Comments on Walt Whitman's Poem

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"



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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