O'Connor, William Douglas.
The Good Gray Poet. 1866.
A Vindication. New York: Bunce & Huntington, 46 pp. Reprinted: Bucke;
1927;
Loving. Abridged: Miller;
Hindus. [Defense of Whitman occasioned by his dismissal from the Interior Department by Secretary Harlan, who told an eminent government official that he dismissed Whitman because he had written a book "'full of indecent passages'" and was "'a very bad man,' a 'Free-Lover.'" Included are physical descriptions of Whitman, opinions by Alcott, Thoreau, and Lincoln, and testimonials to his good character. He loves music and art, is indebted to the Bible, and is a "laborious student of life." Only eighty lines out of nine thousand are in question and have been misread. Examples from classical literature which deal with sex more blatantly are cited.
Leaves is "purely and entirely American" but transcends mere nationalism, emphasizing the wholeness of the human being, the sacredness of the body, the divinity of all things. It is a masterpiece, even with its faults, commendable for its meter ("flexible, melodious, corresponsive to the thought," similar to nature's, incomparable to Tennyson's) and its use of the English language. Various poems are praised as "examples of great structural harmony as well as of the highest poetry." "Lilacs," "unique and solitary in literature," will remain "the chosen and immortal hymn of Death forever." His contemporaries "are but singers; he is a bard," ranking with Shakespeare, Dante, and others. He seeks to remedy contemporary morbid attitudes toward sex. Time will memorialize him and his war-time service. The wrong done him demands redress, affecting all literature.]