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Transcendentalism in the Poems of Whitman
From looking at the titles of Walt Whitman's vast collection of poetry in Leaves of Grass one would be able to surmise that the great American poet wrote about many subjects -- expressing his ideas and thoughts about everything from religion to Abraham Lincoln. Quite the opposite is true, Walt Whitman wrote only about a single subject which was so powerful in the mind of the poet that it consumed him to the point that whatever he wrote echoed of that subject. The beliefs and tenets of transcendentalism were the subjects that caused Whitman to write and carried through not only in the wording and imagery of his poems, but also in the revolutionary way that he chose to write his poetry. The basic assumptions and premises of transcendentalism can be seen in all of Whitman's poems, and are evident in two short poetic masterpieces: "A Noiseless Patient Spider" and "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer."
In the belief of transcendentalism, the reliance on intuition, instead of rationalization, became the means for a union between an individual's soul and the soul of the world or the cosmos. Called the Oversoul by Emerson, this collective soul gathered the soul of a person upon a person's death. To understand the Oversoul, one had to first understand oneself and then look toward nature as expressions and instructions for the living of one's life (Boller 1-3). Through all of Whitman's collections of poetry, essays, and letters, he quested to find the meaning of life and to understand the Oversoul, which the great poet referred to as the "float."
In "A Noiseless Patient, Whitman presents a simple analogy that compares a lone spider searching for a hold to his soul as...
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...au, Roger. The Transcendentalist Constant in American Literature. New York: New York UP, 1980.
Boller, Paul. American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry. New York: Putnam, 1974.
Eckley, Wilton. "Whitman's 'A Noiseless Patient Spider.'" The Explicator 22 (1963): 20.
Emmanuel, Lenny. "Whitman's Fusion of Science and Poetry." Walt Whitman Review 17 (1971): 73-81.
Lindfors, Berndt. "Whitman's 'When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.'" Walt Whitman Review 10 (1964): 19-21.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence. "An Important American Critic Views Whitman." Critical Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. 116-127.
Whitman, Walt. "The Noiseless Patient Spider." Leaves of Grass. New York: Penguin, 1980. 347-348.
Whitman, Walt. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." Leaves of Grass. New York: Penguin, 1980. 226-227.
Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 24-67. Print.
A list of statistics can be printed on a sheet of pure gold and still have no impact on how it can affect an individual’s day to day; however, hearing or in this case, reading of the experiences in the Concentration Camps is more than enough to make you rethink everything that you thought you knew about human nature and enable you to open your eyes and see the deep dark secrets of the past. Sometimes all it really takes is one voice, that one voice can make a much larger impact than any set of statistics, in this case its Elie Wiesel’s
The Basques are an ancient people whose history is deeply intertwined with the people of Spain and France. Toward the end of the tumultuous period that followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Navarre (Nafarroa in Basque), centered in Pamplona, came into being. Originally this kingdom covered all of modern Navarre, plus the three Vascongadas, or Basque countries (Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia, Araba), and the modern French Basque countries, and into neighboring areas in modern Spain. When the moors invaded Spain, Navarre was never conquered, thus it retained many Basque characteristics Navarre was probably not a "Kingdom of the Basques", but it was a kingdom whose dominant ethnic group were the Basques . Through the high and late middle ages Navarre gradually lost bits of its territory through various dynastic marriages and inheritances, a...
Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945. It has been estimated that nearly half of the total number of concentration camp deaths between 1933 and 1945 occurred during the last year of the war” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in the world’s history.
...llion Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and of those six million, 2.75 million were murdered in the six death camps.
Before Spain became part of the Roman Empire, it was occupied by Celts, Iberians, and Basques. Not until after Spain became ruled by a Roman emperor named Ataulf did it finally become independent and its own entity. In the year 1469, the country was brought together by the marriage of Ferdinand II and his wife Isabella I. Nearly ten years later; they tried to convert whatever religion that was not Christianity to it. Not long after the conversion of the other religions, Roman Catholicism was discovered, established, and became the official religion and whoever did not convert over were
Throughout America in the 1830's, the religious and literary philosophy of Transcendentalism flourished. This period of time is difficult to describe in a simple definition, but the general ideas are expressed through poetry, essays and books of these three talented Transcendental authors; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry Thoreau. From Emerson's dramatic expressions of thinking for one’s self and not conforming, to Whitman's belief of living stress free and experiencing life, to Thoreau's explanation of the purpose of sucking the marrow out of life and constant reminder of simplicity; the writing of these free thinking authors with these ideas show the overall meaning of Transcendentalism. The lessons of the Transcendental era are expressed in the modern day movie Dead Poet's Society directed by Peter Wier. As a literature professor at Welton Academy, a preparatory school for boys, Mr. Keating has rather unorthodox methods of teaching which include interactive lessons to inspire his students to learn. Rather than a normal class of reading from books and writing essays, Mr. Keating taught life lessons which are different from your average lecture. The storyline of the film focuses on one class composed of boys who are on their 4th and final year of education at this academy. Mr. Keating is successful in teaching all the boys the ideas of Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau during his period of time as their literature teacher. This teachers class changed the boys perspective on life forever, which is more than what most high school students can say from their ed...
General Franco died in the year 1975, Juan Carlos I takes the throne and became the new king of Spain. Carlos pushed a...
15. "What the Camps Were Like, Told Through the Eyes of Piople Who Suffered Through
The main rivers in the country are the Ebro in the northeast, the Tajo in the central region, and the Guadalquivir in the south (Carr, Ginés, Harrison, Koenigsberger, O'Callaghan, Richardson, Rodriguez, Shubert, Smith & Viguera, 2017). Spain is in southwestern Europe, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, Bay of Biscay, and Pyrenees Mountains (CIA, 2017). Agriculture land use is important in Spain and the main products produced from that industry are beef, pork, poultry, dairy products, grain, olives, wine grapes, sugar beets and citrus (CIA, 2017). Spain is ranked number 12 in the world for the country with the highest standards of living (Briney,
Today, Spain occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula in the southwestern corner of Europe. Modern Spain shares borders with France and Portugal. Historically, Spain has been dominated by Catholics, but Muslims had occupied for some time in the past. Today, Spain hosts several different cultural groups, including Basque and Catalan.
In “On the Beach at Night Alone,” Walt Whitman develops the idea that everyone has a connection with everything else, including nature. Whitman uses a variety of writing techniques to get his point across. First, the repetition and parallel structure that his poems contain reinforce the connection between everything in nature. The usage of “All” 11 times emphasizes the inclusion of everything in the universe. The sentence structure remains the same throughout the poem, without any drastic change; however, the length of the lines in the poem vary. In addition, Whitman’s’ extravagance with his words further illustrates his idea of the Over-Soul. For example, “A vast similitude interlocks all” (4) shows his verbose nature. Whitman does not do directly to the point, but gives every little detail. Most importantly, Whitman’s’ use of catalogues stands as the most recognizable Whitman characteristic that illustrates his beliefs. These long lists that he uses set the mood of the poem. “All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,” (5) shows the idea that everything is connected in nature. Similarly, “All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations languages.” (10) furthermore emphasize Whitman’s belief in the Over-Soul.
Early reviews of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass evince an incipient awareness of the unifying and acutely democratic aspects of the poetry. An article in the November 13th, 1856, issue of the New York Daily Times describes the modest, self-published book of twelve seemingly formless poems: "As we read it again and again, and we will confess that we have returned to it often, a singular order seems to arise out of its chaotic verses" (2). The Daily Times's identification of "order" out of "chaos" in Leaves of Grass parallels America's theoretical declaration of e pluribus unum, one out of many—a uniquely democratic objective. Also manifesting the early perception of the democratic poetic in Leaves of Grass, yet focusing more on Whitman and his content, an 1856 edition of the North American Review asserts, "Walter Whitman, an American,—one of the roughs,—no sentimentalist,—no stander above men and women, or apart from them,—no more modest than immodest,—has tried to write down here, in a sort of prose poetry, a good deal of what he has seen, felt, and guessed at in a pilgrimage of some thirty-five years" (275). Here, Whitman is seen as the archetypal American, practicing the democratic ideal of human equality. The reviewers' awareness of order out of chaos and of the ideological American attitude of equality is a written history of the problems of nineteenth-century, post-Jacksonian America, for the presence of their observations, which celebrate Whitman's democratic vision, can only suggest the absence of that vision in American politics and culture.