Back to basics: Walt Whitman
"BE simple and clear — Be not occult," the notes begin, and he then he wrote: "I will not descend among professors and capitalists"
21 July
Concord Masstts. 1855
Dear Sir,
I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile & stingy nature, as if too much handiwork or too much lymph in the temperament were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment, which so delights us, & which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely of fortifying & encouraging. I did not know until I, last night, saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available for a post- office. I wish to see my benefactor, & have felt much like striking my tasks, & visiting New York to pay you my respects.
Emerson's Letter to Whitman
Concord Masstts. 1855
Dear Sir,
I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile & stingy nature, as if too much handiwork or too much lymph in the temperament were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment, which so delights us, & which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely of fortifying & encouraging. I did not know until I, last night, saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available for a post- office. I wish to see my benefactor, & have felt much like striking my tasks, & visiting New York to pay you my respects.
R. W. Emerson
Mr. Walter Whitman.
*This letter, which is probably the most famous letter in American literary history, is in the Feinberg Collection at the Library of Congress. It is reproduced in facsimile in Walt Whitman: A Selection of the Manuscripts, Books, and Association Items(Detroit: Detroit Public Library, 1955), a catalog of an exhibition held at the Detroit Public Library. It also appears in an accurate text in Walt Whitman: The Correspondence, ed. E. H. Miller (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1961),1, 41.
Etiquetas: Poesia
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