Transcendentalism in the Poems of Whitman Essay -- Biography Biographi

Transcendentalism in the Poems of Whitman From looking at the titles of Walt Whitmans wide collection of poetry in Leaves of Grass one would be equal to(p) to surmise that the great American poet wrote about many battlegrounds -- expressing his ideas and thoughts about everything from faith to Abraham Lincoln. Quite the opposite is true, Walt Whitman wrote only about a single subject which was so powerful in the mind of the poet that it consumed him to the point that whatever he wrote echoed of that subject. The beliefs and tenets of transcendentalism were the subjects that caused Whitman to write and carried through not only in the style and imagery of his poems, but also in the revolutionary way that he chose to write his poetry. The basic assumptions and premises of transcendentalism can be seen in all of Whitmans poems, and are evident in two short poetic masterpieces A Noiseless diligent Spider and When I hear the Learnd Astronomer. In the belief of transcendentalism, the reliance on intuition, instead of rationalization, became the means for a wedlock between an individuals soul and the soul of the world or the cosmos. Called the Oversoul by Emerson, this corporate soul gathered the soul of a person upon a persons death. To make the Oversoul, one had to first understand oneself and then look toward nature as expressions and instructions for the living of ones life (Boller 1-3). Through all of Whitmans collections of poetry, essays, and letters, he quested to arrest the meaning of life and to understand the Oversoul, which the great poet referred to as the float. In A Noiseless Patient, Whitman presents a simple analogy that compares a lone bird of passage searching for a hold to his soul as... ...au, Roger. The Transcendentalist Constant in American Literature. New York New York UP, 1980. Boller, Paul. American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860 An Intellectual Inquiry. New York Putnam, 1974. Eckley, Wilton. Whitmans A Noiseless Patient Spider. The Explicator 22 (1963) 20. Emmanuel, Lenny. Whitmans Fusion of Science and Poetry. Walt Whitman Review 17 (1971) 73-81. Lindfors, Berndt. Whitmans When I hear the Learnd Astronomer. Walt Whitman Review 10 (1964) 19-21. Stedman, Edmund Clarence. An Important American Critic Views Whitman. Critical Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress. Boston G.K. Hall, 1983. 116-127. Whitman, Walt. The Noiseless Patient Spider. Leaves of Grass. New York Penguin, 1980. 347-348. Whitman, Walt. When I Heard the Learnd Astronomer. Leaves of Grass. New York Penguin, 1980. 226-227.