Show 4 4 A n ar A F 6 k 31 1 1 na A 6 vl A oki g i afo IT the ra good 6 gray poet comin la 10 afi own by JOHN DICKINSON S WALT WHITMAN the 11 good gray poet coming coining into his own at last new york city anyway seems to be scrambling hard to overtake hla his fame the authors club has decided upon a ten toot foot bronze statue and jo davidson davedson Dav ldson hug has been commissioned to make it anyone who feels so inclined can contribute to the cost shut not your doors to me proud libraries wrote whitman in one of ills poems poem libraries rles have been known to do that and now comes forward the new york public library with tin an exhibition of Whit mania in aid of the statue project it Is the first time finy any library has honored the poet with it special exhibition the consists of books editions of all sorts sorto translations into foreign languages newspapers and magazines to which lie he contributed manuscripts paintings busts bust s caricatures books about him and a great variety of other material illustrative of the life and work of new yorks greatest poet the exhibition hibi tion has been assembled and arranged by alfred goldsmith the whitman biographer the editions on view are thus summarized here Is shown franklin evans Whit mans first volume a puerile temperance melodrama seven coplea copies of the famous first edition of leaves of af grass grasi the second edition with the well known 1 I greet you at the beginning of a great career from emerson spread upon the Is fully displayed as tire are the various quaint blind tooled bindings of the third edition accompanying passage to india Is the original manuscript this poem was as lie he said that which expressed his deepest self the osgood edition of 1881 2 which caused such a furor because of threatened legal prosecution la Is shown as well as the rees welsh edition which paid the author the largest royalty checks of his career A rarely seen volume Is 18 memoranda during the war of which less than one hundred copies were printed the edition which whitman himself thought his most handsome one was the autographed pocketbook edition of 1889 but ten years after tits hla death in n 1892 1802 his collected works were published de by put inam cam in ten highly illustrated volumes the deathbed edition was hastily bound for whitman just before his bis death in order that he might make a farewell present to his friends the display of editions editions closes with the latest issued a year ago the Inclusive edition tho the committee on sculpture includes prof george S sellman hellman chairman and mrs airs harry payne whitney aymar ekahn charles do de kay guy egleston and prot prof emry holloway chairman of 0 the walt whitman memorial committee professor hellman has this to say about the selection of mr ME davidsons model for the mo morial no formal competition VI vrna vitis held but designs were submitted by six lz sculptors toM who requested that their works be considered at the recent meeting of the sculpture committee C Z 14 01 mr davidsons design was declared the most fitting and arrangements were begun with him looking to the co completion mple tion of the work mr davidson Dav ldson took as his theme Whit mans song of the open road the long brown path before me leading wherever I 1 choose hla his idea Is to have the statue raised slightly y above its surroundings on a sort of hillock suggesting an open road on the ground in front odthe statue lie he visualizes it a big stone slab upon which would be set in bronze the first stanza of the song of the open road when completed the statue will be in bronze and of heroic size probably ten feet or more in height here are lines from the song ot of the open road which show that mr davidsons idea for a statue Is a happy one afoot and lighthearted light hearted I 1 take to the open road healthy free the world before me the long brown path before me leading wherever I 1 choose henceforth I 1 ask not good fortune I 1 myself am good fortune henceforth I 1 whimper no more postpone no more need nothing done with indoor complaints 1 libraries br arles querulous criticisms strong and content I 1 travel the open road prom from this hour hoerl I 1 ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines going where I 1 list my own master total and absolute listening to others othere considering we well 11 what they say bay pausing Be searching arching receiving contemplating gently but with undeniable will dl vesting myself of the holds that would hold me I 1 inhale great great draughts of n pace the east and the west are mine and the north and the south are mine Ca CL merado I 1 give you my handl I 1 give you my love more precious than money I 1 give you myself before preaching or law will you give me yourself will you come travel with me shall we etick by each other as am long as we live foreigners insist that it was walt whitman who put us on the literary map and keeps us there however that may be john burroughs probably expressed the american viewpoint of a generation ago pretty closely when he wrote this who poes goes there hankering grona mystical nude hankering like the great elk in the forest at springtime gross grog s as an nature Is gross mysto mystical ca as boehme or and so 9 far as aa the conce almenta and disguises of the conventional man and the usual adornments of polite verse are concerned a nude as adam in Pari paradise dixe indeed it was the nudity of walt Whit mans verse both in re to its subject matter and him mo mode do of treatment of it that so BO aston dished when it did not repel his hie read ers eri he boldly stripped away every thing conventional and artificial fron from man clothes cust customs omil institutions etc to and treated him as he Is marily in and of himself and in till his relation to the universe and with equal boldness he stripped away what whal were to him the artificial adjuncts ol of poetry rhyme measure and all the th stock language langu ago and forms of the schoola and planted himself upon a spontaneous rhythm of language and 8 the inherently poetic in the common and universal walt whitman 1810 1819 1892 1802 was born on long island and was educated in the public schools of new york and brooklyn rooklyn Il on ills his fathers side he was english and on ills his mothers side holland dutch his maternal grandmother was a ile he learned printing and carpentering and also taught school he began ills his writing in 1811 1841 with convent conventional ionnI stories next ho he was editor of the brooklyn engle eagle after a leisurely tout tour of middle west and southern states he joined the staff of the new orleans crescent A little later he established in brooklyn the freeman a short lived organ of the free sellers from 1851 to 1854 ho he was busied with building and selling houses and in 1855 appeared leaves of grass for which lie he set most of the type himself leading citizens preachers lecturers and the general public corabi combined ned in denouncing him as a revolutionary abandoned voluptuary unredeemed pagan freethinker free thinker literary charlatan and so BO on As late at 1881 the massachusetts authorities thorit ties les objected to its sale on tho the ground that it was immoral from 1802 to 1805 1865 whitman was a volunteer war nurse in the army hospitals of washington it Is said that he visited and administered to sick and wounded union and confederate out of these experiences came drum taps 1805 1863 and other volumes ills his labors as a nurse brought on a serious illness from which he be never recovered in 1865 he was given a clerkship p in the interior department but was discharged by the secretary who objected to the Ad adamic Adam arale lc passages in leaves of grass he was given a new place under the attorney general and held it until a stroke of paralysis in 1873 compelled his retirement ti ile he went to camden N J W where hero he lived till his death march 20 1892 walt whitman anticipating abusive criticism said he was willing to walt wait to understood be by the growth of tho the taste of hims bonnea elit Is toe the 1449 balt over overl |