Walt Whitman: The Amiable Poet

One of my all time favorite books to read is actually a series of lectures given by William James at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in the beginning of the twentieth-century. Collectively these lectures are called, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The lectures are a psychological exploration of various individual types of religious experiences and their commonalities. In his fourth lecture—a lecture which investigates individuals with a healthy-minded religious perspective—James appends commentary written by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke that pertains to the amiable disposition of America’s great poet, Walt Whitman. I found that this little nugget hidden away in all these lectures provided some wonderful insight into the kind of person this poet was, and I thought of no better place to share this insight than here: “His favorite occupation,” writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke “seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew the man,” continues Dr. Bucke, “it had not occurred to me that anyone could derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history, or against any trades or occupations—not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it.” Often we read the poems of poets without a clue of who these men and women were or are. I am, for my own part, almost always pleased to hear details about a poet’s personal background, especially when the details indicate (insofar as we can know) what kind of man or woman the individual was or is—and most especially if it imparts an idea of how poetic inspiration came about and swayed their musings. If you have any similar excerpts like the one above, excerpts that reveal a little bit more about a poet’s character, how they derive inspiration, or even just little facts about them that most people otherwise would not know, please, copy and paste them in the comments area. In fact, if you have any interesting tidbits that pertain to artists of any kind, we would love to hear about them—I will do the same and add more to the comments area as I learn little things about other poets as time goes by.