a reflection on walt whitman's preface to leaves of grass

recently, i've just read walt whitman's preface to leaves of grass, and it's already began to resonate with me. these are some of the passages that have done so. i plan to read the rest soon.

> "no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin."

> "The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer… he is individual… he is complete in himself… the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus... he does not stop for any regulation… he is the president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest."

> "dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency…"

> "the known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet."

> "the soul has that measureless pride which consists on never acknowledging any lessons but its own."

> "the direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today. if he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides… and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits… and if he be not himself the age transfigured… and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of today… and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour—let him merge in the general run and wait his development… still the final test of poems or any character or work remains…"

> "the poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. the coward will surely pass away."

—walt whitman, preface to leaves of grass (1855)

he speaks of a character he describes as "the greatest poet," an individual who looks around and has this immense love and passion and appreciation for everything — both beautiful and ugly — around him, with an ability of expression unmatched and ultimately capable of possibly giving others the chance to understand and allow them to perceive the same things he does, and he is not bothered or discouraged when they dont but rather indifferent, i believe he suggests some may not all can be assisted to perceived that the desire to understand describing it as a "poetic quality" or nature that may not lie within everyone but possibly something that u are instilled with maybe it could be dormant. i wish to lead a life devoted to personal growth, the pursuit of knowledge as well as the spread and expression thereof, and achieving not only self-realization — but true self-realization just like the individual he speaks of.

Walter White GIFs | Tenor

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