Whitmania: Round VII, God.

I found in reading “Song of Myself” this passage:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letter from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I will leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

I find in this passage echoes of Blake; first the idea of the macrocosm in the microcosm. The speaker of the poem sees God in every object that he encounters, no matter how small it is. Whitman sees God in the macrocosm because God’s character is infinite. Even though the speaker is able to see God in all aspects of life, he still does not understand him in the least. Although he is able to experience some of God in reality, he does not mistake that for the whole as the Enlightenment thinkers did.

In following Blake, Whitman also, it would seem, has a problem with churches who claim to know all there is about God and create dogma surrounding their knowledge. Through this poem, Whitman shows how it is wrong for churches to place limits on God. He sees God as infinite and putting Him in a box is wrong.