Walt Whitman: Transcendentalism By the late 19th century, Walt Whitman had become positioned at the forefront of the American cultural lexicon. His poetry was at once brash, dissonant and resoundingly erotic. His raw, unabashed poetry flew in the face of the prevailing ideals of his time. Whitman’s greatest literary accomplishment, Leaves of Grass, had set the ideas of divinity, the hierarchy of the holy trinity, and the ethereal perfection afforded these things into turmoil. …showed first 75 words of 2064 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2064 total…Above all, these things existed within the grand cosmic structure of the universe and all moved in harmonious conjunction. Nature, man and God all traveled through the great cosmos of space and time as one. Whitman attempted to show that the things which he wrote were not exclusive of one and other, but were intertwined to the very core of each one’s existence. It was that idea which stated the true ideals of transcendentalism.