Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1883 — Walt Whitman an Upside-Down Dandy. [ARTICLE]

Walt Whitman an Upside-Down Dandy.

The poetry of the future holds that all modern poetry, Tennyson particularly, is dainty and over-perfumed, and Whitman speaks of it with that contempt which he everywhere affects for the dandy. But what age of time ever yielded such a dandy as the founder of this school, Whitman himself? The simpering beau who is the product of , the tailor’s aid is certainly absurd enough; but what difference is there between that and the other dandy up-side-down, who from equal motives of affectation, throws away coat and vest, dons a slouch hat, opens his shirt so as to expose his breast, and industriously circulates his portrait thus taken in his own book? And this dandyism—the dandyism of the roustabout—l find in Whitman’s poetry from beginning to end. Everywhere it is conscious of itself, everywhere it is. analyzing itself, everywhere it to see if it cannot assume a naive and striking attitude, everywhere it is screwing, up its eyes, not into an eye-glass like the conventional dandy,bn-tinto an expression supposed to be fearsomely rough and barbaric and frightful to the terror-stricken reader; and it is almost safe to that one-half of Whitman’s poetic work has consisted of a detailed description of the song he is going to sing. It is the extreme of sophistication in writing.— Sidney Lanier.