Comments on Walt Whitman's Poem
"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
John L. Waters
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John L. Waters
February 16, 2002
Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
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Not to count as part of the 350 words, here is the
84-word poem by America's Great Gray Poet:
"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
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."
Discussion:
In this poem Walt Whitman is turning the reader's
attention from the antique science of what's outside
to the new science of what's inside, to wit, a
person's immense and awesome response to a starry
night. Huh? You don't get it? Well, Walt Whitman
first presents the scene of people in a crowded
lecture hall being instructed about one of the oldest
sciences of all: astronomy. Furthermore, astronomy is
about as far from the person's inner lights as you can
get. In fact, astronomy is the scientific study of
the outer lights in the vast universe containing the
Milky Way and billions of other star systems in the
macrocosm.
Compare the old science of the macrocosm with the new
science of the microcosm, which includes the inner
lights many people see under certain conditions.
Indeed, Walt Whitman was immensely interested in the
microcosm and the new science of his close friend Dr.
Richard Maurice Bucke. Of course, the subtle Whitman
doesn't come right out and say all these things in
plain English. Whitman expected his readers to be
aware of Dr. Bucke's published work. Many were not,
however, and many publishers were not, and this is one
reason why both Whitman and Bucke were forced to
self-publish. Both men were innovators and ahead of
the times.
Whitman's tiredness and sickness in the lecture hall
was due to his personal enthusiasm for Dr. Bucke's
nascent science and to his own boredom all the while
the learned astronomer and the audience were so keenly
focused on the antique science. Sickened by this
scholarly preoccupation with what is old, traditional,
and outside of persons, Whitman leaves the lecture
hall and walks outdoors under the stars feeling
attuned to the universe in the way Dr. Bucke discusses
thoroughly in his still controversial book. And would
you believe it? Bucke's book is even in the HSU
library! The staff hasn't yet elected to remove it
yet from the stacks as yet another psychology book
that is hopelessly out of date.
At the time Whitman wrote this poem, R. M. Bucke was
doing his research and writing his book. Consequently
this poem isn't about rejecting science for some
misty, moisty mysticality. The poem is about turning
from an ancient science to a new science, which is the
science of the subjective light that is to some extent
visible inside at least some of us. Call this new
science the "humane" science, the science which among
other things considers Vincent Van Gogh's response as
he was painting "Starry Night" and at other times, the
intuitive sense of Dylan Thomas' "green fuse in the
flower," and the Biblical writers' sense of a
so-called "Holy Spirit" which unites the ineffable
sensibility with the sensibility that is conscious and
expressible in words.
Walt Whitman and Richard Maurice Bucke both were
inspired men, and independent-minded. Without such
independent-mindedness, no new science has ever been
done. What is inside the skull exists as much as what
is outside of the skull.
7:45PM Friday, February 15, 2002
John L. Waters
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