Whitman and Mysticism
What is mysticism: Mysticism is not a coherent philosophy of lifestyle, but far more a mood of head. A mystical knowledge, according to BERTRAND RUSSEL, requires perception, a feeling of unity and the unreality of time and room, and a belief that evil is mere physical appearance. A mystic’s vision is intuitive he feels the existence of a divine truth driving and inside of the regular planet of feeling notion. He feels that God and the Supreme Soul animating all things are equivalent. He sees an vital identification of being between Guy, Nature and God. He believes that “all factors in the visible entire world are but forms and manifestations of the one Divine Existence, and that these phenomena are shifting and short term, while the soul that informs them is everlasting”. The human soul, way too, is eternal. Transcendentalism is intently related to mysticism, for it emphasizes the unintuitive and non secular previously mentioned the empirical.
Whitman’s poetry is full of mystic and transcendental strains: He was deeply motivated by Emerson, the American transcendentalist. His thought was intuitive and not systematic like a logician’s. He wrote like a mystic:
Knowledge is of the soul, is not inclined to proof, is its possess evidence.
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content material,
Is the certainty of the reality and immorality of items and the excellence of issues.
Anything there is in the float of the sight of issues that provokes it out of the Soul.
Whitman believed the soul to be immortal. He felt identification with all animate and inanimate items about him. What is interesting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “in his e-book we can discover the typical qualities of totally all the different mystic doctrines”.
Whitman is a mystic with a big difference: One can not call him a pure mystic in the sense of oriental mysticism. He is not a praying male. Like all mystics he considered in the existence of the soul, and in the existence of the Divine Spirit, in the immortality of the human soul, and in the capability of a human currently being to create interaction amongst his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the oriental or traditional mystics in that he does not subscribe to their perception that conversation with the Divine Spirit is achievable only by means of denial of the senses and mortification of the flesh. Whitman declares that he sings of the body as much as of the soul. He feels that religious interaction is attainable, without a doubt attractive, with no sacrificing the flesh. Thus there is a great offer of the sexual aspect in Whitman’ s poetry, especially in the early poetry-Section 5 of Music of Myself is a circumstance in position where the sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical knowledge.
The Material World is not denigrated: Whitman does not reject the content planet. He seeks the non secular by way of the substance. He does not subscribe to the belief that objects are illusive. There is no tendency on the portion of the soul to leave this world for excellent. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul striving to enjoy a substantial role in the administration of this globe of scenes, sights, sounds, etc. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism. In Area 23 of Track of Myself, he accepts the actuality of materialism and suggests:
Human for optimistic science!
Long stay actual demonstration!
Nature and male shall be disjoined and diffused no much more.
Seeking the divine actuality: Whitman recognized the Principle of Evolution but could not imagine evolution to be a mechanical procedure. In the gradual process of progress, advancement and change that science was revealing, Whitman noticed God generating Himself obvious and unmistakable to male. The soul of gentleman finds entire dissatisfaction only in looking for out the fact behind the manifestations. As he claims in Passage to India:
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting thee,
I and my soul to range in assortment of thee.
At the conclude of the journey the soul satisfies with God-or the “Fantastic Camerado” as he says in Music of Myself.
Whitman’s perception of unity of the entire: His cosmic consciousness.: Whitman has through his poetry demonstrated his religion in the unity of the total, or “oneness” of all. This perception of the important divinity of all created things is an crucial factor of mysticism and is also closely associated to Whitman’s religion in democracy calling for equality and fraternity. Music of Myself is replete with lines proclaiming this “oneness”. He understands
… that all guys ever born are also my brothers… and all the girls my sisters and lovers,
And that a keelson of the creation is really like.
He praises, not merely lifestyle, but the complete wroth of each and every certain and specific individual, each actual present becoming. Whitman equates all opposites, and accepts evil as significantly as part of Actuality.
In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the poet has attained the unity of all mankind: “The simple, compact, effectively-joined scheme myself disinterested however part of the plan”. Time gets to be one in Whitman’s poetry. Earlier, existing and long term are merged into a spiritual continuum. Hence in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he claims:
It avails not, time nor spot-length avails not,
I am with you, you gentlemen and females of a generation,
Or ever so numerous generations that’s why.
Mysticism governing the photos and symbolism of Whitman’s poetry: The mystic quest for Actuality and communion with the Divine effortlessly lends alone to be represented in phrases of the voyage image. The Track of the open up Street is a poem whose theme is a journey symbolic of an exploration of the spiritual as effectively as the bodily universe. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking symbolizes the mystic quest for fact and the ultimate discovery of the which means of lifestyle. When Lilacs previous in the dooryard Bloom’d use symbols and pictures designed to affirm the significance of Demise. Dying is observed as a deliveress because it qualified prospects to new life, and the poet having had the mystical experience of this fact, seeks to be a “uniter of right here and hereafter”
As G. W. Allen details out, the “try to show the route between truth and the soul quite almost sums up Whitman’s total intention in Leaves of Grass”. The mysticism listed here is clear. The cosmic “I” of Whitman’s poems is on a perpetual journey. His soul is but a fragment of the globe soul. The mass of images which race through his poems symbolize the unity and harmony in himself and all development. The spear of grass assumes mystical importance through its symbolic worth-celebration of individuality and the enmasse, exclusion of none, exception of all. In Track of Myself, Whitman speaks of God as his beloved and his “bed-fellow” sleeping at his facet all night. The mystical knowledge is conveyed in phrases of very charged sexual imagery.
Whitman seldom missing touch with the bodily reality even in the midst of mystical expertise. Bodily phenomena for him ended up symbols of religious fact. He thought that “the unseen is proved by noticed” thus he helps make use of very sensuous and concrete imagery to express his notion of divine truth. He finds a function guiding natural objects-grass, sea bird, bouquets, animals-for,
The smallest sprout displays there is really no demise…
and
… al leaf of grass is no much less than the journey-perform of the stars…
Certainly, 1 might say that mysticism constitutes the extremely poetic sort of Whitman’s poems, he seemed on the universe as constituting a unity of disparate objects, unified the Divine Spirit thus his poems are “Leaves of Grass” signifying at once separateness and unity. Whitman’s dominant metaphor of grass offers a situation for unity and harmony, a basic component of composition.
Mystical structure of Song of Myself: Music of Myself is possibly the greatest illustration of Whitman’s mysticism influencing which means, sort and symbolism. Says James E. Miller: “When viewed in terms of the phases of the conventional mystical experience, Tune of Myself will take on a extensive structural form”.
The reader can rediscover what the poet by observing his very own spear of summertime grass and by launching his possess mystical journey. Tune of Myself is an “inverted mystical expertise”¬- Although the conventional mystic attempted to annihilate himself and mortify his senses in planning for his union with the divine, Whitman magnifies the self and glorifies the senses in his progress in direction of union with the Absolute.
Summary: Whitman is a mystic as considerably as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic with no a creed”. He sees the entire body as the manifestation of the spirit which is “sent” by demise into a higher existence. A spear of grass is not an inert compound for him but God’s handkerchief, “the flag of disposition”. Frequently in his sensibility, matter is dissolved, trees grow to be “liquid” and contours “fluid”. The true is transmuted and he has cosmic visions. He gets to be a comet travelling spherical the universe with the velocity of mild.
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 known as a “Bible” of The usa, it has a fantastic deal to do with its mystical pressure. True, Whitman’s model of mysticism is not identifiable with the selflessness of the Christian range or the passivity of the Oriental. What we may possibly call Whitman’s mysticism is “democratic” mysticism-obtainable to each and every male on equivalent phrases and embracing contradictory elements. But christian mysticism is simple that mysticism is central to the meaning of Leaves of Grass.