Transcendentalism and the Transcendentalist Movement in the Poetry of Whitman (◄Return to Page 1 of 2)

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include :The Role of Nature in Transcendentalism : Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson •  Analysis and Summary of "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau •  Persistent Themes in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats  •  Summary and Analysis of the Poem “Departmental” by Robert Frost  •  Poem Analysis of "Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford  •  Romanticism in Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge •   An Analysis of Common Themes in Victorian Poetry

Throughout the poem by Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” the transcendentalist poet, marvels at “Nature without check with original energy” (l. 14), a state which he himself hopes to achieve, and does, over the course of the poem. Nature, it is repeatedly asserted by Whitman in this poem, is the model that man should follow to realize his potential. These themes in the poetry of Whitman and preoccupations of all of the nature-geared transcendentalist poets continues throughout the poem “Song of Myself”, at the conclusion of which Whitman completes the cycle by alluding that he will, one day, return to dust and that the reader can seek him in the inspiring qualities of nature. Nature is his religion and his inspiration, his model for how to live, and how to understand himself and others.

Another transcendentalist poem by Walt Whitman, “Facing West from California’s Shores” is a much shorter poem compared to “Song of Myself,” but it is just as marked by transcendental ideas and images as the longer poem is. This is true even though the poet is contemplating far-away lands. In fact, “Facing West from California’s Shores” is perhaps even more interesting than “Song of Myself” with respect to transcendental beliefs because it is in this poem that Whitman permits himself to express some of his concerns and doubts about the American experiment. Whitman first considers distant countries and some of their superficial qualities—the “flowery peninsulas” (l. 8) and the islands fragrant with their spices. He does not seem to yearn to be anywhere else, but to simply observe, through the mental exercise of imagination, those places. Still, he finds himself turning “home again—very pleas’d and joyous” (l. 10). This is where doubt begins to creep in, however. As a last, trailing thought Whitman wonders aloud, why the American experiment is “yet unfound” (l. 12).

When performing a closer poem analysis of "Facing West from California's Shores" by the transcendentalist poet, Walt Whitman, it seems significant that he puts this question in parentheses, as if doing so makes the question less threatening; As this analysis of the poem "Facing West from California's Shores" suggests, Whitman does not want to attack transcendental values. Indeed, he wants to come to a deeper understanding of those values by assuring himself that he believes in them as strongly as he ever did. He does not answer the question that he raises in this poem, but he continues to explore this same transcendental theme—What does it mean to create and participate in a society-building experiment?—throughout his entire body of poetic work.

In the poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Whitman reasserts his belief in transcendental values as opposed to beliefs that are based upon the distanced coolness of logic and scientific reasoning. This poem, like “Facing West from California’s Shores,” is compact, but it offers an unequivocal affirmation of Whitman’s preference for reasoning arrived at through emotion as opposed to reasoning arrived at through a scientific process. As it becomes clear in this transcendalism focused poetry analysis of “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Whitman’s speaker feels overwhelmed by the “proofs, the figures…the charts and the diagrams” (ll. 2-3), and feels puzzled and perhaps even alienated by the audience’s enthusiastic applause for the astronomer’s erudition, which the speaker finds mind-boggling. In fact, the astronomer’s lecture makes the speaker feel “tired and sick” (l. 6), and he immediately heads outdoors to seek relief. It is only immersed in nature where the speaker can both restore himself and understand some of the great mysteries which the astronomer purported to explain through his scientific techniques. The use of the words “mystical” (l. 8) and “perfect” (l. 9) reaffirm Whitman’s belief in the order of the universe as it is observed, not as it is dissected and explained.

These three poems, then, serve to detail Whitman’s beliefs in the transcendentalists’ fundamental values and interests. Like Thoreau and Emerson, Whitman believed in the restorative and redemptive value of nature, the importance of the social experiment, and the importance of individualism and self-awareness and self-reliance. These are themes that are explored throughout Whitman’s entire poetic work, and which are exemplified here.  They stand as markers to the distinctly American literary and philosophical tradition of transcendentalism.

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