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When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer -- Walt Whitman

       
(Poem #54) When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer
 When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
 When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
 When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
       measure them;
 When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
       applause in the lecture-room,
 How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
 Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
 In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
 Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
-- Walt Whitman
I like this poem. This does not, however, imply that I agree with any of the
sentiments expressed therein <g>. Whitman presents the ages-old argument
that science, in its relentless probing of nature, has somehow contrived to
rob it of its beauty, its mystery. Of course, it has done no such thing;
there is a beauty in the proofs and equations that gladly coexists with, and
complements the more 'poetic', sensory side of things.

Returning to the poem, note the wonderful quality of the verse itself. There
is a common misconception that 'free' verse implies a total disregard of
form; this is, of course, far from the truth. I urge you to read this poem
aloud, the better to appreciate the way in which Whitman has echoed his
reaction to the lecture in the long, somewhat droning lines that make no
attempt to mirror the natural rhythms of speech, and the instant easing of
strain when he leaves, allowing 'poetry' to reassert itself.

And for Thomas's view on the matter [curiously enough, written after mine;
it seems that great minds *do* think alike <g>]:

<comment>

Much as I hate to do this to Martin...

There are some poems which I don't mind too much, some which I tolerate,
some which I positively dislike, and some which I cannot stand. Today's
poem, I'm afraid to say, is one of the latter.

Not that I have anything against Whitman, mind you. I like most of his
poetry a great deal.  But even great poets have their off days, I
suppose...

The thing that gets my goat about today's poem is the basic conceit -
that Science, by measuring and analysing the natural world, somehow
detracts from its innate beauty. I guess it comes down to a personal
point of view (though I for one am against this entire 'two cultures'
divide - I don't see why the two world-views should collide at all);
nevertheless, I take issue with all those poets (and yes, scientists)
who propagate it. I fail to see how understanding Nature gets in the way
of appreciating it; indeed, to me, there is something wonderfully poetic
about the notion that there are millions of stars in millions of
galaxies, further than the eye can see, each with their own solar
systems and cometary halos and asteroid belts and ringed planets and red
spots and blue planets...

Any poet who thinks that science is an impersonal, mechanical monster,
committed to destroying beauty and truth and the joy of individuality,
reducing the Universe to facts and figures, charts and numbers, doesn't
know the first thing about science.

Any scientist who thinks that poets are woolly-headed romantics, living
in a world of their own, indulging in utterly impractical flights of
fancy, building castles in the air without knowing or caring about the
basics of structural architecture, doesn't know the first thing about
poetry.

There, that's my quota of invective for the day.

thomas.

</comment>

Biographical Note:

b. May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, N.Y., U.S.
d. March 26, 1892, Camden, N.J.

in full WALTER WHITMAN, American poet, journalist, and essayist whose verse
collection Leaves of Grass is a landmark in the history of American literature.

  Whitman had spent a great deal of his 36 years walking and observing in
  New York City and Long Island. He had visited the theatre frequently and
  seen many plays of William Shakespeare, and he had developed a strong love
  of music, especially opera. During these years he had also read
  extensively at home and in the New York libraries, and he began
  experimenting with a new style of poetry. While a schoolteacher, printer,
  and journalist he had published sentimental stories and poems in
  newspapers and popular magazines, but they showed almost no literary
  promise.

  By the spring of 1855 Whitman had enough poems in his new style for a thin
  volume. Unable to find a publisher, he sold a house and printed the first
  edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense. No publisher's name, no
  author's name appeared on the first edition in 1855. But the cover had a
  portrait of Walt Whitman, "broad shouldered, rouge fleshed,
  Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr." Though little appreciated upon its
  appearance, Leaves of Grass was warmly praised by the poet and essayist
  Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote to Whitman on receiving the poems that it
  was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" America had yet
  contributed.

  [...]

  At the time of his death Whitman was more respected in Europe than in his
  own country. It was not as a poet, indeed, but as a symbol of American
  democracy that he first won recognition. In the late 19th century his
  poems exercised a strong fascination on English readers who found his
  championing of the common man idealistic and prophetic.

        -- EB

Viewpoint:

  Under the influence of the Romantic movement in literature and art,
  Whitman held the theory that the chief function of the poet was to express
  his own personality in his verse. The first edition of Leaves of Grass
  also appeared during the most nationalistic period in American literature,
  when critics were calling for a literature commensurate with the size,
  natural resources, and potentialities of the North American continent. "We
  want" shouted a character in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Kavanagh (1849),
  "a national literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the
  earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies." With the
  same fervour, Whitman declared in his 1855 preface, "Here are the roughs
  and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves."
  In Leaves of Grass he addressed the citizens of the United States, urging
  them to be large and generous in spirit, a new race nurtured in political
  liberty, and possessed of united souls and bodies.

  It was partly in response to nationalistic ideals and partly in accord
  with his ambition to cultivate and express his own personality that the
  "I" of Whitman's poems asserted a mythical strength and vitality. [...]
  From this time on throughout his life Whitman attempted to dress the part
  and act the role of the shaggy, untamed poetic spokesman of the proud
  young nation. For the expression of this persona he also created a form of
  free verse without rhyme or metre, but abounding in oratorical rhythms and
  chanted lists of American place-names and objects. He learned to handle
  this primitive, enumerative style with great subtlety and was especially
  successful in creating empathy of space and movement, but to most of his
  contemporaries it seemed completely "unpoetic." Both the content and the
  style of his verse also caused Whitman's early biographers, and even the
  poet himself, to confuse the symbolic self of the poems with their
  physical creator. In reality Whitman was quiet, gentle, courteous; neither
  "rowdy" (a favourite word) nor lawless. In sexual conduct he may have been
  unconventional, though no one is sure, but it is likely that the six
  illegitimate children he boasted of in extreme old age were begotten by
  his imagination. He did advocate greater sexual freedom and tolerance, but
  sex in his poems is also symbolic--of natural innocence, "the procreant
  urge of the world," and of the regenerative power of nature. In some of
  his poems the poet's own erotic emotions may have confused him, but in his
  greatest, such as parts of "Song of Myself" and all of "Out of the Cradle
  Endlessly Rocking," sex is spiritualized.

  Whitman's greatest theme is a symbolic identification of the regenerative
  power of nature with the deathless divinity of the soul. His poems are
  filled with a religious faith in the processes of life, particularly those
  of fertility, sex, and the "unflagging pregnancy" of nature: sprouting
  grass, mating birds, phallic vegetation, the maternal ocean, and planets
  in formation ("the journey-work of stars"). The poetic "I" of Leaves of
  Grass transcends time and space, binding the past with the present and
  intuiting the future, illustrating Whitman's belief that poetry is a form
  of knowledge, the supreme wisdom of mankind.

        -- EB

Criticism:

  Whitman's aim was to transcend traditional epics, to eschew normal
  aesthetic form, and yet by reflecting American society to enable the poet
  and his readers to realize themselves and the nature of their American
  experience. He has continued to hold the attention of very different
  generations because he offered the welcome conviction that "the crowning
  growth of the United States" was to be spiritual and heroic and because he
  was able to uncompromisingly express his own personality in poetic form.
  Modern readers can still share his preoccupation with the problem of
  preserving the individual's integrity amid the pressures of mass
  civilization. Scholars in the 20th century, however, find his social
  thought less important than his artistry. T.S. Eliot said, "When Whitman
  speaks of the lilacs or the mockingbird his theories and beliefs drop away
  like a needless pretext." Whitman invigorated language; he could be strong
  yet sentimental; and he possessed scope and inventiveness. He portrayed
  the relationships of man's body and soul and the universe in a new way,
  often emancipating poetry from contemporary conventions. He had sufficient
  universality to be considered one of the greatest American poets.

        -- EB yet again.

m.

39 comments: ( or Leave a comment )

Someone Somewhere said...

Those who would say that Walt Whitman is trying to point out the
inadequacies of science are reading too much into the poem. The beauty lies
in the simplicity of this poem's eye-opening experience. It strikes me as
prodding, telling me to not forget my sense of childish curiosity, to not
forget the greater sense of human wonderment.

Why does Walt necessarily disagree with science? He doesn't. It is an
assumption on the critic's part that he is drawing a thick line between
mechanical theory and natural beauty. The narrator only expresses his
disgust for the "professor" subject, as well as the lecture-room crowd, who
is, perhaps, pretentious in his own right. He only dislikes the method with
which Astronomy is presented. The poem's stark contrast between the two
attitudes just serves to present Walt's opinion, which is that the subject
CAN be more organic, and less robotic. By having the narrator veer towards
one extreme over another, Walt ingeniously shows the possibility of middle
ground.

Remember that the author and narrator are not nearly always the same point
of view. Remember that assuming what an author intends with his/her work
creates what is known in literary analysis as the "intentional fallacy."

-cynetix

Amit Chakrabarti said...

* Someone Somewhere () [000511 05:10]:
[snip]

This is a very good point and I must thank
someone somewhere for bringing up this reading
of the poem.

-C

Abraham Thomas said...

Hi cynetix,

Thanks for your comments. Very thought-provoking, though I'm not
sure I agree with the points you make.

> Those who would say that Walt Whitman is trying to point out the
> inadequacies of science are reading too much into the poem. The
> beauty lies in the simplicity of this poem's eye-opening experience. It
> strikes me as prodding, telling me to not forget my sense of childish
> curiosity, to not forget the greater sense of human wonderment.

Exactly! My personal opinion (and be warned that I'm a pretty
opinionated person) is that it's perfectly possible to maintain a
sense of wonder along with a scientific attitude - indeed, I find that
scientific understanding actually enhances my appreciation of Nature.
Whitman's astronomer may be guilty of reducing the natural world to 'mere'
facts and figures', but Whitman's narrator is equally guilty of the
opposite crime.

> Why does Walt necessarily disagree with science? He doesn't. It is an
> assumption on the critic's part that he is drawing a thick line between
> mechanical theory and natural beauty. The narrator only expresses his
> disgust for the "professor" subject, as well as the lecture-room crowd,
> who is, perhaps, pretentious in his own right. He only dislikes the
> method with which Astronomy is presented. The poem's stark contrast
> between the two attitudes just serves to present Walt's opinion, which
> is that the subject CAN be more organic, and less robotic. By having
> the narrator veer towards one extreme over another, Walt ingeniously
> shows the possibility of middle ground.

Now I think _you're_ reading too much into the poem. The 'straight'
interpretation of the poem, as far as I can tell, is that science is
impersonal and unnatural, and that raw emotional experience is far better.
Needless to say, I disagree.

> Remember that the author and narrator are not nearly always the same
> point of view. Remember that assuming what an author intends with
> his/her work creates what is known in literary analysis as the
> "intentional fallacy."

Yes, I realise that. But the fact that 'the author and the narrator
don't _always_ have the same point of view' doesn't necessarily
imply that in this case, they have _different_ points of view.
Remember, Whitman was a follower of the Romantic tradition; by
and large, his poems _do_ reflect what he feels and believes. If he
had wanted to, I'm sure he could have distanced himself from his
narrator's point of view more explicitly; since he didn't, I assume
that it wasn't his intention to do so.

In short, I do think that in this case the narrator _does_ represent the
poet.

Anyway. Thanks once again for your comments.

cheers,
thomas.

Someone Somewhere said...

Hey Thomas, and the wondering minstrels...

I thought about this after reading your comments, and actually discovered
that I had argued a point I really didn't want to make.

While it is true that we cannot know for sure what Whitman intended with the
poem, and while there is the possibility that he did not mean for the poem
to be politically anti-science, none of this really matters.

I was irked by the original comments on the page under the poem (the type
set in Arial). These comments not only assumed and proclaimed that Walt
Whitman was projecting his own views about the inadequacies of analytical
thought, but also suggested that the poem itself was somehow made less
beautiful because its writer may have written it for a different purpose
than its possible interpretations taken either objectively or subjectively.

Thomas is right in that Whitman is most likely not showing "the possibility
of middle ground" (to quote myself as being wrong) in his comments.
However, in wishing that this poem was written by me (*grin*), I know that
the poem's immediate impression on me held no glint of "hate science!" or
"down with civilization!" whatsoever.

I thought about why I posted what I posted, and it's obvious to me now that
my argument was a projection of defense for the poem for how I wanted it to
mean to me. Ignoring this, which shows my lack of experience in critiquing
works of art, the above, when seen from a grander vantage point, illustrates
something very important.

The poet's intentions, whatever they may be, are irrelevant in understanding
the inherent value in his creation. Of course, the creator matters--how
many times have we heard and agreed with such statements as "blasphemy (or
your own exclamation here)! If only Beethoven could hear that techno remix
of his symphony...he'd be rolling in his grave." But, in the end, this is
how it seems: it is the works of art that can inspire creative thought, and
interpretations, that can be wondered and pondered over, that travel closer
and closer to infinite value.

What if I told you that I wrote the poem, and you were given a little
background information about me? I pursue objectivity, and revel in
scientific data ("charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure
them") but also cannot live without trips to secluded beaches and forest
hikes. When I wrote this poem, I intended for the reader to realize that,
while we live in a busy age (well, society and culture)where technology and
the transfer of information contribute to the most progress, we should not
forget to bask in the joys of nature and of understanding ourselves, from
time to time. What if this paragraph were true? Would the value of the
poem increase or decrease any? I certainly hope one would not be so
superficial as to say yes.

I maintain that this poem is untouchably pristine, even if it were the words
out of Whitman's (or anyone else's) mouth when he slaughtered a wart hog.

-cynetix

Alissa Mortenson said...

Searching the web for background info on Whitman, I stumbled across the
page with this poem and the attached comments. Now, this poem is one of
my favorite poems of Whitman's, if not one of my all-time favorites,
period. For me, the question of whether it is anti-science is
irrelevant; I'd say the fact that the narrator was at the astronomy
lecture at all is an indication of his interest in the science. But
what resonates with me about the poem is the individual's distancing
from the crowd around him--that feeling of pressure and confinement one
gets sometimes in a group of people who are in a slightly different
world--and then the freedom, the relaxation, the release, when the
speaker leaves the room and just turns his face up to the beautiful
sky. The contrast between the "mysical moist night-air" and the "charts
and diagrams" isn't necessarily intended, I don't think, to praise one
over the other, just to illustrate that the speaker was in a head-space
to just let go and meditate rather than focus on the intellectual
aspects of the stars.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

Alissa

Ann Keefer said...

"Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration! . . .
Gentlemen [of science], to you the first honors always!"--Song of Myself
Any analysis that assumes that Whitman's own values are being expressed in
his poems--and I'm inclined to think they are--has to contend with this and
other celebrations of the scientists' work.
I would characterize what's being criticized in this poem as not science
but pedantry, of a sort that loses sight of the material world by
substituting abstractions for experience. Whitman's writing is *very*
different from that of Poe (in his sonnet "On Science") and Keats (to whom
science unweaves the rainbow). when sicence is a human labor concerned with
the real world, it earns "the first honors": when it's divorced from
reality in the manner that Swift, for example, satirized, it's pedantry.

Glenn Walker said...

Hi,
I am going to do a speech on this poem. It should be somewhat interesting. All of the comments on this page have been very helpful. Thanks

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Tirzah Alexander said...

I disagree that this poem is saying that science takes away from natures beauty and stuff like that. I think that Science has nothing to do with what he's saying. What I think he's saying is that some people will measure the stars and look at the distance between, and make speaches on the ways the stars are important, but they will do so indoors, away from the stars. He's not so much saying that Science itself takes away from the beauty, but that sometimes people get so worked up about thinking about something, they no longer take time to just enjoy it, smell the flowers if you will. This works for the stars, but you could easily put anything in their instead of stars. You could talk about music, how the musicians work so hard to get the notes right, mesure every tiny influation of sound, make speaches on how important the quarter note is, but never listen to the beauty of the song. So I guess what I'm getting at is, perhaps the message is nothing to do with Science, it has to do
with people enjoying stuff for what it is, instead of just working and making speaches all the time.

Spencer Turner said...

I think that the assumption that Whitman has anything against science is
ridiculous given his love of progress and the marvels of industry. I think
there are many fragment-like poems throughout leaves of grass that try to
express momentary emotions. There is one I love which deals with a brief
relationship with a women in a small town. The idea that human complexity has
something to do with the vast universe of emotions and imagination is
inherent in these poems. They are empowering because they assert the ability
of each man to relate with the natural world. He clearly went to this lecture
interested in the complexity of the stars and clearly met with a level of
academic insight beyond his comprehension. He was not sickened by the lecture
but by the feeling of powerlessness it implied for him. He wanted to reassert
his right to connect with the natural world more directly and this he did by
wandering alone unimpeded by descriptions. I love scientific explanations but
there are days when I need romantic ones - ones I create that have no bearing
on the objective discussion of the universe. No matter ones feelings on the
sentiment of the poem, it is beautifully crafted, honest and direct:
everything one expects from Whitman.

Ashay A said...

HI,
I liked this poem..
The poet just wishes to express his view that Science sometimes tends to
make things in life look very boring and mathematical..
This view has been exaggerated in this poem to some extent.
Through this poem, I feel that the poet wishes to tell us that we must also
appreciate the beauty of nature sometimes and not always try to delve into
the laws of nature.
The astronomy lecture sounds boring and monotonous to the poet(which he
beautifully expresses in the poem),
while actually observing the enchanting night sky creates a sense of beauty
and tranquility and makes us admire nature.
The repetition of "When I " throughout the poem adds to the poetic effect as
well as ascertains that this poem is the personal viewpoint of Whitman.

-Ashay

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