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.
Commentary
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.
— Martin
Show 12 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Someone Somewhere · 10 May 2000
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
Abraham Thomas · 11 May 2000
Hi cynetix,
Thanks for your comments. Very thought-provoking, though I’m not sure I agree with the points you make.
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.
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.
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.
Amit Chakrabarti · 11 May 2000
* 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
Someone Somewhere · 23 May 2000
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 · 24 May 2001
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 · 7 August 2001
“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 · 17 September 2003
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
Paul Lehrer · 3 June 2004
I’m Gay
Paul Lehrer · 3 June 2004
I’m Gay
Tirzah Alexander · 8 January 2006
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 · 31 October 2007
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 · 20 April 2008
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