Mahdi Shar'Iat

8/22/2019 Mahdi Shar'Iat

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Nature in the Works of the Transcendental Poets,

With a Focus on Walt Whitmans

Song of Myself

by

Mahdi Shariat

Writing Research Papers

Instructor: Farid Parvaneh, Ph.D.

Islamic Azad University, Pardisan Branch


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Outline

Thesis: Nature plays an important role in the philosophy of the Transcendental poets, especially

Walt Whitman. The purpose of this essay is to show the readers how important nature is to such

poets.

I. Introduction to the Movement and Its Key ConceptsII. Importance of Nature in the Works of Three of the Greatest Writers of the MovementIII.

A Critical Comparison of the Different Perspectives of Emily Dickinson and Walt

Whitman

IV. A Study the TranscendentalNature Shown through an Analysis of Whitmans Songof Myself


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Although influenced by and helping to shape an overall shift in American culture toward a

focus on the individual, American Transcendentalism began as a crisis of faith, as a reaction

against Boston Unitarianism. In exploring the role of the individual in a theological sense,

Transcendentalism ultimately rejected the need for biblical Christianity, replacing belief in the

God of the Bible with belief in the divinity of humanity. While Unitarianism, influenced by

Enlightenment thought of the 18th century, preached that the Bible could be studied rationally,

just as any other text, Transcendentalism went even further than Unitarianism to the belief that

one need only look inward to ones own personal subjective beliefs and definition of truth to

form spiritual and moral beliefs.

Unitarianism had an impact on the development and course of Transcendentalism beyond the

theological issues, however. Unitarians believed inperfecting individual character as humanitys

destiny on Earth and promoted the connection between a healthy spiritual life and intellectual

life. Some Transcendentalists maintained their Unitarian connections, but others found that their

formal ties with Unitarianism were strained. Transcendentalists shared Unitarian beliefs in the

divinity of nature and in humanitys free will and innate goodness, but Transcendentalists had

moved from a Unitarian focus on a benevolent God and a divine Christ to urging individuals to

look within, as Emerson explained in his 1838 Divinity School Address: to go alone . . . to be a

divine man.Transcendentalists began to speak of mans inward nature as a guide to spiritual

truth and of the idea of the Over-Soul as the guiding force of the universe. This was a

secularization of the idea of a unified God, beyond the biblical God to the idea of the universe

as one giant soul, encompassing God, humans, and nature working together toward truth and

perfection.


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Transcendentalism was more than a theological break between generations, however, emerging

as a distinct philosophical, literary, and social reform movement itself. While some individuals

notably Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, as well

as many otherswere Unitarian ministers who became prominent Transcendentalist lecturers,

critics, and writers, others, such as Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau, came to

Transcendentalism not through Unitarianism but through literary and philosophical interest in

exploring new forms and questions. As detailed in the entries in this volume, Transcendentalism

was influenced not only by Puritan Calvinism and Enlightenment thought but also by other

religious-spiritual movements of the time, such as Quakerism (with its emphasis on the inner

light and social justice), and by German philosophers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and

Immanuel Kant (from whom the term transcendentalwas adapted), as well as by the leading

figures of English romanticism, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Transcendentalism was ultimately, then, not a new or separate system of thought but a

synthesis of these various traditions and approaches. The core of Transcendentalist thought

emphasized both the religious and the secular or humanist aspects of the philosophy. The

mandates to knowthyself and to act according to ones own subjective understanding of truth

(ones intuition) were direct intellectual challenges to Enlightenment rationalism and to

institutional authority and even biblical revelation as guides and sources of truth.

Transcendentalism suggested instead that the individual was the spiritual and moral center of the

universe and that the mind, not the scriptures, held the keys to a moral life.

The year 1836 has been identified as the annus mirabilis, or miraculous year, of the

Transcendentalist movement. In 1836 the Transcendental Club was formed to bring together


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individuals interested in discussing the new ideas. Also in 1836 several key figures published

Transcendentalist manifestos on a variety of themes related to nature, philosophy, individualism,

and debates within Unitarianism, including Ralph Waldo EmersonsNature. Throughout the

remainder of the century the Transcendentalists met, discussed, lectured, experimented with

social reform and newspaper publishing, established clubs and schools, and wrote poetry, fiction,

literary criticism, and philosophical treatises.

Transcendentalism was a set of ideas promoting a new understanding of the individual, his or

her relationship to nature and society and the universe, and the importance of self-development.

Self-knowledge was the key to education for the Transcendentalists in their focus on the

individual as the source of and route to all knowledge. They rejected contemporary social mores

that were anti-individualistic or encouraged social conformity, emphasizing instead self-

reliance and self-expression as their primary values.

Transcendentalists believed that the natural or physical world had meaning only as a reflection

of the divine. Humans could experience divinity directly through nature, a spiritual practice in

which no mediation, such as through the churches, was needed. As part of the natural world, the

human mind itself was divine, and therefore one must pay attention to understanding ones own

thoughts, feelings, and emotions as reflective of universal truths. As Emerson said of the times, it

was as ifthe mind had become aware of itself. In more modern terms, this was a philosophy of

subjectivity, privileging the intuitive and the individual over rational thought or formal learning.

In other words, the Transcendentalists believed that there were universal truths governing the

world, but that these truths were not contained in texts or in tradition, rather that individuals

reached the universal truths in different ways through their own minds and experiences.


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The paradox of Transcendentalism is how this philosophy of the self translated into a social

conscience, for the mid-19th century was also the age of reform, as Americans looked for new

solutions, philosophically, spiritually, and socially, to the problems brought by extreme changes

in their society, such as industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and westward expansion.

Despite traditional understandings of Transcendentalism as primarily a literary-philosophical

impulse, many individual Transcendentalists made names for themselves as social reformers.

This volume pays particular attention to those reformers whose political and social consciences

were informed by their commitments to self-culture, to progress, and to the life of the mind, such

as George Ripley with the utopian community at Brook Farm, Bronson Alcott and Elizabeth

Palmer Peabody with education reform, Margaret Fuller with womens rights, and Theodore

Parker and Henry David Thoreau with antislavery, just to name a few.

Transcendentalists were no different from many of their contemporaries in that they possessed

the optimistic spirit of the time and believed that human society could be changed. On the

principles of self-reliance and nonconformity, many resisted joining reform organizations which

they feared stifled individual thought and were too narrowly focused on one issue at the expense

of addressing the interrelatedness of problems. In addition, most reform associations proposed

political solutions for what were, according to Transcendentalists, spiritual problems. However,

even while retaining different philosophical approaches to reform, many Transcendentalists did

lend their voices and their time to the most significant reform causes of their time, such as

education, laborrights, womens rights, and the abolition of slavery. In fact, Transcendentalist

philosophical concerns, such as the commitments to individual freedom, self-development, and

social progress, helped shape the issues and focus of those reform efforts. Attention to social


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reform as a main issue for Transcendentalists helps illuminate the wider cultural engagement and

significance of Transcendentalism and also brings in a variety of individuals not always

associated directly with the literary aspects of the movement, but who were, in fact, engaging

Transcendentalist themes and concerns.

Nature and its particles have always been important subjects for poets and prose writers and it

is not an aspect that is dealt with only by transcendental poets such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, who are some of the most influential transcendental

poets. Nature always serves as much more than simply a passive setting against which

compelling actions take place, or a pretty backdrop or setting in the natural world. Rather, nature

in all of the poems and essays by the transcendental poets, especially Whitman, is a living

character through which human identity is constructed either through the characters alignment

with the natural world or their fighting against it.

In the works of Whitman, in particular, nature is portrayed as a beneficent living force that can,

if studied and understood through careful and intentional reflection, teach useful lessons about

what it means to be human. In Leaves of Grass, the author seems deeply reverent of nature, and

it is through his intimate relationship with the natural world that he constructs his own identity

and his philosophies about how to live a right life in the natural world. For Emerson, Thoreau,

and Whitman, nature is viewed as possessing all the knowledge that man needs to know, if only

he is attentive and willing enough to study its messages and apply them to his life.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, the physical environment is a perfectly ordered world because it is

natural; it was not constructed by man and it is therefore not subjected to or tainted by his


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misguided ideas, as Emerson portrays mens institutions to be. Yes, the physical world is wild

and untamed, just as the human soul itself. In nature or the natural world, Emerson finds the rules

by which he lives, and by which he exhorts others to live. The institutions of men have no appeal

for him since they do not fit within the natural world, nor does he acknowledge them as

authoritative; as he says, No law can be sacred to me but that of my [own] nature. The human

being, like the natural world in which he lives, is untamed. However, there is an order within

man, as there is within nature, if only he takes the time to study and understand his own system.

Even if man does not understand his own personal nature, or the natural world in which he

lives, this order still exists [N]o man can violate his nature, Emerson writes, just as the Andes

and Himmaleh cannot be anything other than they are: mountains. [R]ead it forward,

backward, or across, it still spells the same thing, he asserts. Emerson warns against forgetting

that we share the cause of nature by being overly preoccupied with the institutions we have

made; of this obsession, Emerson writes that he is I am ashamed to think how easily we

capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Nonetheless, Emerson

recognizes that we must live in the world that we have created, and he advises that we keep

with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude, which is found in nature, even while in

the midst of the crowd.

Thoreau takes a slightly more radical or extreme stance, advocating a literal return to nature

and a disconnection from the madness of the modern worldas a way of understanding oneself

and society and, as in one of his seminal works aside from Walden, entitled, Civil

Disobedience, he connects themes of nature, law and society. Thoreau contends that most
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menare in an extreme uncertainty about life, and it is for this reaso n that he deliberately

returned to the natural world for two years and two months, alone, in order to un derstand

mans essential nature. Although Thoreau returns to the civilized world as a sojourner, it is

in the natural environment that he finds the lessons he needs to be able to live in the world of

men and their artificial institutions. Like Emerson, Thoreau believes that the highest law is not

that created by men, but that which is ordained by nature. If we knew all the laws of Nature,

Thoreau writes in one of the important quotes from Walden that we should need only one fact,

or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particu lar results at that point. This

is one of the main lessons that Thoreau wants to convey to his reader: any deviation from the

patterns established in the natural world will only distract man from his true nature.

Although Whitmans genre was poetry, not prose, the role and value of nature was, as was true

for Emerson and Thoreau, that it serves as a pattern for how to live a meaningful life. For

Whitman, nature inspires and reflects the individualism that he aspires to embody and which he

wishes for his fellow man. Like Thoreau, important works by Walt Whitman contemplate the

natural world deeply; even a simple blade of grass provokes deep meditation about human

origins and the meaning of life. For Whitman, Nature without check with original energy is an

inspiring model by which he would like to live. Whitman alludes that as much as we may

alienate ourselves from the natural world, we cannot escape our connection to it; we were born

of dust, he reminds the reader, and to dust we will return, becoming one with nature. Nature is

Whitmans religion; more than any man-made institution, the laws by which man can and should

live are plainly visible in the natural world.
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Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are classified as transcendentalist writers, characterized by

their preoccupation with nature. Far from viewing nature simply as a beautiful landscape, these

three writers do identify and praise natures beauty, but they also look beneath the superficial

aspects of nature in order to derive lessons about living in the world of men and the artificial

institutions that they have made. Each of these writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David

Thoreau, and Walt Whitman disconnects temporarily from that world in order to return to nature

and study it carefully. In nature, they assert, the order of the world is evident, and the patterns

established there can and should be imitated in the society of men. The most important lesson,

agreed upon by all three poets Emerson, Thoreau, and Walden, is that the laws of man cannot

govern an individuals spirit, which is part of his natural endowment. While we must live in the

world we have created, we can always look to the world that existed before us to find the

direction that we need to live rightly.

Now let us take a look on the similarities and differences of two other poets of the era. Walt

Whitman and Emily Dickinson shared some similarities and had their differences when it came

to the subject of nature. They shared a love for nature, but approached nature from different

perspectives. Certainly, Whitman felt a deeper connection to nature than did Dickinson. Both

expressed death from the perspective of those left behind to deal with the aftermath. Also, while

their views of immortality were not identical, they were similar in that neither of them seemed to

have expressed immortality in terms of a continued personal existence in the traditional Christian

sense.


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Whitman felt a brotherhood with nature, a oneness that Dickinson never achieved. This

oneness was expressed in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" when Whitman said, "But fuse

the song of my dusky demon and brother, / That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's

gray beach". Whitman here referred to the bird as his brother, expressing a deep connection to

nature. In section ten of "Song of Myself," Whitman spoke of a comfort level with nature that

Dickinson never would have felt when he said:

"Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,

Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,

In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,

Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,

Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by my side."

His references to spending the night outdoors and cooking his game over a campfire were

certainly things that would never have entered Dickinson's mind or poetry.

Emily Dickinson also expressed a love for nature. In "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," she

discussed a snake. At one point, she said, "Several of Nature's People / I know, and they know

me / I feel for them a transport / Of cordiality." Dickinson expressed a connection to nature, a

knowledge of nature's creatures. In "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed," Dickinson said, "Inebriate

of Air-am I- / And Debauchee of Dew- / Reeling-thro endless summer days- / From inns of

Molten Blue-." Here she certainly was showing a connection to nature at some level.


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While Dickinson demonstrated a love for nature, she viewed herself as an observer, someone

who was on the outside looking in. At the end of "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," she said, "But

never met this Fellow / Attended, or alone / Without a tighter breathing / And Zero at the Bone-."

She expressed a discomfort with being in nature that was foreign to Whitman. In "A Bird Came

Down The Walk," speaking of the reaction the bird had to her presence, she said, "Like one in

danger, Cautious / I offered him a Crumb / And he unrolled his feathers / And rowed him softer

home-." She wasn't part of nature, as demonstrated by the bird's reaction. She certainly shared a

love of nature with Whitman, but not the brotherhood with nature that Whitman expressed.

Walt Whitman spoke of death from the perspective of those who were left behind, for him

death is becoming identical with nature. In section eighteen of "When Lilacs Last in the Door-

yard Bloom'd," Whitman said:

"But I saw they were not as was thought;

They themselves were fully at rest-they suffer'd not;

The living remain'd and suffer'd-the mother suffer'd,

And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd,

And the armies that remain'd suffer'd."

Whitman emphasizes the sufferings of those who remained alive and says that the ones who

had died were embraced by nature and so were not suffering anymore.

Whitman's view of immortality arises from the physical elements and his belief that creatures

are reborn when by becoming parts of nature. In section one of "Song of Myself," he said, "For


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every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." He goes on in the same section to say "My

tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, / Born here of parents born here

from parents the same, and their parents the same," indicating an ongoing transfer of atoms

leading to a sense of immortality.

Emily Dickinson's view of death held similarities to Whitman's. In "There's Been a Death, in

The Opposite House," she spoke more of those who were left, rather than the one who died. She

wrote that "The Neighbors rustle in and out- / The Doctor-drives away" and "The Minister-goes

stiffly in- / As if the House were His." Nevertheless, her opinion is not identical with that of

Whitman, since she does not imply any physical rebirth as Whitman does. Dickinson's view of

immortality included the idea that her writing would have future generations think of her. In "Of

Bronze-And Blaze-," she related this idea:

"My Splendors, are Menagerie-

But their Competeless Show

Will entertain the Centuries

When I, am long ago,

An Island in dishonored Grass-

Whom none but Beetles-know."

For Dickinson, her work was the mechanism of her immortality. In this sense, it is not a

spiritual immortality, but rather a continued realization of her abilities by future generations, but


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for Whitman it was returning to nature and being reborn in the shape of other things such as a

tree or that meant immortality.

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were much different poets, yet they also shared some

similarities. They both loved nature, but Whitman felt he was a part of nature while Dickinson

saw herself as merely an observer. Both spoke of death as something that had more impact on

those left behind than on the one who had passed. This integrated well with their shared

perception of an impersonal immortality. For Whitman, this immortality was achieved in the

scattering of his atoms after his death. For Dickinson, it was through the reading of herpoetry

after she was gone.

Now let us have a section by section analysis of Whitmans Song of Myself. This poem

celebrates the poet's self, but, while the "I" is the poet himself, it is, at the same time,

universalized. The poet will "sing myself," but "what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom

belonging to me as good belongs to you." The poet loafs on the grass and invites his soul to

appear. He relates that he was "form'd from this soil," for he was born here, as were his parents,

grandparents and great-grandparents. He is thirtyseven years old and "in perfect health." He

hopes to continue his celebration of self until his death. He will let nature speak without check

with original energy."

In section 2, the self, asserting its identity, declares its separateness from civilization and its

closeness to nature. "Houses and rooms are full of perfume," Whitman says. "Perfumes" are

symbols of other individual selves; but outdoors, the earth's atmosphere denotes the universal
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self. The poet is tempted to let himself be submerged by other individual selves, but he is

determined to maintain his individuality.

The poet expresses the joy he feels through his senses. He is enthralled by the ecstasy of his

physical sensations. He can enjoy each of the five sensestasting, hearing, smelling, touching,

and seeing-and even more the process of breathing, the beating of his heart, and "the feeling

of health." He invites the reader to "stop this day and night" with him in order to discover "the

origin of all poems."

In the third and fourth sections, Whitman chides the "talkers," "trippers," and "askers" for

wasting their time discussing "the beginning and the end," and "the latest dates, discoveries,

inventions, societies . . . More important is the eternal procreant urge of the world." He prepares

himself for the union of his body with his soul: "I witness and wait." As his soul is "clear and

sweet," so are all the other parts of his body -and everyone's bodies. "Not an inch . . . is vile, and

none shall be less familiar than the rest."

Section 5 is the poet's ecstatic revelation of union with his soul. He has a feeling of fraternity

and oneness with God and his fellowmen ("And I know that the hand of God is the promise of

my own/And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own") and a vision of love ("And

. . . a kelson [an important structural part of a ship] of the creation is love"). This union brings

him peace and joy.

Section 6 presents the first significant transition in the poem and introduces the central symbol

in "Song of Myself." A child appears with both hands full ofLeaves from the fields and asks the


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poet, "What is the grass?" The poet at first feels incapable of answering this question but

continues thinking about it. He muses that perhaps "the grass is itself a child" or maybe it is "the

handkerchief of the Lord." Here the grass is a symbol of the divinity latent in the ordinary,

common life of man and it is also a symbol of the continuity inherent in the life-death cycle. No

one really dies. Even "the smallest sprout shows there is really no death," that "all goes onward

and outward . . . /And to die is different from what any one supposed."

In Section 7 the poet signifies his universal nature, which finds it "just as lucky to die" as to be

born. The universal self finds both "the earth good and the stars good." The poet is part of

everyone around him. He sees all and condemns nothing.

Sections 8-16 consist of a catalog of all that the poet sees people of both sexes, all ages, and

all conditions, in many different walks of life, in the city and in the country, by the mountain and

by the sea. Even animals are included. And the poet not only loves them all, he is part of them

all:

And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,

And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

Section 17 again refers to the universality of the poet his thoughts are "the thoughts of all

men in all ages and lands." Sections 18 and 19 salute all members of humanity.


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Grass, a central symbol of this epic poem, suggests the divinity of common things. The nature

and significance of grass unfold the themes of death and immortality, for grass is symbolic of the

ongoing cycle of life present in nature, which assures each man of his immortality. Nature is an

emblem of God, for God's eternal presence in it is evident everywhere. Grass is the key to the

secrets of man's relationship with the Divine. It indicates that, God is everything and everything

is God.

These sections deal with the themes of God, life, death, and nature. Their primary aim is to

reveal the nature of the poet's journey through life and the spiritual knowledge which he strives

for along the way. They reveal an essential element in a mystical experience the awakening of

the poet's self. "Song of Myself" is a poetical expression of that mystical experience. It arises out

of a belief that it is possible to achieve communion with God through contemplation and love,

without the medium of human reason. It is a way of attaining knowledge of spiritual truths

through intuition. Sections I to 5 concern the poet's entry into a mystical state, while sections 6-

16 describe the awakening of the poet's self to his own universality.

The poet declares that all he says of himself the reader is to say of his own self, "else it were

time lost listening to me." He declares himself to be "solid and sound," "deathless," and "august,"

and, while no one is better than he, no one is worse, either. In section 21, Whitman proclaims

himself "the poet of the Body" and also "the poet of the Soul." He is a poet of pleasures and pain,

and of men and women. Calling to the earth, he thanks it for giving him love, which he answers

with love: "Prodigal, you have given me love therefore I to you give love!/O unspeakable

passionate love." In section 22 the poet reveals that he also loves the sea. He feels at one with it


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("I am integral with you") for it has as many aspects and moods as he has. He is the poet of both

good and evil: "I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness

also"; the two qualities complement each other. In section 23 the poet affirms his acceptance of

"Reality." He salutes scientists but, he admits, "your facts . . . are not my dwelling."

Section 24 presents some of Whitman's basic tenets. He calls himself a "kosmos." The word

"kosmos," meaning a universe, is significant and amounts to a renewed definition of the poet's

self as one who loves all people. Through him, "many long dumb voices" of prisoners, slaves,

thieves, and dwarfs all of those whom "the others are down upon" are articulated and

transfigured. He also speaks of lust and the flesh, for each part of the body is a miracle: "The

scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer." In section 25 Whitman dwells on the

comprehensive range of the poet's power. He declares that "with the twirl of my tongue I

encompass world and volumes of world. Speech is the twin of my vision." He must speak, for he

cannot contain all that he has to say; and yet "writing and talk do not prove me." What he is can

be seen in his face.

The poet's self-appraisal is the keynote of sections 20-25. He describes himself as gross and

mystical. He feels he is part of all that he has met and seen. He is essentially a poet of balance,

since he accepts both good and evil in his cosmos. His awareness of the universe, or cosmic

consciousness, is expressed when he calls himself "a kosmos," invoking a picture of the harmony

of the universe. He accepts all life, naked and bare, noble and ignoble, refined and crude,

beautiful and ugly, pleasant and painful. The physical and the spiritual both are aspects of his

vision, which has an organic unity like the unity of the body and the soul. Whitman realizes that


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the physical as well as the spiritual are aspects of the Divine. The culmination of the poet's

experience of self is the ecstacy of love. Contemplating the meaning of grass in terms of mystical

experience, he understands that all physical phenomena are as deathless as the grass.

These chants express various stages of the poet's mystical experience of his self. The first stage

may be termed the "Awakening of Self"; the second, the "Purification of Self." Purification

involves an acceptance of the body and all its functions. This acceptance reflects the poet's goal

to achieve mystical experience through physical reality. This is in opposition to the puritanical

view of purification through mortification of the flesh. In Whitman's philosophy, the self is

purified not through purgation but through acceptance of the physical. Man should free himself

from his traditional sense of sin. The mystical experience paves the way for the merging of

physical reality with a universal reality.

Whitman is representative of all humanity because, he says, the voices of diverse people speak

through himvoices of men, animals, and even insects. To him, all life is a miracle of beauty.

Sections 20-25 close on a note of exaltation of the poet's power of expression, although they

indicate that his deeper self is beyond expression.

The poet resolves to listen and be receptive to all sounds. The sounds are familiar: the

"bravuras of birds," the "bustle of growing wheat," and "the sound of the human voice." Soon

they reach a high pitch and the poet is ecstatic at this "music." Sections 27-30 reveal that the

sense of touch also brings the poet joy. Indeed, the poet's sense of touch is extremely acute. At

times he is overwhelmed by it, and he asks, "Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new


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identity." The emphasis is on his search for an individuality, an aspect of his evolving self. He

will end his quest for being in an affirmation of his body's sensory awareness. With all his

senses, the poet responds to existence and living, "the puzzle of puzzles . . . that we call Being."

The poet's senses convince him that there is significance in everything, no matter how small.

Sections 31-33 contain a catalog of the infinite wonders in small things. He believes, for

example, that "a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars" and "the narrowest

hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery," for all things are part of the eternal wonder of life

and therefore even "the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps." He, himself, incorporates

an unending range of things, people, and animals. Now he understands the power of his vision

which ranges everywhere: "I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,/I am afoot with my

vision." Especially in sections 34-36, he identifies himself with every person, dead or living, and

relates his involvement with the various phases of American history. Realizing his relationship to

all this makes him feel, as he states in section 38, "replenish'd with supreme power, one of an

average unending procession."

In the earlier chants, the accent was on observation; in this sequence it is on what "I" am or

what "I" am becoming. Whitman develops a kind of microscopic vision in the way he glorifies

the details of the commonplace. The poet's experience is ecstatic; his joy comes to him through

his senses, and the physical enjoyment suggests a sexual union as the culmination of this

experience of ecstasy. The catalog of people and places is an attempt to give a feeling of

universal scope. Ordinary life becomes permeated with mystical significance. The poet identifies

himself with every being and every object, and this identification forms an integral part of his


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concept of what "I" am. The process of identification arises out of the belief that the poet's soul is

a part of the universal soul and therefore should seek union with it.

Whitman also discusses the relative properties of the body and the soul. He finds that the body

has value, for it leads man to a unified self, a purified combination of the body and the soul. The

poet praises the primitive life of animals (section 32) because they have achieved this union

they are born pure. In sections 33-37, Whitman experiences a spiritual illumination, passing

through suffering, despair, and the dark night of the soul to finally achieve purification. His self,

purified, comprehends the Divine Reality, the "transcendental self" Transcendentalism is a word

with varied meanings, but in Whitman's poetry it implies beliefs based on intuitional philosophy

which transcend, or go beyond, ordinary experience. Human reason can deal reliably with

phenomena, but there is a world beyond phenomena, and this world is approached through faith

and intuition. Transcendentalists tried to receive their inspiration at first hand from the Divine

Power. Their God was sometimes called the OverSoul. Whitman's God revealed Himself in

nature. The poet's self, inspired by his insights, venerates God, the Divine Reality, who embodies

the transcendental self.

These three sections express the idea of the poet as a sort of superman, flowing through life

and the world doing good. He transforms the common into the Divine. In this process, the

"common modes" assume "new forms." He answers the call of the needy and the despairing and

even becomes a healer to the dying: "To any one dying, thither I speed/ . . . Let the physician and

the priest go home." He would seize "the descending man and raise him with resistless will . . .

/By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me."


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In section 41 the poet assumes the role of the prophet of a new religion, incorporating all

religions:

Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,

Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,

In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved.

He declares that all men are divine and possess powers of revelation equal to any god's. The

poet denies significance to old gods because God is to be found in all men. He says, "The

supernatural is of no account," meaning that the Divine is here on earth for all men, who must

only become ready to accept this divinity.

"The friendly and flowing savage" mentioned in section 39 is a key image which sums up the

progression of ideas and feelings in this section. This image combines the idea of the primitive

ancestor of man with the figure of Christ. He is a healer, a comforter, and a lover of humanity.

He raises men from their deathbeds and imbues them with strength and vision. This Christ-like

savage merges with the other identities contained in the total idea of the poet's self. The

primitivity of savage man is divine; modern civilized man has lost this divinity but is eager to

regain it.

Whitman's chants recall the experience of Indian sages and mystics (the Samadhi) who, on

realizing the state of spiritual absorption, are endowed with divine and superhuman power. The


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poet is conscious of his newly acquired, holy and superhuman power resulting from the union of

his self with the Divine.

"A call in the midst of the crowd,/My own voice, orotund [strong and clear] sweeping and

final," says the poet, who assumed the position of prophet while acknowledging his kinship with

mankind. He says, "I know perfectly well my own egotism," but he would extend it to include all

humanity and bring "you whoever you are flush with myself" He sees the injustice that prevails

in society but recognizes that the reality beneath the corruption is deathless: "The weakest and

shallowest is deathless with me."

In section 43, Whitman states that he does not despise religion but asserts that his own faith

embraces all "worship ancient and modern." He practices all religions and even looks beyond

them to "what is yet untried." This unknown factor will not fail the suffering and the dead. In the

next section, the poet expresses his desire to "launch all men and women . . . into the Unknown"

by stripping them of what they already know. In this way he will show them their relationship

with eternity. "We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,/There are trillions

ahead, and trillions ahead of them." The poet is conscious of the confrontation of his self with

limitless time and limitless space and realizes that he and his listeners are products of ages past

and future.

Section 45 again deals with eternity and the ages of man. Everything leads to the mystical

union with God, the "great Camerado." In section 46, the poet launches himself on the "perpetual

journey," urging all to join him and uttering the warning, "Not 1, not any one else can travel that


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road for you,/You must travel it for yourself." The poet (section 47) says that he is a teacher, but

he hopes that those he teaches will learn to assert their own individuality: "He most honors my

style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." Section 48 repeats the idea that "the soul is not

more than the body," just as "the body is not more than the soul." Not even God is more

important than one's self. The poet asks man not to be "curious about God" because God is

everywhere and in everything: "In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in

the glass."

The poet is not afraid of death. In section 49, he addresses it: "And as to you Death, you bitter

hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me." For there is no real death. Men die and are reborn

in different forms. He himself has died "ten thousand times before." The poet feels (section 50)

there is something that outweighs death, although it is hard for him to put a name to it: "It is

form, union, planit is eternal lifeit is Happiness."

The last two sections are expressions of farewell. "The past and present wilt I have fill'd

them, emptied them,/And proceed to fill my next fold of the future." He knows that his writings

have been obscure but sees the paradoxes in his works as natural components in the mysteries of

the cosmos: "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain

multitudes.)" The poet can wait for those who will understand him. He tells them, "If you want

me again look for me under your boot-soles," for he will have become part of the eternal life

cycle. Although it may be difficult to find or interpret him, he will be waiting. "Missing me one

place search another,/I stop somewhere waiting for you."


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The poet's journey and quest for selfhood have now come full circle. He began by desiring to

loaf on the grass and ends by bequeathing himself "to the dirt to grow from the grass I love."

These chants contain many of the important ideas and doctrines of Whitman. The poet brings a

new message of faith for the strong and the weak, a belief in the harmony and orderliness of the

universe. The poet, noting what has been said about the universe, shows how his own theories,

which have a more universal scope, transcend them. Assuming the identity of the Savage-Christ,

he delivers a sermon which imagines transcendence of the finite through a union of the

individual soul with the Divine Soul. The poet offers to lead men and women "into the unknown

that is, into transcendent reality. Whitman talks about the self as part of the eternal life

process. There is no death, for man is reincarnated time and time again. The poet speaks about

man's relation with the moment and with eternity. Eternity is time endless, as is the self.

The poet does not prescribe any fixed pathway to a knowledge of the self; it is for each person

to find his own way to make the journey. The poet is not afraid of death because death, too, is a

creation of God and through it one may reach God. The culmination of the poet's mystical

experience is revealed in his vision of eternal life. Life is neither chaotic nor finite; it is

harmonious, reflecting the union of the poet's individual soul with the Divine Soul.

Grass is the central symbol of "Song of Myself," and it represents the divinity contained in all

living things. Although no traditional form is apparent, the logical manner in which the poet

returns to his image of grass shows that "Song of Myself" was planned to have an order and

unity of idea and image.


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Now, having a brief review on the role of nature in the works of the Transcendental poets,

especially Song of Myself that may be called the greatest achievement of the movements

greatest genius, the writer of the essay is able to prove that nature and its elements have been the

at the center of the symbolic system of the Transcendental writers, especially Walt Whitman.

Documents

Mahdi Shar'Iat