Discussion of Walt Whitman's Poem 

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"



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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