WHITMAN-ROMANTICIST AND TRANSCENDENTALIST

"Wait Whitman was a transcendentalist, a mystic, and a romanticist," said Professor Bliss Perry, in the seventh lecture of the series for the Radcliffe Endowment Fund, "A mystic," Professor Perry went on to say, "in that he thought the best way to understand the world was to observe it, not argue about it. He was a transcendentalist through his contact with Emerson, who was his inspiration. He came at the end of one phase of the so-called romantic period. Whitman was also the climax of the period of offensive American assertiveness."

Professor Perry then gave a brief sketch of the poet's life. "Whitman was essentially a man of deep refinement in spite of some of his own statements to the contrary. In speaking of him, we should remember Fielding's famous saying, 'Don't make the mistake of calling a man bad because he is not wholly good.'"

Professor Perry then spoke of Whitman's book of poems, "Leaves of Grass". In this work, he sought, "a new and national declamatory expression". This remark has been frequently quoted by those who claim Whitman is not a poet at all. "He wrote under the influence of powerful emotion, and his work suffers from this. He has tried to put his country as a whole into the pages of "Leaves of Grass". Whether he succeeded or not has been much disputed.

"Whitman was an imperfect man and an imperfect poet, but in thinking of him we should remember the glory of the imperfect," said Professor Perry in conclusion.