WALT WHITMAN SAID

 

WALT WHITMAN SAID

            Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet and essayist. He also worked as a journalist and a teacher. His most famous collection of poems is Leaves of Grass. One of the longest poems in this book is “Song of Myself”.   He is known as a revolutionary poet. His literary style is original. Free verse is his   poetic hall mark. He is bold, fearless, frank, and broad-minded. He is a great poet of the common man. He does not believe in taboos and is as much a lover of the body as of the soul.             

            An overview says: Walt Whitman’s philosophy is a form of American transcendentalism, celebrating the individual and nature as divine, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things, and promoting a democratic, sensual, and spiritual life lived in harmony with the body and the physical world.

            In his famous poem on animals, he says

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are

so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition.

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.

 

            The Indian mystic and philosopher Acharya Rajneesh popularly known as Osho (1931-1990) had this to say after reading these lines:

If you look at the animals it is natural to be tempted by their silence, by their acceptance, by the peace that surrounds their being, by the non-tense, non-neurotic state of their minds. It’s very natural to be tempted by the animals. It means man has fallen. It seems there has not been an evolution, man has not progressed----just the contrary. For three hundred years the scientists have been telling there has been a great evolution, man has come far above animals. This is a false claim.

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G.R.Kanwal

O9 September 2025