“Other states indicate themselves in their deputies
… but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or
legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or
parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors … but always most in the
common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendship—the freshness and
candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage … their
deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft
or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the
citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their
curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their
susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it
felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their
delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of
soul … their good temper and open handedness—the terrible significance of their
elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them, not they to him—these too
are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of
it.”-- Walt
Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)
(Thanks to Gretel DeRuiter, instructor this week for
“Walt Whitman: Cosmic Poet of the American People,” at the Chautauqua Institution,
for drawing the attention of the class to this preface, a prose counterpart to
his hymn to the American republic.)
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