Question

Read and analyze, "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman. First, accurately summarize the events that occur in this poem. Then discuss the reason for the narrator's actions. How does the poem reflect the ideas of the romantics? What evidence in the poem shows this?

Answer 1

The narrator is inside the lecture room, listening to a well educated astronomer, a "learned" man, explain the universe in terms of mathematics, with his charts and diagrams to be added, divided, and measured. This poem is, in many ways, essentially a poetic expression of Immanuel Kant's ideas, key to an understanding of Romanticism, on the nature of the sublime. Kant drew on the work of Edmund Burke and stipulated that Nature's beauty cannot and should not be quantified; what is beautiful in nature is a "presentation of an indeterminate concept of understanding."This is what the speaker in Whitman's poem experiences. lol so basicaly the astronomer was explaining the universe but the author thought it was beautiful so it makes the poem beautiful.(i'm sorry)