Anonymous Assholes

After reading multiple criticisms I found myself sufficiently stunned by the audacity of certain “critically acclaimed critics” and what they had to say about Whitman’s work.  Some, (actually many) critics chose to simply let the work speak for itself by inserting lengthy parts of the text with little to no analysis.  Not only do they provide microscopic insight, but in two out of the three criticisms I analyzed, the critic felt it necessary to throw in before the text “Of course we do not select those which are the most transcendental or the most bold” as if that somehow throws them into the pile of innocent bystanders.  First of all, if you’re going to be a literary critic then learn how to take an adequately established stance, rather than bandwagoning off of your contemporary critics’ chauvinistic opinions (Mr. Anonymous in the Saturday Review 1856), or better yet providing none at all (George Eliot, April 1856).  Now of course I’m being hypocritical by slandering the qualifications of anonymous criticism and being entirely biased myself, but I find it difficult to respect any critic who denounces a work of art because it differs from Tennyson or is potentially “irreligious” (Mr. Anonymous working for The Crayon 3).

If you ask me, the critics whom disregard Leaves of Grass as being “haughty” or “unromantic” pseudo-superior, or “obscene” are not delving deep enough into the depths of Whitman’s prophetic womb.  How is it possible that they were allowed to provide such surface level reviews?  Sure Whitman calls himself the “Kosmos” and may metaphorically imply that he encompasses all, but this in itself is a humbling act.  How naive is the critic whom professes Whitman “never knew what it was to feel that he stood in the presence of a superior” (Mr Anonymous, Saturday Review) when chapter after obsequious chapter, Walt proclaims he shall never be superior because he will join in an unbreakable bond with those that are both high AND low on the American totem pole, no matter how low that low may be.

However, some critics do view Whitman’s work in the prestigious light in which it radiates, and understand the multifaceted structure of it’s meandering relativity, but unfortunately these critics are not the majority.  So if studying these so called “contemporary critics” of Whitman is supposed to show one anything, it only shows that in 1855 the American literary critics were pompous assholes.  They were too blinded by Shakespeare, too enraptured with Milton, to see the complexity, insight, and beauty of Whitman’s “spiritual structure.”  It seems as though Whitman was just too ahead of the poetic batch of his time, and was therefore tossed aside in the literary spectrum, left to be ridiculed not only by the content of his work, but also by the picture on the cover page.  So to conclude this angry rant of sorts, I must say that I probably did not adequately analyze the criticism of the critics, but in a sense I am doing to them what they did to Whitman by simply not giving their opinions a meager chance.