^'^

Evidently the type of social individual Traubel here presupposes will

become general only under

the improved conditions of the future society. like

Whitman, Traubel

this

much-abused term.

But he

than

Whitman was by

may

futurist, if I is

So,

use

far less influenced

the past and

undoubtedly

even more closely in touch with the masses of

men

which gives him a more solid foundation for his construction. His interest in the future, moreover, does not consist in a willingness to postpone that future,

because of the certainty of

Traubel

coming.

its

not an evolutionist of the old school, he

a pragmatist:

Why we

should

apologize?

that the future

present

Why is

should

we be

good enough for

learned in nonsense.

You

should

willing to admit

justice but that the

not good enough for justice ?

Why

skulk in the present ?

You

are

quote evolution against

But what will evolution do for you if you do nothing for evolution? Evolution includes delay. Am I to be a dead But it also includes hurry. haste.

tool of evolution?

evolution

^^'

Or am

I to

be a

vital factor in

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEt

138

"History reaches back into the jungle.

forward

into the

It reaches

commune."

Traubel repudiates "the old apologists of old sys-

tems and the old interpreters of old saviors," and all those who look to the past rather than the future, on the ground that their culture separates

them from the of

men

living currents

of our time.

among

Not one of

the masses

these "autocrats

of culture," he says, hears "either the laugh of the unlettered or the cry of the living." ^^*

Traubel

confident as to the future for

two

reasons: because of his views about society and

because of his views about individuals. as he does that existing civilization

most as much as

it is

Believing

a burden al-

a benefit to the masses of men,

he reasons, with undeniable

logic, if his

premise

accepted, that progress will be hastened enormously

when

this colossal

burden

removed.

And

even

he did not see concretely the form of society that will take the place of the old, he believes that mankind has now, as it has always had, the power to rebuild

Listen,

you high and mighty lordlings of things and

affairs all your books and properties and precedents and cultures and put them on a pile together. And I light them with a simple match into a vast flame,

take

THE POET OF SOCIALISM And you up

And

stand close by with

in smoke.

see

them

all

then you look at

come

me and

139

me wondering what now

to the earth.

you what is to come to the earth, you lordand things. All that has just burned up before you so casually will come to the earth again and woiild always come: For they have always come out of the people, who I will tell

lings of affairs

are the masters of

life,

For they do not come making man but they come made by man, And will always come^ and be destroyed, and come .^^ again and again. .

Again Traubel's confidence his belief in

bases, not

individual

human

speculation, but

nature, which he on his observation of

bom

individuals.

Every human being that

the world

obviously restricted by the limitations

in the future lies in

of civilization, and feels this restriction.

into

Society

even makes a conscious effort to mold the child into a serviceable and obedient being, but fortunately

itj

fails

was not for the boys, or for the boy left over man, ever)^hing would always remain about where it is. We draw a line up against which we If

in the

140

WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL The boy walks

halt the boy.

does not defy us.

straightway over.

The boy

does not hear us.

has eye and ear for sights and sounds ahead. But no cries from the past arrest his impatient feet. Every boy brings the youth of the race back again. The hope you have lost your boy recovers. When you say rebellion you say boy. ... If injustice could live in a world of grown men it would feel safe. Injustice fears the cradle.

Injustice

not afraid of

your brain, your culture, your curiosity or your logic. Injustice is afraid of the boy. The boy dreams. And the boy believes in dreams. Grown men dream, too.

But they are less apt to believe in their dreams. The boy tries fact by dream. The man tries dream by fact. That is what makes the man conservative and the boy radical. That is what makes the man the apologist and the boy a menace. The boy is the typical striker.

at once for his rights.

neither of family nor society.

thinks

thinks only of his

rights."'

Traubel does not assert that be

made over by any

artificial

human nature can arrangements how-

ever "socialistic" or "idealistic" they

he believes that

will

make

itself

may

over

be, but

if artificial

arrangements give it the opportunity. \/Like Whitman, Traubel distrusts all institutions and systems, past, present, and future. But he goes

beyond Whitman in his distrust of ideals and ideas

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;which may tyraimize over the individual as much

THE POET OF SOCIALISM as

institutions

to renovate

and

metaphysics.

utilize the old religion is

rule of the abstractions

as he

and

and the old

much opposed

to the

faiths of the future

to their continued authority in their present

Whitman was a democrat on

forms. this.

Whitman wanted

and systems.

Traubel

141

all sides

did not see that the religion and meta-

physics of a period are the last stronghold of social system.

So he

mentally undisturbed. sides, recognizes

to come.

but

left these authorities

Traubel, a democrat on

no authority

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

its

fundaall

either existing or

NOTES "Song of Myself."

Blue

"By

26. Ibid. Vol.

Ontario's

27. Ibid.,

Shore."

28. Ibid.,

Broad-

the

Axe." Ontario's

Shore." 6. 7-

Vol. XXII, pp. 66-

30. Ibid., p. IS3.

32.

67.

113,

I, p.

"The Conservator," Vol. XXIII, p. 105. Ibid., Vol. XVIII, pp. 6s-

8. Ibid.,

Vol.

II, p. 34.

9- Ibid.,

Vol.

II, p. 35.

10. Ibid.,

Vol.

II, p. 283.

34. Ibid., Vol.

II. Ibid.,

Vol.

I, p.

35. "T.

2SS.

Vol. Ill,

Vol.

Ill, pp. 491, 492.

14. Ibid.,

Vol.

18.

37.

"Optimos," pp. 132-149. "The Conservator," Vol.

38.

XXI,

"Democratic Vistas."

Walt Whitman

35.

Cam-

22. Ibid., Vol. II, p. S3.

23- Ibid., Vol.

I, p.

"Optimos,"

43.

"The Conservator," Vol. XXIII, p. 13. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 113-

43.

"Chants

"The Conservator," Vol. p. 104.

p. 60.

116.

321.

24. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 439.

XXV.

41.

den, Vol. II, pp. 87, 88.

XXIII,

40.

20. Ibid.

2S-

1914.

17,

"The Conservator," Vol. XXII, p. 188.

39. Ibid., Vol.

tas."

p. i6s.

36.

p. 193.

19. Ibid.

21.

XXII,

Weekly," Octo-

P.'s

ber

p. 69.

"Song of Myself." "Song of the Open Road." Note to "Democratic Vis^

p. 77-

12. Ibid.,

17-

XXIV, No.

33. Ibid., Vol.

13- Ibid.,

16.

67.

31.

"Song of Myself." Walt Whitman in Camden, Vol.

IS-

No.

29. "Optimos,'' p. 131.

Blue

"By

XXV. XXV,

pp. 1-4.

Ibid.

"Song

Vol.

Communal,"

9744. Ibid., p. 171. 45.

"The Conservator," Vol.

XXn,

pp. 18, 19, 35, 36.

NOTES

144

XXIV. No.

46. Ibid., Vol.

10,

pp. 162-164. 47- Ibid., Vol. 48. Ibid., 49. 50. 51.

Vol.

XXV. XXV.

74. Ibid., pp. 78,

53.

"The Conservator,'' Vol. XXII, p. 35. Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 119.

56.

p. 288.

79.

Vol.

XXV.

58. Ibid.,

Vol.

XXIV, No.

XIX,

pp. 114,

62.

"The Conservator," Vol.

150.

XXI,

84. Ibid.,

85.

Vol. XXIII, pp. 100, Vol. XXII, pp. 98-

XXII, p. Vol. XXII, pp. Vol.

"Optimos,"

89.

"The Conservator," Vol.

90. Ibid.,

180.

pp.

146,

92. Ibid.,

93-

XXIV, No.

10,

pp. 164, 165.

Vol.

XIX,

Vol. XXIII, p. 109. 69. Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 148.

"Optimos," p. 370. "The Conservator," Vol. pp. 82-84.

368.

7, p. 100.

Vol. XXII, Vol.

XXIV, No.

117. 10,

170, 171.

Vol. XXIII,

"Chants

p. 106.

Communal,"

177. 94-

"The Conservator," Vol.

95-

"Optimos," pp. 46, 47. "The Conservator," Vol.

XXIV, No.

p. 18.

68. Ibid.,

XXII,

XXV. XXV.

88.

91- Ibid.,

Vol.

87. Ibid., Vol.

XXIV, No.

147-

71.

Vol.

"The Conservator," Vol.

86. Ibid.,

168.

Vol. XXII, pp. 99,

100.

70.

The Conservator, XXI, p. 171.

XXV. XIX, p. 114. Communal," p.

"Chants

67. Ibid.,

180.

100.

61.

66. Ibid.,

iSa.

lOI.

60. Ibid., Vol.

65. Ibid.,

81. Ibid., pp. 208, 209.

82.

"5.

64. Ibid.,

Vol. XXII,

80. Ibid., pp. 206, 209.

pp. 115, 116.

63. Ibid.,

104.

"Optimos," pp. 177,

83. Ibid.,

pp. 1-4.

57. Ibid.,

59. Ibid., Vol.

115-121.

"The Conservator," Vol. XXII, pp. 184, 185. Ibid., Vol. XXI, pp. 33,

78. Ibid.,

"Optimos," pp. 199-201. "The Conservator," Vol.

XXII,

77.

67.

34-

"Optimos,"

55.

76.

p. 169.

52.

54.

Vol. XXIII,

"Optimos," pp. 34, 35.

75. Ibid., pp. loi,

"Optimos," p. 67. "Optimos," pp. 126, 127. "The Conservator," Vol.

XXII,

72. Ibid., 73-

96.

7. p.

loi.

XXV. 97. Ibid.,

132.

Vol. XXII, pp. 131,

NOTES 98. Ibid., Vol.

XXIII,

99. Ibid.. Vol.

XXV.

102. Ibid.,

Vol. XXIII,

103. Ibid.,

Vol.

104. Ibid.. Vol.

XXI,

120. Ibid..

121. Ibid..

pp. 50,

"Chants Communal," pp.

106.

"The Conservator," Vol. XXIII, p. 59.

142, 143.

10, pp. 168, 169.

108. Ibid., Vol. 109. Ibid.. Vol.

XXV. XXV.

112.

124.

"The Conservator," Vol.

73, 75. 83, 84.

XXIII, 125. Ibid.,

Vol.

126. Ibid., Vol. 127.

75.

XXI,

p. 109.

XXV.

"The Conservator," Vol.

XXV. XXV.

Vol.

129. Ibid.,

XXIII,

pp.

IDS, 106. 130. Ibid.,

Vol. XXII,

Vol.

XXV.

114.

"Chants Communal," pp.

115.

"The Conservator," Vol.

131. Ibid.,

Vol.

XXIII, pp.

1-4. 6.

XXIII, p. 6. XXII, p. 83. "Chants Communal," pp.

132. Ibid., Vol.

66-68.

XXIV, No. Vol.

Vol.

10, p. 172.

133. Ibid., Vol.

134.

XXIV, No.

10, pp. 169, 170.

117. Ibid..

XXIII,

"Chants Communal," pp.

164.

116. Ibid..

Vol.

128. Ibid., Vol.

"The Conservator," Vol. XXI, p. 172. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 162-

113. Ibid.,

Vol. XXIII, pp. 26,

123.

no. "Chants Communal," pp. 33. 34-

p. 13.

26.

XXIV, No.

Vol.

107. Ibid.,

S8, S9. 122. Ibid..

SI.

105.

111.

No.

Vol. XXII, pp. 20,

21.

p. S3.

p. 137.

XXIII,

"Optimos," p. 313. "The Conservator," Vol.

XXV,

p. 99.

XXV.

Vol.

118.

119.

XXIII,

100. Ibid.. Vol. loi. Ibid.,

p. 98.

I4S

XXIV, No.

132-134135136.

"Optimos," pp. 282, 283. "Chants Communal," pp. 12-13.