Walt Whitman: Frasi in inglese (pagina 2)

Origine: Song of Myself

The Sleepers, 7
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Origine: Leaves of Grass

Origine: Song of Myself

Complete Prose Works (1892), III. Notes Left Over 3. Ventures, on an Old Theme, p.324 http://books.google.com/books?id=UJA1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA324
Contesto: If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere — probably more than the rest of the world combined.
Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.

"Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)" http://www.aol.bartleby.com/229/4011.html (1839); later delivered as a lecture at the Brooklyn Art Union (31 March 1851) and printed in the Brooklyn Daily Advertizer (3 April 1851)
Contesto: It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture, fill’d with luxuries, and embellish’d with fine pictures and sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be known or enjoy’d by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory.
I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

"Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)" http://www.aol.bartleby.com/229/4011.html (1839); later delivered as a lecture at the Brooklyn Art Union (31 March 1851) and printed in the Brooklyn Daily Advertizer (3 April 1851)
Contesto: It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture, fill’d with luxuries, and embellish’d with fine pictures and sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be known or enjoy’d by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory.
I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

Origine: Leaves of Grass

Origine: Leaves of Grass

Origine: Leaves of Grass

Conversation with Whitman (16 May 1888) as quoted in With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906) http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/disciples/traubel/WWWiC/1/med.00001.49.html by Horace Traubel, Vol. I <!-- p. 166 -->
Contesto: There was a kind of labor agitator here today—a socialist, or something like that: young, a rather beautiful boy — full of enthusiasms: the finest type of the man in earnest about himself and about life. I was sorry to see him come: I am somehow afraid of agitators, though I believe in agitation: but I was more sorry to see him go than come. Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated. … Cheer! cheer! Is there anything better in this world anywhere than cheer — just cheer? Any religion better? — any art? Just cheer!

Origine: Leaves of Grass

Origine: Leaves of Grass

Song of Myself, 48
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)