Whitman and Mysticism
What is mysticism: Mysticism is not a coherent philosophy of lifestyle, but a lot more a mood of brain. A mystical experience, according to BERTRAND RUSSEL, requires perception, a perception of unity and the unreality of time and space, and a perception that evil is mere appearance. A mystic’s eyesight is intuitive he feels the existence of a divine reality guiding and inside of the regular globe of feeling perception. He feels that God and the Supreme Soul animating all items are equivalent. He sees an important identity of being between Gentleman, Character and God. He thinks that “all issues in the obvious world are but forms and manifestations of the a single Divine Life, and that these phenomena are changing and temporary, even though the soul that informs them is eternal”. The human soul, as well, is eternal. Transcendentalism is carefully linked to mysticism, for it emphasizes the unintuitive and religious earlier mentioned the empirical.
Whitman’s poetry is full of mystic and transcendental strains: He was deeply motivated by Emerson, the American transcendentalist. His considered was intuitive and not systematic like a logician’s. He wrote like a mystic:
Knowledge is of the soul, is not susceptible to evidence, is its very own evidence.
Applies to all levels and objects and traits, and is content material,
Is the certainty of the fact and immorality of issues and the excellence of items.
Anything there is in the float of the sight of factors that provokes it out of the Soul.
Whitman considered the soul to be immortal. He felt identification with all animate and inanimate factors all around him. What is interesting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “in his ebook we can discover the standard characteristics of totally all the different mystic doctrines”.
Whitman is a mystic with a difference: One cannot contact him a pure mystic in the sense of oriental mysticism. He is not a praying guy. Like all mystics he thought in the existence of the soul, and in the existence of the Divine Spirit, in the immortality of the human soul, and in the potential of a human becoming to create conversation between his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the oriental or conventional mystics in that he does not subscribe to their belief that interaction with the Divine Spirit is possible only by means of denial of the senses and mortification of the flesh. Whitman declares that he sings of the entire body as a lot as of the soul. He feels that religious communication is possible, indeed appealing, without having sacrificing the flesh. Thus there is a excellent offer of the sexual element in Whitman’ s poetry, specially in the early poetry-Segment five of Song of Myself is a scenario in point exactly where the sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical expertise.
The Substance Entire world is not denigrated: Whitman does not reject the content planet. He seeks the non secular by means of the materials. He does not subscribe to the belief that objects are illusive. There is no tendency on the part of the soul to depart this planet for great. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul making an attempt to perform a substantial role in the administration of this world of scenes, sights, seems, etc. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism. In Segment 23 of Tune of Myself, he accepts the fact of materialism and says:
Human for constructive science!
Extended reside actual demonstration!
Character and male shall be disjoined and subtle no more.
Searching for the divine fact: Whitman acknowledged the Concept of Evolution but could not believe evolution to be a mechanical method. In the sluggish procedure of growth, improvement and change that science was revealing, Whitman observed God generating Himself obvious and unmistakable to guy. The soul of guy finds entire dissatisfaction only in in search of out the truth powering the manifestations. As he suggests in Passage to India:
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.
At the stop of the journey the soul meets with God-or the “Excellent Camerado” as he claims in Song of Myself.
Whitman’s feeling of unity of the whole: His cosmic consciousness.: Whitman has all through his poetry shown his faith in the unity of the whole, or “oneness” of all. This perception of the crucial divinity of all created factors is an essential aspect of mysticism and is also closely associated to Whitman’s faith in democracy calling for equality and fraternity. Music of Myself is replete with lines proclaiming this “oneness”. He is aware of
… that all men ever born are also my brothers… and all the females my sisters and lovers,
And that a keelson of the creation is enjoy.
He praises, not simply life, but the absolute wroth of every single specific and personal man or woman, each genuine existing getting. Whitman equates all opposites, and accepts evil as considerably as part of Truth.
In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the poet has reached the unity of all mankind: “The easy, compact, effectively-joined plan myself disinterested but component of the plan”. Time gets a single in Whitman’s poetry. Previous, current and foreseeable future are merged into a spiritual continuum. Therefore in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he claims:
It avails not, time nor place-length avails not,
I am with you, you gentlemen and girls of a era,
Or ever so a lot of generations therefore.
Mysticism governing the images and symbolism of Whitman’s poetry: The mystic quest for Actuality and communion with the Divine simply lends alone to be represented in conditions of the voyage impression. The Music of the open up Street is a poem whose topic is a journey symbolic of an exploration of the religious as properly as the actual physical universe. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking symbolizes the mystic quest for reality and the greatest discovery of the which means of daily life. When Lilacs last in the dooryard Bloom’d use symbols and photos developed to affirm the value of Death. Dying is noticed as a deliveress since it leads to new lifestyle, and the poet possessing had the mystical knowledge of this reality, seeks to be a “uniter of below and hereafter”
As G. W. Allen factors out, the “endeavor to indicate the path among fact and the soul very practically sums up Whitman’s entire intention in Leaves of Grass”. The mysticism below is obvious. The cosmic “I” of Whitman’s poems is on a perpetual journey. His soul is but a fragment of the planet soul. The mass of images which race by means of his poems symbolize the unity and harmony in himself and all generation. The spear of grass assumes mystical significance via its symbolic price-celebration of individuality and the enmasse, exclusion of none, exception of all. In christian mysticism of Myself, Whitman speaks of God as his beloved and his “mattress-fellow” sleeping at his aspect all night. The mystical knowledge is conveyed in phrases of extremely billed sexual imagery.
Whitman rarely lost touch with the bodily actuality even in the midst of mystical knowledge. Physical phenomena for him ended up symbols of religious actuality. He thought that “the unseen is proved by witnessed” thus he makes use of very sensuous and concrete imagery to express his perception of divine fact. He finds a function driving all-natural objects-grass, sea fowl, flowers, animals-for,
The smallest sprout exhibits there is truly no demise…
and
… al leaf of grass is no much less than the journey-work of the stars…
Certainly, one particular may say that mysticism constitutes the extremely poetic type of Whitman’s poems, he looked upon the universe as constituting a unity of disparate objects, unified the Divine Spirit as a result his poems are “Leaves of Grass” signifying at when separateness and unity. Whitman’s dominant metaphor of grass offers a situation for unity and harmony, a simple element of composition.
Mystical structure of Track of Myself: Song of Myself is perhaps the very best illustration of Whitman’s mysticism influencing indicating, sort and symbolism. Claims James E. Miller: “When considered in phrases of the phases of the standard mystical encounter, Tune of Myself takes on a comprehensive structural shape”.
The reader can rediscover what the poet by observing his possess spear of summertime grass and by launching his own mystical journey. Song of Myself is an “inverted mystical expertise”¬- While the classic mystic attempted to annihilate himself and mortify his senses in preparing for his union with the divine, Whitman magnifies the self and glorifies the senses in his development toward union with the Complete.
Summary: Whitman is a mystic as much as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic without having a creed”. He sees the entire body as the manifestation of the spirit which is “delivered” by demise into a greater daily life. A spear of grass is not an inert material for him but God’s handkerchief, “the flag of disposition”. Typically in his sensibility, subject is dissolved, trees turn out to be “liquid” and contours “fluid”. The genuine is transmuted and he has cosmic visions. He gets to be a comet travelling spherical the universe with the velocity of gentle.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runway solar,
I effuse my flesh in eddies,
And drift in lacy jags.
If Leaves of Grass has been called a “Bible” of The united states, it has a fantastic deal to do with its mystical pressure. True, Whitman’s brand of mysticism is not identifiable with the selflessness of the Christian selection or the passivity of the Oriental. What we may possibly call Whitman’s mysticism is “democratic” mysticism-available to every gentleman on equivalent conditions and embracing contradictory elements. But it is undeniable that mysticism is central to the that means of Leaves of Grass.