One can look at nature either with the eye of a scientist or with the eye of a poet. Is it possible to look at it in both ways? Walt Whitman’s poem ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’, which first appeared in 1865, offers a sharp contrast between the two visions. The poem was published in the context of the Industrial Revolution and the great scientific boom of that period. The verses draw the portrait of a lecture room where a learned astronomer lectures.
‘When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick’
The world of scientific data and analysis, with rubrics and measurement, makes the persona sick. The initial lines start with “When” repeatedly. This use of anaphora may also imply the redundancy and signify the boredom which the persona feels. There is “much applause in the lecture-room”, except from the persona, who becomes “tired and sick”.
‘Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.’
The poem ends with the persona observing the stars in silence. The shift in the lines and the words also shows a shift in the mood. Phrases like “rising and gliding” and “mystical moist night-air” reflect the movement outside, as against the stagnant conference room replete with charts, diagrams and figures. In the modern world, when we are constantly bombarded with beeps and alerts on our mobile phones, how much time do we take to switch off, step out and look at the night sky? What if there is more beauty and peace in observing the distant stars than looking at the zoomed-in images which Google throws at you? If Whitman makes you walk under the stars tonight, please read his poem ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’ too. Tomorrow you will be patiently observing a web-in-the-making!
The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam