When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the Learn's Astronomer

Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the 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;	5
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.

I enjoy reading Walt Whitman’s "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer" for the mere feeling it brings me. I haven’t tried to read too far deep into it, fearing that the meaning will not satisfy me, or it will ruin my emotional response. So. . . here goes nothing. The poem seems to be from the point of view of a student, or “lesser” who finds respect in the learn’d astronomer. Through mathematical proofs and displayed data I see that the astronomer is a man in search of answers. However, it is not theoretical or philosophical truths this man searches for. These are physical answers. The astronomer feels the need to share this knowledge and so the speaker is “shown” by the astronomer, graphs that are supposed to prove a point. I’m not sure how I feel about this. The cynic inside of me always feels uneasy at the thought that the only way to learn is to accept the reality from someone else. The speaker is at the complete mercy of the astronomer. While it’s possible that what the astronomer speaks is true, it’s impossible to know for sure, as all knowledge we gain from the world is passed down by those who have experienced it longer. Those who are already shaped by it, and are, even if unintentionally, paired with bias because of it. Still, the astronomer is met with “applause”, showing that despite the possibility that these may be lies, others have joined and collectively decided to agree that this is the truth they are wiling to give their lives over for. This appears to be too much for the speaker, as he is forced to leave. The feeling that he experiences is “unaccountable”. An ironic word, as the speaker is in this environment where everything can be explained and accounted for, the speaker still finds doubt and an inability to understand his reality. Perhaps it’s a cyclical process, as it leaves the speaker “tired and sick”. He ventures out alone. Oh no. See at the beginning of this poem, I found comfort in the message it sent to science, but now the phrase “wandering off by myself” reminds of the Allegory of the Cave. Even though reality is the majority’s perception, that does not mean it is correct. In the Allegory of the Cave, the wall shadows are the reality for most of the prisoners and yet they are incorrect and ignorant of the truth. Only one fortunate soul is able to wander away from the accepted reality and find true enlightenment. Even if the next step is enlightenment, that doesn’t seem to be the focus for the rest of the poem. The speaker becomes sick of overanalyzing and realizes how impossible it is to entirely understand the universe, and so he settles for enjoying nature for what it is - Beauty without reason or purpose. He walks into the “mystical” or inexplicable night-air, and stares that the stars. While he sits in silence, perhaps a nihilistic argument, or disconnection from God, the speaker is still able to appreciate the perfect silence of the stars. There’s no attempt to explain them, as he doesn’t feel pressured to accept another’s idea of reality, the speaker just enjoys the existence of figures in the sky that are far greater than himself. So going into the poem, I just liked the neat language of the charts, columns, and diagrams, and the space imagery that ends in fulfillment. It gave me trust in science. Now, I’m left with with a minor existential crisis. If there’s a message that is to be pulled from the poem, is seems to be along these lines: It’s a waste of time to try and explain the environment around you. Time wasted that could be spent enjoying its existence.

To have squeezed the universe into a small ball...

This week I returned, once again, as I do almost every other month, to my casual viewing of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic that’s essentially the movie adaptation of the novella Heart of Darkness. I’d like to spend my time describing the similarities between the two. What first stands out to me worth discussing is Marlon Brando’s Kurtz, and Joseph Conrad’s vision of the antagonist. In Apocalypse Now,  Kurtz is portrayed as a rouge general, who has gone insane. He beings to fight his own war with the natives against the government’s orders. His physical appearance is meant to mirror his excess of power. His bulk-ness verges on being overweight. Because of the costuming and shadowing it was hard for me to distinguish if Coppola wanted me to view Kurtz as unhealthy overweight or towering strength. Curiously, in the novel, Kurtz is depicted as something skeleton-like. Conrad blatantly compares Kurtz’s head to a skull of ivory. While contextually, Kurtz’s skinny weight can be blamed to his unnamed disease, it’s began apparent to me that Kurtz is shriveled and hollow because of his own excess. This draws an interesting parallel between symbols of excess. Now, realistically the reason why Marlon Brando was so fat was because he showed up to filming obese. He had weight problems. But for the sake of literary merit, Coppola decided that Marlon wouldn’t be sent home. Despite the excess, even if Coppola’s Kurtz appears full, Kurtz is a hollow man. Because of excess, there’s no humanity left, and so there’s only a structural store front that’s supposed to resemble a human. Watching the movie after reading the seventh chapter of Grendel, I spot an interesting comparison to Dennis Hopper’s character, the insane American journalist who decides to stay with Kurtz, and the slightly schizophrenic Grendel. Both obsess over twisted logic in rules that define their worlds. Hopper reveals his true disconnect from reality when he speaks cinema’s craziest dialogue:  “this is dialectics, simple dialectics. It is very simple dialectics: 1 through 9, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel to space. You can not go to space with fractions. What do you land on: on one quarter or 3/8th? What do you do when you go to venus or something. Thats dialectic. Physics. Dialectic logic is: there is only love or hate”. Similarly to Grendel, Grendel speaks of conics and keeping a steady balance of everything. The photojournalist holds to the belief that there are no compromises to the truth. There are only absolutes - there can only be polar outcomes. With two such absolutes, there’s almost a balance established between truth and lies. A line that is drawn straight down through reality, where there’s no complex truth. There’s a balance that’s been set in place, a balance that cannot change despite varying opinions and emotions regarding what the truth should be. Both of these characters seem to crack over their obsession for the truth. For enlightenment. While the journalist claims to have had his “mind expanded” by Kurtz, he’s limited himself because within all humans there is a limit. Grendel has difficulty following the Dragon’s logic - it can’t be helped. Both characters are representative of how incompetent humans are to understanding the entire universe; who can blame them? Instead of swimming in ambiguity, theses two characters have chosen a different path. An oversimplification of the truth. They’ve enclosed their minds in limited options as to what the truth can be. Grendel preaches existence’s meaninglessness. The journalist preaches there are only absolutes. One either loves something, or hates it. Ignoring all of the complications show how the character’s minds are receding back into ignorance. 

Winesburg, Ohio and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There lies a close parallel between the character of George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio, and J. Alfred Prufrock in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Both male characters face sexual frustration, and disconnect from those around them. In order to describe the disconnect, they both seem to stem from the feeling that they cannot be understood, or they wish to touch or be touched by a woman in some way that communicates intimacy, a need they don’t get from exclusively communicating verbally. At Winesburg, Ohio’s peak, “Sophistication” correctly describes in words what this need exactly is. George wants to “be touched by the hand of another. . . he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding” (Anderson 217). In contrast to the loud, industrious city George's dream wit take him next, George wants a gentler feeling. A more soothing one that comes from a female. Just speculating, the reason as to why he’d think that it would be more accessible coming from a female is the tender motherly feeling females are able to provide. I don’t have a lot of evidence to support that, but generally, woman have been shown in literature to be more in touch with their emotions that man are. Being able to fill the need for something and making it more comfortable to exist in a jarring world leads to understanding. Being able to locate that need, empathizing over how it feels, and being able to fix it is complete understanding. Alfred Prufrock meets the same roadblock of communication when he exclaims that what he has said in an attempt to connect and receive comfort is “not what I meant at all”(Eliot 97). Prufrock, having similar needs and the lack of a leading female role in his life, pushes him to reach out and ask for help. Disconnect follows as he isn’t able to articulate the feeling. This failure of verbal communication shows how touch is the most important mode of understanding, as words fail for both characters when they attempt to get what they want. This leads Prufrock to worry about social pressures, such as his appearance and his manner of speech at parties. George feels awkward around Helen when they converse. With the lack of physical touch, both characters face a difficultly of connection. Since physical touch involves actions, rather than words, it’s hard to understand why it wells up positive feelings like comfort. Both characters rely too heavily on words to communicate what they are feeling. The poem is titled as a love song for some intended. Prufrock is limiting himself from the beginning, as he can explain only as much as his capacity for forming the lyrics will allow. George Willard is a reporter and makes his living off of using words to communicate, and yet he fails at getting what he wants. In “Teacher”, Kate Swift advises that George must learn what people are thinking about, as to what they verbally say (Anderson 145). Because of these two character’s heavy reliance on speech, they are paralyzed from acting out their physical needs. Without engaging people physically, the characters cannot access the primal need for understanding that cannot be understood.