Whitman and mysticism

Whitman and mysticism

What is mysticism: Mysticism is not a coherent philosophy of life, but rather a state of mind. A mystical experience, according to BERTRAND RUSSEL, involves perception, a sense of unity and unreality of time and space, and the belief that evil is mere appearance. The vision of a mystic is intuitive; he feels the presence of a divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of sense perception. He feels that God and the Supreme Soul that animates all things are identical. He sees an essential identity of being between Man, Nature and God. He believes that “all things in the visible world are but forms and manifestations of the one Divine Life, and that these phenomena are changeable and temporary, while the soul that informs them is eternal.” The human soul is also eternal. Transcendentalism is closely related to mysticism as it emphasizes the unintuitive and spiritual over the empirical.

Whitman’s poetry is full of mystical and transcendental tensions: he was deeply influenced by Emerson, the American transcendentalist. His thinking was intuitive and not systematic like that of a logician. He wrote as a mystic:

Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible to proof, it is its own proof.

Apply to all stages and objects and qualities, and it’s content,

It is the certainty of reality and the immorality of things and the excellence of things.

There is something in the floating of the sight of things that provokes it outside the Soul.

Whitman believed that the soul was immortal. He identified with all the animate and inanimate things around him. What is interesting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “in his book we can find the typical features of absolutely all the various mystical doctrines.”

Whitman is a mystic with a difference: one cannot call him a pure mystic in the sense of Eastern mysticism. He is not a man of prayer. Like all mystics, he believed 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 the human being to establish communication between his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the Eastern or traditional mystics in that he does not subscribe to their belief that communication with the Divine Spirit is possible only through denial of the senses and mortification of the flesh. Whitman declares that he sings both to the body and to the soul. He feels that spiritual communication is possible, even desirable, without sacrificing the flesh. Thus, there is a great deal of sexual elements in Whitman’s poetry, especially early poetry: section 5 of Song of Myself is an example where sexual connotations are inseparable from mystical experience.

The Material World is not denigrated: Whitman does not reject the material world. He seeks the spiritual through the material. He does not subscribe to the belief that objects are illusory. There is no tendency on the part of the soul to leave this world forever. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul trying to play a major role in managing this world of scenes, sights, sounds, and so on. Whitman does not disparage the achievements of science and materialism. In Section 23 of Song of Myself, he accepts the reality of materialism and says:

Human for positive science!

Long live the exact demonstration!

Nature and man will not be separated or diffused any more.

Searching for divine reality: Whitman accepted the Theory of Evolution but could not believe that evolution was a mechanical process. In the slow process of growth, development, and change that science was revealing, Whitman saw God becoming apparent and unmistakable to man. The soul of man finds complete dissatisfaction only in the search for the reality behind the manifestations. As he says in A Passage to India:

Bathe me, oh God, in you, riding you,

Me and my soul within reach of you.

At the end of the journey the soul meets God -or the “Great Camerado” as it says in Song to myself.

Whitman’s sense of unity of the whole: his cosmic consciousness. Throughout his poetry, Whitman has shown his faith in the unity of the whole, or “oneness” of everything. This sense of the essential divinity of all created things is an important aspect of mysticism and is also closely related to Whitman’s faith in democracy which he calls for equality and fraternity. Song of Myself is packed with lines proclaiming this “oneness.” He knows

…that all men born are also my brothers…and all women my sisters and lovers,

And that a keel of creation is love.

It praises, not only life, but the absolute rage of each particular and individual person, of each real being that exists. Whitman equates all opposites and accepts evil as part of Reality.

In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the poet has achieved the unity of all mankind: “The scheme simple, compact, well put together, myself disinterested but part of the scheme.” Time becomes one in Whitman’s poetry. Past, present and future merge into a spiritual continuum. Thus, in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he says:

It doesn’t work, neither time nor place-distance work,

I am with you, men and women of a generation,

Or many generations later.

Mysticism governing the images and symbolism of Whitman’s poetry: The mystical search for Reality and communion with the Divine lends itself easily to being represented in terms of the image of the journey. The song of the open road is a poem whose theme is a symbolic journey of exploration of the universe, both spiritual and physical. Out of the Cradle Endless Rocking symbolizes the mystical search for reality and the ultimate discovery of the meaning of life. When the Lilacs last in the courtyard, Bloom uses symbols and images designed to affirm the importance of Death. Death is seen as a liberator because it leads to a new life, and the poet, having had the mystical experience of this truth, seeks to be a “unifier of the here and the hereafter”.

As GW Allen points out, the “attempt to point the way between reality and the soul pretty much sums up Whitman’s intent in Leaves of Grass.” The mysticism here is obvious. The cosmic “I” of Whitman’s poems is on a perpetual journey. His soul is but a fragment of the soul of the world. The mass of images that run through his poems symbolize unity and harmony in him and in all creation. The grass spear takes on a mystical meaning through its symbolic value: celebration of individuality and mass, exclusion of none, exception of all. In Song of Myself, Whitman speaks of God as his beloved and his “bedmate” sleeping next to him all night. The mystical experience is conveyed in terms of highly charged sexual imagery.

Whitman rarely lost touch with physical reality, even in the midst of mystical experience. Physical phenomena for him were symbols of spiritual reality. He believed that “what is not seen is proved by what is seen”; therefore, he makes use of very sensual and concrete imagery to convey his perception of divine reality. He finds a purpose behind natural objects (grass, seabirds, flowers, animals) to,

The smallest outbreak shows that there is really no death…

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…every blade of grass is not less than the work of the travel of the stars…

In fact, it could be said that mysticism constitutes the very poetic form of Whitman’s poems, he considered that the universe constituted a unity of disparate objects, the Divine Spirit unified; thus, his poems are “Leaves of Grass” which mean both separation and unity. Whitman’s dominant grass metaphor makes a case for unity and harmony, a basic component of structure.

Mystical Structure of Song of Myself: Song of Myself is perhaps the best illustration of Whitman’s mysticism influencing meaning, form, and symbolism. Says James E. Miller: “When viewed in terms of the phases of traditional mystical experience, Song of Myself takes on an integral structural form.”

The reader can rediscover what the poet is by looking at his own spear of summer grass and embarking on his own mystical journey. Song of Myself is a “reversed mystical experience”: whereas the traditional mystic sought to annihilate himself and his senses in preparation for his union with the divine, Whitman magnifies the self and glorifies the senses in their progress toward union with the divine. Absolute.

Conclusion: Whitman is as much a mystic as a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic without a creed.” He sees the body as the manifestation of the spirit that is “handed over” by death to a higher life. A blade of grass is not an inert substance for him but God’s handkerchief, “the flag of readiness.” Often, in his sensitivity, matter dissolves, trees become “liquid” and contours “fluid.” The real is transmuted and has cosmic visions. It becomes a comet that travels around the universe at the speed of light.

I start like the air, I shake my white hair in the sun of the track,

I spill my flesh in eddies,

And drifting in lacy jags.

If Leaves of Grass has been called an “Bible” of America, it has a lot to do with its mystical tension. It is true that Whitman’s brand of mysticism is not identifiable with the self-sacrifice of the Christian variety or the passivity of the Eastern. What we may call Whitman’s mysticism is a “democratic” mysticism, available to all men on equal terms and encompassing contradictory elements. But it is undeniable that mysticism is central to the meaning of Leaves of Grass.