Arts and Letters

There was nobody like Carl Sandburg, yet now that he is dead at eighty-nine, and sorely missed in America for the precise reason that he did not lend himself to comparison with others, two fellow-members of the Institute and Academy do nevertheless come to mind in connection with his name. The first of these is James Southall Freeman, who in 1952 presented to him The Gold Medal for Biography and History. The spectacle of those two venerable biographers standing together at the Ceremonial that year will not be forgotten by anybody who saw it. Freeman, famous for his life of Lee, wore a blue suit, and Sandburg, no less famous for his life of Lincoln, wore a gray suit. It could not be discovered that they had conferred beforehand as to what they should wear, and neither man admitted having planned a salute to the other. Yet so it was. It was between Lincoln and Lee that the Civil War had been waged; they were its moving forces from the start; and now it could seem that they were reconciled.

The second figure that comes to mind is Robert Frost, who died four years ago at the same age of eighty-nine. As poets they were so different that they were seldom compared, but as persons they were equal in eminence, and as symbols they were certainly of comparable power. Both of them traveled widely over the country making their poems known and their faces familiar. The two of them, unlike as they were, got to be thought of as a pair, though they were almost never seen together. Both had humor, and both were wise. Both were popular at the same time that their peers respected them as artists. And neither one has been, or soon will be, replaced.

Carl Sandburg, to consider him by himself at last, will continue to be known for two great works: his biography of Lincoln in six volumes and his Complete Poems, published in 1950. By any liberal definition, both are poetry. Both, that is to say, come to us with an intensity not to be denied, and both make a kind of music in our minds. Other biographers of Lincoln tell us true things about the man, but in Sandburg's pages Lincoln is weirdly present. If no more interesting man ever lived, in this country or elsewhere, Sandburg seems to know why, because he has Lincoln always before him; or with him; or in him. The identification is well-nigh complete. Not that he thought he was Lincoln; it is rather that he knew in his own mind how Lincoln thought—and, of course, felt; for the mournful, bemused genius of Springfield and Washington had come to haunt him with the insoluble problems he incessantly faced. And so with Lincoln's mysterious humor, the final sign of his deep and utter seriousness. Other biographers have talked about this humor, and some of them have even tried to explain it; but Sandburg had it, he was at home with it, it was his; so that when his own pages make us smile it is not always clear whether it is Lincoln or Sandburg who does this to us. Lincoln, he tells us, once accounted for his shyness with women by saying: "A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know can't hurt me." Our illusion can be that Lincoln said this to Sandburg himself. We know he did not, but we think he might have, in the full faith that Sandburg would comprehend.

Sandburg's poetry, which often looks like prose and never is, though in so vast an output some of it is naturally more moving than the rest, has never been adequately described. Any generalization about it tends to be refuted by further reading. It is compassionate, yes; this poet has seen the faces of those who go forth early in the morning

Tired of wishes,
Empty of dreams.

And he has championed the poor of this world with a fervor that breaks our hearts. But he had his savage indignation too; he was a first-rate satirist of knaves and fools. And then at times he was interested in nothing but mist and moonlight and wild geese flying. He could not resist children, nor did he try to. Always, however, he had his humor—not Lincoln's now, but his. It is everywhere in his poetry as the thing that keeps it, however grim its subjects, finally sweet. In Sandburg, as in Lincoln, it is the indispensable ingredient.