quietistic creed, Whitman went to work as a
printer, joined debating societies, became an edi-
tor, and enjoyed plays, concerts, and operas,
preparing himself for the affirmations of the
activities of the world in the earlyLeaves of
Grass. In an editorial for theDaily Crescentin
1848 the young Whitman explicitly rejected the
Quaker refusal to bear arms in these words:
‘‘Quakerism can never become the creed of the
race; and you might as well expect all men to
adopt the straight-cut coat and plain phraseol-
ogy of the followers of Fox, as to hope that the
principles of peace will ever become the law of
men’s opinions and actions.’’
Even in later life, when Whitman could
speak fondly of his ‘‘Quaker’’ mother, and of
his own Quaker intuition, he was well aware of
the narrowness of the sect in custom and disci-
pline and could speak with some feeling of
their ‘‘damnable unreason’’ for being ‘‘fiercely
opposed to pictures, music in their houses.’’ He
wanted to flaunt the picture of Elias Hicks in
the faces of the Quakers who would buyNovem-
ber Boughs. In the same year, 1888, Whitman
received a short friendly note from the Quaker
poet Whittier. Traubel asked Whitman whether
Whittier had finally committed himself toLeaves
of Grass. ‘‘Good heavens no!’’ said Whitman.
‘‘He has too much respect himself, for his puritan
conscience, to take such a leap.’’
Walt Whitman was well aware of the real
gap that separated him from the Puritan con-
science of the Quaker. There was too much of the
love of the world in Whitman to set up the
typical Quaker hedge against outside influences.
Yet Whitman could feel the effect of the root
similarities between his own mystical experiences
and the experiences of the Quaker in silent meet-
ing ‘‘centering down’’ and waiting for illumina-
tion. He correctly labeled this root similarity
his ‘‘Quaker intuition.’’ Through it he shared
the Quaker concern for unity and humanitarian
equality that lies beneath the surface of apparent
religious formlessness and unworldliness in Qua-
kerism. One could perhaps better phrase this as
the paradox of the individual and theen masse,
or of the community achieved through individ-
ual intuition of the Inner Light, that works itself
out in many ways in both Whitman and Quaker-
ism. It was largely through Elias Hicks that
Whitman seems to have got the sense of this
paradoxical conception....
Various parallels have been noted by schol-
ars between Elias Hicks and Walt Whitman:
their early life on Long Island, love of nature,
tendency toward mystical experiences, belief in
the validity of individualistic religion, identifica-
tion with the democratic spirit of America, and
even a certain kind of cadence in their use of
language. It is important also to notice the differ-
ences. Hicks was a recorded minister who lived
strictly under Quaker discipline. He led a quiet
and industrious family life as a farmer on Long
Island, yet he attracted large audiences during
the period of his public ministry toward the end
of his life. It is significant that Elias Hicks’s
message grew out of a long life of discipline and
experience. He spoke only when he felt an
‘‘impressive concern,’’ and he spoke from depth
of experience. In contrast, it is perhaps the weak-
ness of Whitman as a man—accountable for his
failure as an orator, a political leader, a religious
leader, or even as an editor—that he lacked and
had rejected precisely the kind of disciplined
life that gave Hicks his great strength and
power with words. Yet somehow Whitman man-
aged to translate this feeling for the power of
inspired words into poetry, secularized and inter-
fused with all that the world had to offer and
that Whitman had voraciously absorbed. Whit-
man was, in a sense, the exact opposite of Hicks.
Hicks shut out worldly experience and disciplined
himself to sensitivity to the Inner Life; Whitman
absorbed experience like a sponge and found his
discipline in bardic utterance.
The important influence of Hicks on Whit-
man was through his power of words, through
oratory. Whitman frequently ranked Hicks
along with great opera singers, actors, and ora-
tors like the famous Methodist preacher Father
Taylor of Boston, who was the model for Father
Mapple inMoby-Dick. These men had vocal
power, something that ‘‘touches the soul, the
abysm.’’ Whitman described Father Taylor and
Hicks as essentially perfect orators. ‘‘Both had
the same inner, apparently inexhaustible, fund of
latent volcanic passion—the same tenderness,
blended with a curious remorseless firmness, as
of some surgeon operating on a belov’d patient.’’
The secret of this oratorical power, if Whitman
could not command it himself, was at least trans-
latable into an organic theory of poetry. Thus,
‘‘from the opening of the Oration [or the Poem]
& on through, the great thing is to be inspired as
one divinely possessed, blind to all subordinate
affairs and given up entirely to the surgings and
utterances of the mighty tempestuous demon.’’ It
is important to realize, however, that for Hicks
the words and even the inspiration were only aA Noiseless Patient Spider