[Sidenote: Sincerity in Poetry. Whitman.]
§ 9. For the answer to our question, we must turn to an examination of the intellectual elements of poetry. In the first place, the common demand that the poet shall be accurate in his representations is suggestive of an indispensable intellectual factor in his genius. As we have seen, he is not to reproduce nature, but the human appreciative experience of nature. Nevertheless, he must even here be true to his object. His art involves his ability to express genuinely and sincerely what he himself experiences in the presence of nature, or what he can catch of the inner lives of others by virtue of his intelligent sympathy. No amount of emotion or even of imagination will profit a poet, unless he can render a true account of them. To be sure, he need not define, or even explain; for it is his function to transfer the immediate qualities of experience: but he must be able to speak the truth, and, in order to speak it, he must have known it. In all this, however, we have made no demand that the poet should see more than one thing at a time. Sincerity of expression does not require what is distinctly another mode of intelligence, _comprehensiveness of view_. It is easier, and accordingly more usual, to render an account of the moments and casual units of experience, than of its totality. There are poets, little and great, who possess the intellectual virtue of sincerity, without the intellectual power of synthesis and reconciliation. This distinction will enable us to separate the intelligence exhibited in all poetry, from that distinct form of intelligence exhibited in such poetry as is properly to be called philosophical.
The "barbarian" in poetry has recently been defined as "the man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being; who does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause or by conceiving their ideal goal."[28:1] One will readily appreciate the application of this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this poet's world, is the composition of a purely sensuous experience,
"The earth expending right hand and left hand, The picture alive, every part in its best light, The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted."