When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the

Yes it means he was too stupid to understand the science

>>8833855
pretty much this

it's pure sour grapes/ressentiment/slave morality

The supposed learn'd academic is often incapable of understanding the divine.

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>10/10 poetry is America

Nice breaking bad poem, now read I Sing the Body Electric

Wouldn't a night lecture be a bit weird (esp. in the 1800s)?

Obviously, given that it's a poem, it shouldn't be taken literally, but it's still hard to imagine him "gliding" out of the "lecture-room" and instantly being a night-time environment to look at the stars.

Also, genuine autism on his/the speaker's part: the "perfect silence" of being by himself and looking at the stars is in stark contrast to the applause in the lecture room with many other people. More importantly, his becoming "tired and sick" is unaccountable, which I feel an autist would actually feel in a loud lecture room with applause. The biggest piece of evidence is that, judging by the phrase "from time to time", he didn't even go out with the intention of looking at the stars, but for some other unaccountable reason (which, as I said, is an autist's general discomfort with sound and social situations).

>The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.

>But the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the frighten'd monarchs come back,
>Each comes in state with his train—hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
>Soldier, lawyer, lords, jailers, and sycophant.

Is he arguing for permanent revolution?

>>8833855
Very interesting. I've been looking at it like >>8833873 has been, where language is failing the poet speaker with it's overly rigid scientific systems, but it's crazy to think of maybe he is failing to comprehend the language

>>8833921

you're a terrible critic.

>>8833921
lol is this bait? If so it's incredible

>>8833921
Is he an autist because
a) language has failed to represent the divine heaven/space he gazes upon at the end of the poem or
b) he has failed to understand language and instead just wants to be dumb and look at the pretty lights

>>8834137
I'm referring to actual autism, not 4chan or the internet's version of autism.

The narrator shows that he doesn't like sitting in a lecture room, seeing all the complex charts and figures being taught, and hearing the applause. To a particularly sensitive autistic person (and one who isn't inclined towards math/science), this isn't surprising. The two active verbs of his time in lecture are both "heard", again hinting at actual autism, since noise and sound are harder to filter in people with autism.

The narrator then goes out of the lecture room -- but *not* to look up at the stars. If you were going to look up at the stars, that would be your main action, not something you'd do "from time to time."

Rather, his reason for leaving the lecture room was in search of the "perfect silence". Whether or not he could understand the astronomer's words, it seems that they and the applause began to grate on him, albeit without him realizing it (hence, him becoming "unaccountably" tired and sick).

>>8834098
But maybe you could consider how the poem doesn't offer a concrete way to determine which is being said (of course no poems do but for the sake of argument); instead perhaps it's a poem that offers or maybe highlights the choice and tension existing between how language can or can not offer a depiction of reality. Maybe the speaker doesn't seem to have a choice or two choose, but perhaps instead the poem as a work offer such a notion

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I bet Whitman and Miyazaki would've gotten along very well.

>>8834197
Are you #actuallyautistic?

Because you don't understand the poem at all.

>>8833832
Well, isn't this a pretty typical expression of the transcendentalist idea of gathering your own experience rather than relying on the writings of others?

>Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Enbosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Obviously in the context of of scientific knowledge it doesn't quite hold up (you can't expect to rediscover yourself the entirety of what scientists hvae unearthed until now). But I interpret Whitman's lines simply to mean that he finds the lecturer boring and gets more enjoyment from beholding the stars with his own eyes; that he doesn't need to know the scientific numbers ("the charts and the diagrams") to be able to appreciate the stars or be in awe of them. Recognising their beauty and poetry is more important than understanding the science behind them.