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Whitman and Mysticism

What is mysticism: Mysticism is not a coherent philosophy of existence, but much more a temper of head. A mystical expertise, in accordance to BERTRAND RUSSEL, includes perception, a perception of unity and the unreality of time and space, and a belief that evil is mere visual appeal. A mystic’s eyesight is intuitive he feels the presence of a divine fact guiding and in the normal world of feeling perception. He feels that God and the Supreme Soul animating all things are identical. He sees an crucial identification of becoming in between Man, Nature and God. He thinks that “all things in the visible planet are but kinds and manifestations of the one particular Divine Daily life, and that these phenomena are altering and short term, whilst the soul that informs them is eternal”. The human soul, way too, is eternal. Transcendentalism is closely 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 thought was intuitive and not systematic like a logician’s. He wrote like a mystic:

Wisdom is of the soul, is not inclined to proof, is its own proof.
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content,
Is the certainty of the actuality and immorality of issues and the excellence of items.
Something there is in the float of the sight of factors that provokes it out of the Soul.

Whitman believed the soul to be immortal. He felt identification with all animate and inanimate issues about him. What is exciting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “in his book we can uncover the standard attributes of absolutely all the various mystic doctrines”.

Whitman is a mystic with a distinction: A single can not call him a pure mystic in the sense of oriental mysticism. He is not a praying guy. 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 ability of a human being to establish communication amongst his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the oriental or classic mystics in that he does not subscribe to their perception that communication with the Divine Spirit is possible only via 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 conversation is attainable, without a doubt fascinating, with no sacrificing the flesh. As a result there is a excellent deal of the sexual aspect in Whitman’ s poetry, specially in the early poetry-Segment five of Track of Myself is a case in point where the sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical expertise.

The Material Planet is not denigrated: Whitman does not reject the content entire world. He seeks the spiritual by way of the substance. He does not subscribe to the perception that objects are illusive. There is no tendency on the component of the soul to leave this globe for good. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul attempting to perform a considerable part in the administration of this planet of scenes, sights, sounds, and so on. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism. In Part 23 of Song of Myself, he accepts the truth of materialism and states:

Human for constructive science!
Long reside exact demonstration!
Nature and guy shall be disjoined and subtle no much more.

Searching for the divine reality: Whitman acknowledged the Idea of Evolution but could not imagine evolution to be a mechanical method. In the slow approach of development, growth and change that science was revealing, Whitman observed God generating Himself evident and unmistakable to gentleman. The soul of male finds entire dissatisfaction only in searching for out the reality behind the manifestations. As he says in Passage to India:

Bathe me O God in thee, mounting thee,
I and my soul to variety in variety of thee.
At the conclude of the journey the soul satisfies with God-or the “Fantastic Camerado” as he claims in Music of Myself.

Whitman’s feeling of unity of the entire: His cosmic consciousness.: Whitman has throughout his poetry shown his religion in the unity of the entire, or “oneness” of all. This feeling of the vital divinity of all produced factors is an crucial facet of mysticism and is also intently associated to Whitman’s religion in democracy calling for equality and fraternity. Song of Myself is replete with lines proclaiming this “oneness”. He knows

… that all guys at any time born are also my brothers… and all the ladies my sisters and fans,
And that a keelson of the generation is love.

He praises, not just life, but the complete wroth of each and every certain and individual individual, each true present becoming. Whitman equates all opposites, and accepts evil as a lot as element of Reality.

In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the poet has achieved the unity of all mankind: “The easy, compact, nicely-joined plan myself disinterested yet part of the scheme”. Time becomes 1 in Whitman’s poetry. Previous, existing and future are merged into a religious continuum. As a result in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he states:

It avails not, time nor place-length avails not,
I am with you, you guys and ladies of a generation,
Or at any time so numerous generations consequently.

Mysticism governing the pictures and symbolism of Whitman’s poetry: The mystic quest for Truth and communion with the Divine effortlessly lends itself to be represented in conditions of the voyage impression. The Track of the open up Highway is a poem whose topic is a journey symbolic of an exploration of the non secular as properly as the physical universe. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking symbolizes the mystic quest for actuality and the ultimate discovery of the indicating of life. When Lilacs last in the dooryard Bloom’d use symbols and photos made to affirm the significance of Dying. Dying is noticed as a deliveress because it sales opportunities to new daily life, and the poet possessing had the mystical knowledge of this truth, seeks to be a “uniter of here and hereafter”

As G. W. Allen points out, the “try to show the route among actuality and the soul very almost sums up Whitman’s total intention in Leaves of Grass”. The mysticism listed here is evident. christian mysticism “I” of Whitman’s poems is on a perpetual journey. His soul is but a fragment of the globe soul. The mass of photos which race by means of his poems symbolize the unity and harmony in himself and all creation. The spear of grass assumes mystical significance via its symbolic price-celebration of individuality and the enmasse, exclusion of none, exception of all. In Music of Myself, Whitman speaks of God as his beloved and his “bed-fellow” sleeping at his side all evening. The mystical knowledge is conveyed in conditions of highly charged sexual imagery.

Whitman seldom lost contact with the physical truth even in the midst of mystical experience. Bodily phenomena for him ended up symbols of non secular reality. He believed that “the unseen is proved by noticed” as a result he tends to make use of highly sensuous and concrete imagery to express his perception of divine reality. He finds a purpose guiding organic objects-grass, sea chicken, flowers, animals-for,

The smallest sprout shows there is actually no demise…
and
… al leaf of grass is no much less than the journey-operate of the stars…

Certainly, a single may possibly say that mysticism constitutes the really poetic kind of Whitman’s poems, he seemed 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 once separateness and unity. Whitman’s dominant metaphor of grass provides a circumstance for unity and harmony, a fundamental part of construction.

Mystical structure of Tune of Myself: Track of Myself is possibly the very best illustration of Whitman’s mysticism influencing meaning, kind and symbolism. Says James E. Miller: “When seen in phrases of the phases of the conventional mystical knowledge, Tune of Myself takes on a comprehensive structural condition”.

The reader can rediscover what the poet by observing his possess spear of summer grass and by launching his possess mystical journey. Tune of Myself is an “inverted mystical expertise”¬- While the standard 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 progress in direction of union with the Complete.

Conclusion: Whitman is a mystic as much as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic with out a creed”. He sees the physique as the manifestation of the spirit which is “shipped” by loss of life into a increased daily life. A spear of grass is not an inert compound for him but God’s handkerchief, “the flag of disposition”. Typically in his sensibility, matter is dissolved, trees turn out to be “liquid” and contours “fluid”. The real is transmuted and he has cosmic visions. He gets to be a comet travelling spherical the universe with the speed of light.

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 America, it has a fantastic deal to do with its mystical pressure. Correct, Whitman’s manufacturer of mysticism is not identifiable with the selflessness of the Christian range or the passivity of the Oriental. What we might get in touch with Whitman’s mysticism is “democratic” mysticism-available to each and every gentleman on equal terms and embracing contradictory aspects. But it is simple that mysticism is central to the that means of Leaves of Grass.