R. W. B. Lewis The American Adam: Innocence ... - UK-Online

„It was the tragedy inherent in his innocence and newness, and it established the pattern for
American fiction.“
„The dangers, both to life and to letters, of the Adamic ideal were acknowledged at once and have
been repeated endlessly. The helplessness of mere innocence has been a primary theme of novelists
in almost every decade, and a source of bewilderment to our political and diplomatic historians. The
dismissal of the past has been only too effective: America, since the age of Emerson, has been
persistently a one-generation culture. Successive generations have given rise to a series of staccato
intellectual and literary movements with ever slighter trajectories. The temper which despised
memory not unnaturally fostered a habit of forgetfulness, and writers who even forgot that there was
anything to remember have found themselves remote alike from their predecessors and their
contemporaries.“
Song of Myself
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
„There, in fact, is the new Adam. If we want a profile of him, we could start with the
adjectives Whitman supplies: amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary; especially
unitary, and certainly very easily amused; too complacent, we frequently feel, but always
compassionate expressing the old divine compassion for every sparrow that falls, every
criminal and prostitute and hopeless invalid, every victim of violence or misfortune. With
Whitman's help we could pile up further attributes, and the exhaustive portrait of Adam would
be composed of a careful gloss on each one of them: hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding; no sentimentalist, no stander above
men and women; no more modest than immodest; wearing his hat as he pleases indoors and
out; never skulking or ducking or deprecating; adoring himself and adoring his comrades;
afoot with his vision,
Moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous.
And announcing himself in language like that. For an actual illustration, we could not find anything
better than the stylized daguerreotype of himself which Whitman placed as the Frontispiece of the
first edition. We recognize him at once: looking with side-curved head, bending an arm on the
certain rest of his hip, evidently amused, complacent, and curious; bearded, rough, probably sensual;
with his hat on.