125
See also: Lyrical Ballads 110T
he Transcendentalist
movement thrived in
the US in the mid-19th
century, inspired by German
philosopher Immanuel Kant’s
idea that knowledge is concerned
“not with objects, but our mode of
knowing objects.” This fusion of
the intellectual and metaphysical—
combined with a celebration of
physicality, sexuality, and nature—
characterized the work of American
poet Walt Whitman (1819–92) and
other Transcendentalist writers.In praise of body and spirit
Whitman’s collection Leaves of
Grass contains poems such as “I
Sing the Body Electric,” where, at
the same time as revering the soul,
he displays a desire to liberate
Americans from shame about the
body, to foster egalitarian instincts,
and to promote human connection.
“Song of Myself” is a eulogy to all
of humanity, in which the poet
imagines himself returned to the
cycles of nature. With the hypnotic
rhythm of his verse, Whitman
revels in the senses: “I will go tothe bank by the wood and become
undisguised and naked, / I am mad
for it to be in contact with me.”
Whitman delighted in nature
and its cycles, in which, for him,
God was self-evidently present.
He shared a conviction with the
poet Emerson that humankind was
innately good, and this became
a hallmark of Transcendentalism.
Later poems in the book, such as
“A Noiseless Patient Spider,” also
show a mystic fascination with the
“measureless oceans of space.” ■ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
LET YOUR SOUL STAND
COOL AND COMPOSED
BEFORE A MILLION
UNIVERSES
LEAVES OF GRASS (1855), WALT WHITMAN
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
TranscendentalismBEFORE
1840 Author and literary critic
Margaret Fuller and essayist
and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson
become founding editors of the
Transcendentalist journal The
Dial, publishing on literature,
philosophy, and religion.1850 Emerson, spokesman
of Transcendentalism,
proposes a “general mind”
that expresses itself through
the lives of geniuses such as
Plato and Shakespeare.1854 The rewards of a simple
life in nature are described in
Walden; or a Life in the Woods
by Henry David Thoreau.AFTER
1861–65 The great American
poet Emily Dickinson enjoys
her most prolific period. Her
poems have Transcendentalist
overtones mixed with a fear
of cosmic immensities.This is the grass that grows
wherever the land is and the
water is, / This the common
air that bathes the globe.
“Song of Myself”US_124-125_Onegin_Leaves.indd 125 08/10/2015 13:05