A Dialogue in Hades: Omar Khayyám and Walt Whitman
Omar. Welcome to the realm of shades, thou traveler from the hemisphere that was not dreamt of when I left Earth.
Walt. Is that so ? Then am I the being best fitted to describe it, for I represent the whole of American life. I am
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue, trade, rank, caste, and religion,
Not merely of the New World, but of Africa, Europe, Asia — a wandering savage,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, lover, quaker,
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.”
Omar. Thou speakst in riddles.
Walt. That’s poetry, man.
Omar. ’T would not so have been styled when I abode at Naishápúr; but perchance thou wast one of the discoverers of the western world, and so didst strive to lead the aborigine into the pleasant paths of versification.
Walt. I have but lately left yonder planet.
Omar. And thine is the poetry now in vogue ?
Walt. Not yet; but it will be, although
My aim was to
I was in no haste for personal recognition, believing that
Meanwhile, my countrymen are absorbing you.
Omar. Thou surprisest me. What had I in common with the denizens of thy world, barbarian ?
Walt. Americans have a fondness for Oriental imagery, as for exotic plants, for all things rare or uncommon. Their bards used to be reproached with adhering too strictly to European models, but when one arose not hide-bound by convention, who sacrificed manner to matter, and was a law unto himself —
Omar. He was regarded as a god.
Walt. Quite the reverse. The people of the States still lean upon Old World traditions in matters of art. They place the refined above the natural, though all men know that brown bread is more wholesome than white; and while they have your melancholy quatrains done into musical English verse by a poet of the first rank they will not hearken to my “ barbaric yawp.”
Omar. Nor can I blame them. Thy genius is not strong enough to run a good race, handicapped with thy coarseness.
Walt. I like not the word from one who rejoiced in getting drunk.
Omar. That is the meaning thou readest into my praise of the grape, O thou of evil mind. Reflect upon thy own saying, —
Did you think it was in the white or gray stone ? or the lines of the arches and cornices ?
you are reminded by the instruments.”
Walt. You appear to have read my poems. I had not expected them to have penetrated thus far.
Omar. Full many volumes have come hither, consigned to Hades by the moral teachers of Earth.
Walt. There must be a goodly store of choice literature out here.
Omar. True; but none so repellent as thine, thou sensualist.
Walt. No more sensualist I, than you a drunkard. You affirm you were not, and I doubt no man’s word. Like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes you said, “ I sought in my heart to give myself unto wine,” simply as a commentary upon the text, “ All is vanity.” My point of view was the opposite — All is not vanity. I sang the Modern Man in his entirety, and no more considered it honorable to ignore an integral part than would a physician in dissecting a human body.
Omar. In my earthly sojourn, the physician chose not the public thoroughfare for his analysis. Thou mightest have accomplished thy end after a manner more akin to decency.
Walt. I treated all subjects alike.
Omar. Thou speakest truth. There is a preponderance of unnecessary detail throughout thy so-called verse. I marvel not that mine is preferred.
Walt.
Have you studied out MY LAND, its idioms and men ?
Have you learned the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship of my land ? its substratums and objects ?
Have you considered the organic compact of the first day of the first year of the independence of The States, signed by the Commissioners, ratified by ” —
Omar. Hold ! Enough ! Thou drivest me from my centre of gravity with thy flow of meaningless words. Verily, if thy land be like unto thy poetry, I can describe it well, though I have seen it not.
Walt. Begin then.
Omar. It differs from Europe in many a league of monotony between the spots of natural or historic interest.
Walt. But the spots exist, you ’ll allow, and they ’re interesting enough to justify a spacious background, the duller the better. You may travel for hours over a flat and dreary surface, but suddenly, you come to — the Falls of Niagara.
Omar. Doubtless thou referrest to some astounding beauty of nature, and if it be so, my simile is applicable. I turn thy Leaves of Grass in despair at their tedium, but of a sudden I come upon some astounding beauty of nature, thy Poem of the Road, or A Word out of the Sea. Would I could have crossed Brooklyn Ferry with thee, and as for thy lines beginning “ I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,” I myself might have penned them.
Walt. You never could. Your feeling for nature was not the close, personal affection that I felt — for the rough as for the smooth, for the unsightly as for the comely. You personified Sun, Stars, Night, giving them an existence apart from their association with Earth. The external world was part of my very essence; to you it was the emblem of Fate : —
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help — for it
As impotently moves as you or I.”
Omar. Somewhat like unto that I said, without a doubt.
Walt. But there are others of thy quatrains that I might have written.
Omar. Thou ’rt modest.
Walt. I could not establish my kinship with every man who ever lived, had I not something even of you in me.
Omar. Let me hear thy presumptuous comparisons.
Walt. I say, —
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.”
You transcribe the same thought thus : —
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean —
Ah, lean upon it lightly ! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen ! ”
Again you sigh, —
Nor Whence, like Water, willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.”
I echo, —
You up there walking or sitting,
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.”
I find eternity in men and women, and you come to the conclusion, —
You sing, —
Account and mine, should know the like no more,
The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has pour’d
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.”
To which I reply, —
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.”
Omar. I am amazed, not having observed one sentiment of thine like unto mine.
Walt. You must not imagine that your type of mind died with Omar, the Tent-Maker. It is common in my land, whose representative I am, and therefore voice its every phase.
Omar. Even in opposition to thy prevailing mood ? I was ever bent upon self-suppression, while thou held nothing to be good which ignored individuals.
Walt. Yes; I was “Teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, Egotism.”
Omar. Was that a fitting creed for a nation where individuality already is rampant, if thy writings are to be believed ? Methinks’t were better preached in Europe or in Asia, where men are handled en masse.
Walt. You do not understand. I was the mouthpiece of Democracy, wherever found.
Omar. Thy ideal is not in accord with that of the Europeans with whom I have conversed since they came hither. It must have been formed solely upon experience of America.
W%lt. Perhaps; I never was anywhere else.
Omar. That accounts for the excess of the egoism, likewise for thy provincialism.
Walt. My what ?
Omar. Thou comprehendest not the word ? It’s meaning cannot be unknown even in America. That land may be as large as half the globe in substance and supreme in material things, and yet be backward in thinking. Hath not the invention of thy countrymen gone in advance of their imagination ? Hath not their education distanced their culture ?
Walt. There is no other nation so mad after the things of the mind.
Omar. And yet thou, hoping to be its representative, glorified the body.
Walt. I strove to impress the truth which America in her craze for intellectuality is most likely to forget,— that physical development is essential to the highest mental development.
Omar.
Who touches this, touches a man.”
Walt. You may scoff at my lines as you please; I tell you, they contain a warm and intimate feeling for the race, as individuals, far more sincere than much of the talk about the Brotherhood of Man; it has become the mode for modern poets to sing. ’T is easy to love your kind in bulk, and disdain detached specimens.
Omar. I troubled myself about neither, but lived the life of a recluse, and looked at the stars.
Walt. You made a great mistake. A man had to look down and around, as well as upward, if he wished to be in sympathy with his kind.
Omar. Thy kind receive thee not, thou hast said.
Walt. My poems have gained an attentive hearing among the thoughtful of the Old World.
Omar. Strange! America clings to me ; Europe to thee.
Walt. Not strange at all. The crude ever craves the finished, the finished the crude. When my works, like yours, have been buried for eight centuries, there may spring up, from my mouldering Leaves of Grass, flowers of as rare perfume as ever bloomed in your garden — with the assistance of a knowing cultivator.
Omar. None more willing than I to acknowledge my indebtedness to the translator, whom I have suitably thanked since I had opportunity, though he answered none of the questions I asked in my Rubáiyát.
Walt. Because he could n’t.
Omar. That task was left to thee. I know not thy equal for self-confidence.
Walt. I would have you to remember that,
Omar. Make an end of rehearsing thy interminable lines, and tell me truly the secret of thy firm faith in the existence of the state at which we have now arrived.
Walt. My belief was based chiefly upon the theory of Evolution.
Omar. ’T was ne’er heard of in my day.
Walt. Nor for many along day after. I went a step beyond most of my contemporaries in applying its laws to spirit as well as to matter, deeming the one as indestructible as the other. Where were you, then, with your quatrain, —
Before we too into the Dust descend ;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End! “
in opposition to my promise, —
Omar. Verily, a cheerful showing; but I was content to be a follower of Epicurus, and let the future go.
Walt. Your verses did not breathe contentment, my comrade. I had ever more sympathy for you than for the Agnostics of my time to whom you are so closely akin. They are satisfied not to know, but you seemed ever in doubt if that which you did not know, and had vainly sought to discover, were not the sum and substance of all Truth.
Omar. Of a surety my attitude was the converse of thine, but I believe thy sound health and good digestion were alone responsible for thy joy in life.
Walt. It may have been so at the outset, but my opinions did not change, even when I became poor and old and paralyzed, my superb constitution having been wrecked through hardships endured while attending upon sick or wounded soldiers in the war —
Omar. War ? Is that disgrace to humanity not yet abolished ?
Walt. No; and “ Whatever is, is right.” But tell me, friend, have you taken so little interest in the Earth as not to have revisited it in the spirit ?
Omar. Wherefore should I return ? Like thyself, I was out of harmony with the men among whom I lived.
Walt. Still mere curiosity might have rendered you desirous of seeing what progress the world had made in all these hundreds of years since you left it.
Omar. What are centuries when one is no longer in Time but Eternity ? Moreover, the planet Earth, the whole solar system to which it belongeth, are now become of infinitesimal importance in the wonders of the universe I am exploring.
Walt. I understand. You were an astronomer, and have gone on. Let me go with you.
Omar. How can such a request be granted to the man who wrote, —
Walt. Again you misinterpret me. Your verses are in one key ; mine are in various. There is growth in my Modern Man. Later he goes on to say, —
I was thinking this globe enough, till there tumbled upon me myriads of other globes. . . .
O how plainly I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me — as the day cannot,
O I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.”
You, Omar Khayyám, shall be my instructor. Come, let us proceed. You shall prove me a true seer when I dreamed: —
And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then ?
And my Spirit said No, we level that lift, to pass and continue beyond.”
Jean N. McIlwraith.