know Whitman better than I know what has been written about him, I cannot say whether the relationship between Whitman and Nietzsche has been pointed out. In any case, students of Nietzsche should take care to include Whitman in the long roll of the precursors of their philosopher.[1] From the Leaves of Grass one could easily make a little Nietzschean chrestomathy in which even the favorite expressions of the prophet of Zarathustra would appear.
In the very first strophe of the Song of Myself Whitman says:
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.[2]
I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.[3]
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all dear to me![4]
And he imagines thus the life of himself and his friends:
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
- ↑ It is to be remembered that the first edition of the Leaves of Grass appeared in 1855.
- ↑ Vol. I, p. 33.
- ↑ Vol. I, p. 60.
- ↑ Vol. II, p. 254.
