Walt Whitman's Civil War

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Hermetic America: Transformational America
Presentation 1 of 13

Whitman’s Civil War
The Poet-seer in the Ruins of the Union
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 4, 1985

Transcript:
The date is July 4th, 1985. This is the beginning of a new series of lectures by Roger Weir on transformational America. Tonight's lecture is on Whitman's Civil War, the poet seer in the ruins of the union.

Because of the holiday and because you've been good enough to come out, I'll try and try and give a arousing talk. But it will only be about an hour long. And then instead of having a break, you're all invited to come over just a mile from here 2029 Hyperion and hopefully there'll be food there. Some lemon meringue pies and so forth and harmless fireworks. And you're all walking to, to come along.
I have been lecturing here for almost six years. And in that time, I've been working with very large-scale structures trying to create census of shape again. The senses of shape that were once known as the Hermetic tradition. And this is a very venerable undertaking. And one of the masters of styling history as a Hermetic tradition was the great Abbot [inaudible] who was a contemporary of Martin Luther. Who lived in Germany. Died in 1516. Who studied under Ficino. And it was his concern that the sacred traditions of man be kept in order. And if you look at any of the esoteric texts, alchemical texts especially, always in the legitimate texts at the beginning is placed the lineage. It's just like the lineage in The Vajrayana. And one says that so and so was my teacher and his teacher and so on all the way back. This style of sacred history is meant to give experience a shape so that meaning may occur to us in our lives.

But Hermetic history is different from textbook history. Hermetic history always emphasizes that the pivoting, the mobility, of a man's reality is a mystical experience and is not of the mind. Is not as a body. Does not occur here, although it manifests here. That it occurs in reality in a mystical openness. So that the articulation of time is by eternal hiatuses, which punctuate and give meaning. So that Hermetic histories always emphasize the shape of meaning in terms of spiritual experience and not in terms of dates or battles so forth.

Because this country, our country, the United States is so important in the large-scale structure of time on this planet. And because the shape of our history is, has been lost by and large, it is not taught correctly. It is not taught in the universities correctly at all. That I have sought this year in particular to try in four segments to deliver the Hermetic shape of American history. And the first 13 lectures were called Hermetic America. And they dealt with Franklin and Jefferson and Thoreau. And they dealt with the phenomenon that we know today in high energy physics. It's usually referred to around the question of what are identified now as solitons. And in a soliton, in a high energy integration, there is a resonance which is complete. Every resonance is complete. There is no fragmentation. There is no temporality, but each resonance is complete in itself. And this was the shape of integrity that Franklin and Jefferson made. And we saw with Thoreau that there was almost no contact physically or culturally with Franklin and Jefferson. And yet Thoreau was there kind of a human being.

The second series, the second form, bringing us up to the halfway point was about the critical tradition. It was about those individuals who were so sensitive, perhaps unconsciously so in feeling tones rather than discursive mind. But still sensitive to the fact that there was an American presence that was unusual. That was important. And that was mysterious. And that it had been lost. Or was being lost. Or was being squandered. And we saw it progressively during that series the culmination of that vision in the later year versus Mark Twain. His deep dark pessimistic years when he discovered that without compassion, without a universal compassion, insight into the nature of reality tear will human being apart, we become shards.

So, we're going to go back now. We're going back to Walt Whitman. Because Whitman starts to remind us of that necessity of universal compassion. That the desire to be a cosmic person is in fact, part of the mystery of the American tradition. And the converse of that is that all men may participate in this. All men and women. Regardless of their backgrounds and this is what makes it cosmic. But that they quality that has to be added to insight is universal compassion. The nature of man has to be seen whole, and one was not leave anything out, anyone out.

And Whitman is one of the world's great voices. He is great as a poet. He is greater as a visionary voice. He was born in 1819 in Brooklyn. When he was six the most astounding event happened. When he was six it was 1825 and it was coming up the 50th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. And the United States Congress remembering and recognizing the ties of the revolutionary period to one grand old count in France, brought General Lafayette back to the United States. And in his tour of the United States, after he saw Jefferson. They were both still alive. Lafayette went to New York city and little Walt Whitman age six was taken there by his daddy. And in some strange what General Lafayette looking at the crowd walked over to little Walt Whitman and picked him up and held him on his shoulders and gave him a kiss. And something happened to that little boy, that six-year-old Walt Whitman came alive. And he said for the rest of his life he said that he felt that he had been touched by history. Touched by some effect like the soliton. Some integral transition had been passed to him.

Later on, when Whitman was a little older, he saw Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson impressed him as a man, but he realized that there was a quality missing from Andrew Jackson that Lafayette had had. There was a mystique. There was some mysterious charisma. And charisma is a gift. It is the gift of the divine. And for Whitman, he began to piece together for himself that there was a difference between human beings. Between great human beings. That there are certain human beings who have a charismatic presence that carries the mystery underneath time, underneath history. And for Whitman as he grew and began teaching school all over Long Island in various little school rooms. Then practicing his trade as a reporter and as an editor for small newspapers, again and again, Whitman kept reminding himself that there was some mysterious is essence alive in time in certain human beings. And he began to yearn for what we can only call a divine vision of [inaudible] wholesomeness. That this divine vision of wholesomeness delivered onto one the capacity then to see through this charismata the true nature of events. The true qualities of human beings.

All of this in Whitman's background was simply extraordinary and was brought out in Whitman's life. When he was around 22 years old, he had gotten into a group of individuals who are interested in politics, political change, social reform. And of this group, the great spokesman at this time were all Scottish individuals. Like Robert Owen, who was the founder of the new harmony community. And these individuals who had run up against the specter of power industrialization, power for powers sake, in England, in the Midlands, were coming over to the United States in the 1830’s and trying to alert the American citizenry to the danger coming.

Of those Scottish people the most influential on Whitman was a woman who was almost forgotten now from history. And it's just an indication of the ignorance that runs rampant and passes for American history. Her name was Francis Wright. And Francis Wright was the vision of the perfect woman for Walt Whitman. He never married because Francis Wright never left him. The impress of her personality touched him at a moment when he was filled with the yearning, the desire, for a vision of divine wholesomeness. And he found in Francis Wrights integrity that vision. Francis Wright was to Walt Whitman what Beatrice was to Dante. She was the right woman. She was the anima. She was the sole image of the truth of eternal timelessness. And he knew it.

In fact, when we look at Francis Wright, we need to turn now for just a moment to Arthur Shlesinger The Age of Jackson page 182. “35 years old in 1830. The [inaudible] theories had a very great impact through the influence of Francis Wright. The young Scots woman who had come to America in 1818 and again with Lafayette in 1824.” Notice the connections. Lafayette brings her with him. There are all these connections going on. When one gets used to this one notices the earmarks of the Hermetic tradition. There are always those underneath who make the contacts, who do the bridging. So, she came with Lafayette.

She had undertaken in 1826, the famous Nashoba Experiment in an attempt to mitigate the slavery problem. Failure at Nashoba settled her conviction that the basic obstacle to reform was the corruption of the American people by a false system of education maintained by the clergy. Her belief in the omnipotence of the environment in forming character as well as her anti clericalism inclined her to a sympathy with Robert Owen. They began a newspaper journal in New York in 1829 called The free Inquirer. And The free Inquirer became for a while the model of a number of publications, which Whitman would be associated with.

In fact, this is the beginning, the growing edge, of his writing technique. His vision is just beginning to form. She was 35 years old in 1813. She had an attractive unclouded face. Chestnut hair falling in natural curls. Large blue eyes, clear, serious. A tall slender, graceful figure. She's spoke in rich musical voice tones disarmed the most bitter by her radiant enthusiasm. Her mind was courageous, logical and independent, and she wrote militant and vivid prose. Her followers adored her. Hardheaded mechanics and workers crowded the halls when she lectured and poured over copies of The free Inquirer in flickering light late in the evening. She had, in fact, as described by Walt Whitman's father, Walter Whitman, she had these characteristics. She has always been to me, one of the sweetest of memories. We all loved her. Fell down before her. Her very appearance seemed to enthrall us. She was graceful. She was almost deer like. Beautiful and bodily shape and gifts of soul. And when Whitman was old in Camden, he confessed to Horace Traubel, who was his last great secretary in [inaudible], “I never felt so glowingly towards any other woman. She possessed herself of me, body and soul.”

So, Whitman became to Francis Wright because of this woman, because of her courageousness and her beauty, her integrity, Whitman became a knight, a chivalric knight, recognized of trying to find some way to reinstate that wholesome society that she was agitating for. In this Whitman found himself increasingly adrift. The political theories of the day were terrible. They involved all kinds of subterfuge. And in fact, for a period of about 20 years, Whitman was little more than adjective dated, second rate journalistic writer with great grandiose ambitions and no way to translate it. And what was it it's in his way and what is it in the way of consciousness at just this is that he lacked an expressive form that was capable with its integrity of bringing out from his aspiration into his life as an expression, the yearning for a vision of divine wholesomeness. A crying of a vision and no ceremonial form in which it could come out. And so, it remained nebulous.

Until in 1850-1851, Whitman happened to be in a group of individuals who would meet at various homes or meet at various clubs. And they would talk about these things. And one gentlemen showed up whose name is famous in art history. His name is Horatio Greenough. And Greenough had been born in 1805 and had gone to Florence, Italy when he was in his twenties. And he had lived for more than 20 years in Florence training himself to the aesthetic theories of wholesomeness of the Renaissance. And it was Greenough who brought these back to New York city in the 1850-1851 season and it was there that Whitman found finally the right aesthetic. The right aesthetic not as on a fancy art for art's sake theory, but the aesthetic, which shows man that the expressive form for his yearning of his integrity is in fact, in every case an expression of his own life process. And this of course is the fine old Rosicrucian rule of thumb. The life lived is the doctrine received.

In Greenough then we have from the university of California, press a reprint of many of his articles collected together under the aegis Form and Function [Form and Function: Remarks on Art, Design and Architecture]. When he came back, he was, of course he had been lionized by individuals like James Fenimore Cooper, who perhaps you don't remember had him commissioned him to do a sculpture, a very famous sculpture. John Quincy Adams was one of his patrons. And of course, general Lafayette again.

Remember when we talked about Napoleon, but the message was always that before there was a Napoleon, there was a Lafayette. And oddly enough, after there was a Napoleon, there was a Lafayette. Lafayette is very much like the figure of [inaudible] in recent Chinese history. He was there before [inaudible] and he was there after [inaudible]. And the China today is formed largely by [inaudible] and [inaudible]. The ideology was formed by [inaudible] but the Chinese character, the character of the people as an expressive form for the Chinese life was formed by [inaudible].

General Lafayette is one of the most mysterious figures in Western history. He's always there at the right time. And of course, he was discovered as some of you might remember by Benjamin Franklin. And don't forget that it was Madam Lafayette who made the Masonic apron for General George Washington. And that Masonic apron incidentally is here in Los Angeles as it should be. Unfortunately, it's in the glass case at the museum of science and industry as a decoration, as an ornament of early American craftsmanship. And it's peculiar to mention this because this is exactly what Greenough says is wrong with human consciousness. That we seek to decorate our lives with sacred emblems. And we miss the significance that they are to have a meaningfulness, which we must live honestly. Greenough uses the word occasionally nakedly. We have to be naked to the truth and then it is real. Then it is efficacious. If we use it as an ornamentation, our aesthetic sense is larded up. And in fact, sinks below the level of consciousness. And when something sinks below the level of consciousness something else in compensation must come up into consciousness. And what comes up into consciousness is a transformed mythological demagoguery. And it is this that creates the political problems. It is this that creates the false theologies. It is this that throws man back into an intolerable situation.

Greenough had this to say, “In the hope that some persons studious of art may be curious to see how I develop the formula I have set up, I proceed,” and it runs in the sequence. When I define beauty as the promise of function. Beauty is the promise of function. Action, next. Action is the presence of function. And third character, human character, is the record of function. Beauty, action, character. The fulcrum is what it's called in philosophic political language, the Praxis. Isn't action, but it's an action of translating beauty, which comes through a conscious recognition, which is only possible by a frame made thereby an aesthetic understanding. And only then can man's life in action translate an ideal into the reality that he is in his character. Walt Whitman was eyed. And he recognized and what Greenough was saying that this is what he felt with Lafayette and did not feel with Andrew Jackson.

And as this quality was circulating in Walt Whitman, it was the most amazing event to him. He began writing his Magnum Opus Leaves of Grass, and it was an amazing event. He brought the first edition, very thin, of Leaves of Grass out in 1855, just a couple of years later. And the second edition of Leaves of Grass suddenly is an explosion of capacity. If you read the first edition of Leaves of Grass those poems are clever. They're even inspired. But what he did to the second edition of Leaves of Grass as a total spiritual transformation of the whole scale of vision. It's the vision of divine wholesomeness.

And the figure, the character in human history that brought this out for him was not the memory of Lafayette, but it was the reestablishment of that sacred tradition when Walt Whitman saw for the first time in his life, Abraham Lincoln. And Abraham Lincoln startled, Whitman to realize not there was a connection between Lafayette and Lincoln. There was some esoteric, current and flow. And Whitman had this in one of his notebooks. This is the first visit of Abraham Lincoln to New York city. And of course, the election was very close in popular vote. And in New York city, Lincoln was not popular at all. In fact, the mayor of New York city wanted New York city to establish itself as a separate state and join the South, that the South was going to succeed from the union.

There were 40,000 hostile people there, and Lincoln was on his way to Washington to take the oath of office. There was no secret service, and everybody was certain he was going to be assassinated. And Whitman was there with bated breath. And he wrote this,

On this occasion, not a voice, not a sound from the top of an omnibus, driven up one side, close by and blocked by the curbstone and the crowds, I had a Capitol view of it all. And especially if Mr. Lincoln. His look. His gait. His perfect composure and coolness. He has unusual and uncouth height. His dress of complete black. Stove pipe hat pushed back on the head. Dark brown complexion and wrinkled yet canny looking face. Black bushy head of hair. Disproportionately long neck and his hands held behind as he stood observing the people. He looked with curiosity upon that immense sea of faces and the sea of faces returned the look with similar curiosity, all in silence. In both, there was a dash of comedy, almost farse, such as Shakespeare puts in his blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemmed around consisted I should think of 30 to 40,000 men, not a single one of him a personal friend. While I have no doubt so frenzy where the ferments of the time, many assassin’s knife and pistol alert and hip or breast pocket, there ready soon to break. Ready for the riot. But no breaker riot came. The tall figure gave such relieving stretcher to arms and legs. And then with moderate pace accompanied by a few unknown looking persons ascended the portico steps of the Astro house, disappeared through its broad entrance. And the dumb show ended.

Whitman and the entire city of New York were flabbergasted at the silent presence of Abraham Lincoln because he conveyed something like the soliton conveys, the integrity of the good man who is absolutely essential at that time. No words were needed. There was no politics needed. There was no theology needed. The reality of the man's presence was what was needed and everyone recognized it.

But Whitman recognized it in such an amplified vision because he realized this is how history is made. Because there are individuals like this who present eternity in their character. Their actions are not ingenious. They are neither good nor bad. They are essential to the reality that must happen. And behind that action then is this vision, this beauty, which must be understood. And Whitman searching to put some tone on it came up with the idea that Lincoln presented what would come to be called in 19th century America, cosmic consciousness. That his character manifested it. And it was the character of Lincoln that was the guiding star for holding the unity of the United States together. It was not holding the majority of the States together. Or holding power groups or pressure groups together. But holding everyone together as a unity. That got to Whitman. He couldn't believe that he had understood. That he had witnessed himself this tremendous.

As soon as Lincoln was in office of course, the succession arguments came to the fore and the States began withdrawing. The Civil War began. The terrible devastation of bull run, where the Confederate forces decimated the Union forces. And the sudden nasty recoil and the viciousness in the North that we will kill them all. How dare they do that, this to us. And all the time Lincoln trying to win the war against the Confederates but not let the hate of the North take over as a power structure. And it was Lincoln's great spiritual balance of keeping these two in harmony that Whitman followed day by day.

Whitman's brothers, all wanted to join up with the forces. George Whitman, the most capable of all the Whitman boys went, was assigned near Fredericksburg and in 1862, the New York papers came out with the terrible devastation of Fredericksburg. One of the first battles in world history where artillery scientifically placed tore the battlefield to shreds in a methodological machine-like rigidity and the casually list were astronomical. And appearing on the list was a GW Whitman. And Whitman’s mother said I know it's George. Somebody has got to go and see. And Walt assured her that he would go. His mother gave him $50, which she had been saving for George. Whitman went on some ferry boats and went from Brooklyn to Manhattan, walked across Manhattan. Took the ferry to New Jersey. Took the train to Philadelphia. There was no train from New York to Washington in those days. And some pickpocket took the $50. And he got through starving several days finally to the outskirts of Fredericksburg. And he found George was alive.

But on the way to finding George Whitman had another area vision, because he had to walk past the hospital barracks and outside under the trees was a mountain of the amputated arms and legs of the union forces. And Whitman almost passing out through grief that the great experiment in human Liberty come to this. The, the mound of death, the very image of Kali, the destroyer. And Whitman staying on day after day found that he could not leave. He found that his universal compassion had rooted him to the spot. And so, he located himself in Washington, DC, near the hospitals, near the Army hospitals. And he spent year upon year there until the Civil War was over being a hospital orderly. Doing a few articles here and there just to pay for room and board. And Whitman opened himself up to experience this terrible dreadful tragedy.

One is reminded of the great phrase, Pablo Neruda from the heights of Machu Picchu in September 1945 saying, “There must exist some poet who will take into himself all the deadly sharpened angry knives that people had been concealing in their minds, in their hearts.” Neruda said,

Here if you must kill someone, kill me then. Thrust them to me. The millions of shards of the hatred that has been raised in this world. And I will pray for the division of divine wholesomeness to transform this back into love. We must have love. We cannot live without it.

Whitman found then in this experience, his largest addition to Leaves of Grass. And in Leaves of Grass the section known as drum taps records progressively the tremendous vision of Whitman seeking to heal the nation by his vision. The first poem in drum taps that I would like to give you. And we haven't time for a great many, but I want to just give you this one is entitled Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One-Night

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, one look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil [I stood], dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son [and] my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head [and] carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.

In Leaves of Grass is one of the world's greatest poems because it performs that mystical inner penetration of cells for us on a grand scale. It's a man becoming cosmically wide and his ever loving us for all and bringing it together.

At the end of the Civil War on May 4th, 1865, Whitman stood in the barrenness of the hospitals by now cleaned out and evacuated. And he wrote this short poem, Hush’d Be the Camps to-Day.

Hush’d be the camps to-day, And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons, And each with musing soul retire to celebrate, Our dear commander's death. No more for him life's stormy conflicts, Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time's dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. But sing poet in our name, Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly. As they invault the coffin there, Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers. This dust was once the man. Gentle plain. Just in resolute under whose cautious hand against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, with say the union of the States.

And that was the burial of [inaudible].

Well, I think we should end there. There's more of course and next week we'll come back. But I think you get an idea that we have an incredible tradition, which is ours if we were [inaudible]. And it makes paltry the kind of frazzled arguments that run rampant today. The vision is strong. It is still there. And we hope to recapture it somewhat. And these lectures.

Thank you for coming out on the anniversary of the country's birth. And you're welcome to come over in 2029 Hyperion. Come and be with us. Thank you.

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