The second point of view, and by far the largest--as the world in
working-day dress vastly exceeds the world in parlor toilette--is the
one of common life, from the oldest times down, and especially in
England, (see the earlier chapters of "Taine's English Literature,"
and see Shakspere almost anywhere,) and which our age to-day inherits
from riant stock, in the wit, or what passes for wit, of masculine
circles, and in erotic stories and talk, to excite, express, and dwell
on, that merely sensual voluptuousness which, according to Victor
Hugo, is the most universal trait of all ages, all lands. This second
condition, however bad, is at any rate like a disease which comes to
the surface, and therefore less dangerous than a conceal'd one.
The time seems to me to have arrived, and America to be the place, for
a new departure--a third point of view. The same freedom and faith and
earnestness which, after centuries of denial, struggle, repression,
and martyrdom, the present day brings to the treatment of politics and
religion, must work out a plan and standard on this subject, not so
much for what is call'd society, as for thoughtfulest men and
women, and thoughtfulest literature. The same spirit that marks the
physiological author and demonstrator on these topics in his important
field, I have thought necessary to be exemplified, for once, in
another certainly not less important field.
In the present memorandum I only venture to indicate that plan and
view--decided upon more than twenty years ago, for my own literary
action, and formulated tangibly in my printed poems--(as Bacon says an
abstract thought or theory is of no moment unless it leads to a deed
or work done, exemplifying it in the concrete)--that the sexual
passion in itself, while normal and unperverted, is inherently
legitimate, creditable, not necessarily an improper theme for poet,
as confessedly not for scientist--that, with reference to the whole
construction, organism, and intentions of "Leaves of Grass," anything
short of confronting that theme, and making myself clear upon it as
the enclosing basis of everything, (as the sanity of everything was to
be the atmosphere of the poems,) I should beg the question in its most
momentous aspect, and the superstructure that follow'd, pretensive
as it might assume to be, would all rest on a poor foundation, or no
foundation at all.
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