Walt Whitman, a Study (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... politics to a complex of shrewdly-acting, keenly trafficking, dumbly-thinking personalities, bound together by superficial education in the commonest rudiments of knowledge, without strong national notes of difference, and without any specific bias toward a particular form of selfexpression. On the other hand we have cosmopolitan men of letters, poets, painters, sculptors, architects, living for the most part upon the traditions of the past, working these up into new shapes of beauty with power and subtlety, but taking no direct hold on the masses, of whom they are contentedly ignorant, manifesting in no region of the world a marked national type of utterance, embodying no religion in their work, destined apparently to bequeath to the future an image of the nineteenth century in its confused Titanic energy, diffused culture, and mental chaos. Is Democratic Art possible in these circumstances? Can we hope that the men who write poems, paint pictures, carve statues, shall enter once again into vital rdpp&rt with the people who compose the nations--the people who are now so far more puissant and important than they ever were before in the world's history? Is there to be any place for art in the real life of the future? Or are we about to realise the dream of Dupont in De Musset's satirical dialogue? Sur deux rayons de fer Uh chemin magnifique De Paris u Peking ceindra ma republique. Lit, cent peuples divers, confondant leur jargon, Feront une Babel d'un colossal wagon. La, de sa roue en feu le coche humanitaire Usena jnsqu'tiux os les muscles de la terre. Du haut de ce vaisseau les homines stupcfaits Ne verront qu'une mer de chotix et de navets. Le monde sera propre et net comme une ecuelle; L'humanitairerio en fera sa gamelle, Et le...