Discussion of Walt Whitman's Poem
"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
John L. Waters
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John L. Waters
February 8, 2002
Revised February 11, 2002
Here is the poem:
"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:
To a modern reader this poem is baffling. For
example, in lines five and six by the way the words
are arranged it appears that the astronomer is himself
both lecturing and applauding. Furthermore, in the
seventh line it's not clear why Whitman uses the
adjective "unaccountable" rather than the adverb
"unaccountably." Today, at least in eleventh grade
English, that word usage is considered bad grammar.
Even though the Great Gray Poet presents these
challenges to a modern reader, he shows us how a
mystic breaks away from the astronomer's long
intellectual presentation; the burdensome and
sometimes even irksome concatenation of letters,
words, implications, mathematical derivations and
philosophical arguments. At least this rejection of
intellecual long-windedness is what the mystical
Whitman wants us to buy into. If this is in fact the
case, then how in hades can Whitman expect you and me
to hone our own intellects sufficiently sharp so that
we can interpret his own poems? Can this rudeness be
anything but hypocritical? Of course lots of other
mystics do exactly the same thing by writing poems,
articles, and books which basically urge us to just
"let go and let God" and totally shut down our
intellects! Of course, if you just don't care, it
doesn't matter to you if you're hypocritical or not.
On some enchanted evening Whitman finds himself in a
crowded lecture hall listening to an authority on
astronomy speak. The poet notices that the audience
is in rapt attention but he is not, perhaps because
he's really more fascinated by the people there than
he is by astronomy. Regrettably for him, then, the
authoritarian professorial voice drones on and on, and
Whitman's brain just isn't up to following the
cerebrations of the scientist, and the atmosphere of
the hall, which actually reeks of perfume and tobacco,
sickens the unusually sensitive man. Anti-scientist
that he is, Whitman leaves out all these physiological
details and makes the reader confuse the poet's
discomfort with bad air with the intellectually
demanding public lecture. At the end the reader is
left with the image of the poet taking a long solitary
walk to detoxify his thoroughly polluted
cardiopulmonary cistern.
8:10PM Friday, February 8, 2002
8:40PM Monday, February 11, 2002
John L. Waters
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