A Discussion Always Imminent When the Name of This Writer Is Brought Forward
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman | The Atlantic, January, 1882
If [critics] can see nothing in this book except indecency and bombastic truisms, the inference must be that their sensibilities are not delicate enough to recognize the fresh, strong, healthy presentation of common things in a way that revivifies them, the generous aspiration, the fine sympathy with man and nature, the buoyant belief in immortality, which are no less characteristic of the author than his mistaken boldness in displaying the carnal side of existence, and his particularity in describing disease or loathsome decay.
