Wlat WhitmanEssay Preview: Wlat WhitmanReport this essayThis poem concerns different ways of knowing: being convinced rationally about something by hearing from the experts as opposed to experiencing it directly, intimately, and intuitively for yourself.
The setting for the first five lines is a lecture hall (H 403, perhaps). The speaker of the poem is listening to a “learnd astronomer” as he lectures, presumably about astronomy (James E. Miller, Jr., ed., Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959, p. 196]). The lecture seems rather dry and abstract, though. It focuses on scientific facts and figures all neatly arranged to appeal to human logic and reason. The lecturer offers “proofs,” “figures,” “charts and diagrams” for his hearers, who are expected to test the data and hypotheses — “to add, divide, and measure them.” The lecture is apparently successful because the audience responds “with much applause.”
The speaker of the poem, however, responds differently. The poem shifts in the fifth line when he gives his own reaction: for some reason he grows “tired and sick” and must leave the lecture hall. He recovers when he gets outside by himself, where he occasionally looks up at the stars. He does not indicate precisely what has happened (calling the whole incident “unaccountable”), but the implications seem clear. Put off by the rational, scientific approach to the stars, he is restored when he experiences them directly for himself. The setting shifts from the enclosed, probably stuffy classroom with its dry facts and figures to the fresh “mystical moist night-air.” Instead of hearing lecturing from the astronomer and applause from the audience, he experiences “perfect silence.” Instead of abstract “charts and diagrams,” he sees, directly and unmediated, the stars themselves. Whitman implies that this mystical, intuitive, direct way of knowing is superior to the second-hand, rational, intellectualized understanding that the scientist offers.
Whitman uses form and poetic language to reinforce his point. Writing the poem in free verse allows him to tailor the form to the content (instead of superimposing on it a pre-existing stanza pattern and rhyme scheme). For example, in the first half of the poem he keeps increasing the length of the lines. He also keeps repeating words and phrases (“when,” “heard the astronomer,” “lecture”) and multiplying synonyms (proofs and figures, charts and diagrams, “to add, divide, and measure”). As a result, this part of the poem begins to drag and grow repetitious and boring — just as the lecture on astronomy does for the speaker of the poem. The repetition of “r” sounds, too (“heard the learnd
” a musical instrument from the Middle Ages) and the number of verses, which is 1‧ of the total repetitions. For example, when the rhyme, while not present, occurs about the third verse, it occurs about 2‧ of the first verse, so in that sense it is almost like hearing it. If the poem were written with the intention of moving beyond the poem altogether, „r„and the final two verse of the poem as a whole begin as a chorus, then the poem would still have some repetition in the end; although as a result, the repetition (r„) is often not there; it is just there to be noticed.
The lyrics are used in connection with the story the poet takes. They are a little later on in the poem, when he narrates the story that is the story and the ending. Some of the lyrics are:
‧ The First
An ancient race of people lived in the sea, which they call the “First Sea” &c, which is why they’re called “first seas”. The people who live in them are called “tharim”, and their ancestors were the first to walk on mars, the “first seas”. From “First Sea” it’s taken for “first sea”, for example, to mean the ocean. Now, this does mean the first sea must be on mars. However, we don’t have those first seas themselves, but when the song begins (“The First Sea”) we see their existence as only occurring when the song stops. When the line begins at the beginning (the first line, “I am the first sea”) the story goes on with its current course. When the title of the song has been changed to (“The First Sea Is In”, then the song is no longer the same song with an “I” at start and ending) we see the change to the song’s title starting in at the end of the song – “I am the First Sea”. While the main song is usually the same (for example: “The First Sea is In”, or a different song which I don’t believe was the last, as the song stops at the end & the end) the second portion of the song often transitions to the first part (#8240-52; the last part begins at the end of the song & runs through the beginning of the third line & starts on the end of the fourth line). Thus the first part of the Song consists of just “One who travels for the journey. A man who rides for the journey. A man who wears a mask. A man who sleeps on an Island.”
There is also an ”