Walt Whitman and Transcendentalism

Walt Whitman: Transcendentalism

By the late 19th century, Walt Whitman had become positioned at the forefront of the American cultural lexicon. His poetry was at once brash, dissonant and resoundingly erotic. His raw, unabashed poetry flew in the face of the prevailing ideals of his time. Whitman's greatest literary accomplishment, Leaves of Grass, had set the ideas of divinity, the hierarchy of the holy trinity, and the ethereal perfection afforded these things into turmoil. What he did was take the theologian ideas of perfection and divinity and juxtaposed them onto mankind and the world around him. This theology of transcendentalism was the cornerstone theme throughout all of Whitman's writing.

Throughout Whitman's poetry, there exists several major themes. First, the idea of the Holy Trinity of father-son-holy spirit is taken from a heavenly, theological realm and brought into the present. Second, there is the idea of the Adamic myth of America, whereupon mankind has found a temporal Garden of Eden in which to recreate himself and the world around him. The final theme is that of the perfect order of the cosmos as the stage for which these things can happen. Whitman makes the case that each individual, each "leaf of grass" has its own place within nature.

Up until the time of Whitman, the prevailing religious dogma of America had been one of strict adherence to traditional values and beliefs. Approaching the turn of the century, however, sentiment for an alternative path had begun to grow. Thus came the age of the Great Awakening. The idea of a spiritual equality amongst all people had begun to spread across the country and Whitman was one of the biggest proponents. What made Whitman controversial was not so much his embrace of an alternative religion, but how he took the Christian ideals of otherworldly reverence and planted himself firmly on the middle.

The idea of the Holy Trinity in theology is that of the father-son-holy spirit. This idea of each part of the triangle being one and the same is a major ideal throughout Christianity. Whitman took the old ideas of divinity and perfection and placed them upon his own ideas of the universe. Indeed, Whitman often puts himself squarely in the middle of the trinity, "Di...

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...ement. Whitman took these and brought them to the level of the common man. Man being one with nature as well as one with God was a major reversal in popular ideology within America. No longer was mankind to aspire to the perfection of God, he must merely choose to be such. Whitman had abolished the idea of original sin as casting a pall on the spirit of every man, woman, and child born into the Christian religion. They should not repent and seek redemption, he argued, they should look into this new beginning as a way to create a new self. Whitman thought that man could choose to make his own decisions without an inherent guilt bestowed upon man at the behest of Adam in the Garden of Eden. America was the New Eden. It was up to man to create his own destiny. Above all, these things existed within the grand cosmic structure of the universe and all moved in harmonious conjunction. Nature, man and God all traveled through the great cosmos of space and time as one. Whitman attempted to show that the things which he wrote were not exclusive of one and other, but were intertwined to the very core of each one's existence. It was that idea which stated the true ideals of transcendentalism.