12 April 21 Emerson – “The Poet” and his Poetry 2

Ralph Waldo Emerson – An Exploration of the Essayist and the Poet – Segment 2

Just because a piece of writing is older doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy. — JPS

Last week, I started a new series for the Monday Poetry Post. The post’s focus is Ralph Waldo Emerson,* specifically his essay, “The Poet,” and some of his poetry. The subject essay almost escaped my memory, but happily, I happened upon my Classics Club copy of Emerson’s “Essays, Poems, and Addresses.” I am thoroughly enjoying my reacquaintance with this master within the Transcendentalist movement of New England. I hope you will, too.**

Yes, Emerson’s “The Poet,” speaks to poets in particular, but by solid extrapolation, he speaks to writers of all genres and all subjects – the bawdy, a possible exception. He left that to Walt Whitman. (Chuckle!) Emerson claims that the poet has a “superior calling.” I happen to agree, although I am painfully aware of the heartache, anger, and temporary joy of the poet/writer who sees too much, too deeply. 

The poet’s world is dangerous territory and can cause great anguish for people who seem to have a sensory array that picks up emotional subtleties and the meaning (meaninglessness?) of human activity more than the rest of the planet’s population. These are biased, and generalized statements, and leave out ecstatic saints, heroes, and leaders of justice movements. It also doesn’t include the uncomfortable fact that poetry proves inaccessible to many, and those who do understand it eschew its acquaintance as too highbrow, too harrowing, or too histrionic. 

That and more doesn’t mean that the poet can’t capture the reality of the great matters of life and death. Yes, there are “bad” poets in the literary sense. (Who is to judge?) There are also poets who have literally given their lives for their work. And our encounters with all poets/writers and their work may be well-considered to be taken on with gratitude and humility. Emerson would agree.

Over this series on Emerson, please enjoy selections from his essay, “The Poet,” examples of Emerson’s poetry, and brief comments. Background on Emerson’s life also appears in each post below the selected poem.

SECTION OF ESSAY – Part 2

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torchbearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time.

Comments on Section 02

Emerson considers the nature and the functions of the poet, "the man of Beauty," to whom he ascribes a superior calling. Unlike the intellectual, who sees no dependence between the material world and the world of thoughts and ideas, or the theologian, who relies exclusively on historical evidence for truth, the poet acknowledges an interdependence between the spiritual and the material worlds. This relationship between the ideal — that which we aspire to be — and the real — that which is — is a central issue in the discussion. Continuing the image of the child from the epigraph, Emerson states that we are "children of the fire," and the energy and brilliance of this fire is similar to the spirit in each of us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poem

Good-Bye

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:

Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

Long through thy weary crowds I roam;

A river-ark on the ocean brine,

Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;

But now, proud world! I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;

To Grandeur with his wise grimace;

To upstart Wealth's averted eye;

To supple Office, low and high;

To crowded halls, to court and street;

To frozen hearts and hasting feet;

To those who go, and those who come;

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone,

Bosomed in yon green hills alone, —

A secret nook in a pleasant land,

Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;

Where arches green, the livelong day,

Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,

I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;

And when I am stretched beneath the pines,

Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,

At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;

For what are they all, in their high conceit,

When man in the bush with God may meet?

 

Background – Biography - Part 2

Like other Anglo-American readers of his period, Emerson relied heavily on British colonial agents for his knowledge of India, reading treatises, travelogues, and translations of legal, religious, and poetic texts produced in the wake of Britain’s imperial expansion into India. As a consequence, Emerson’s writing about South Asia (as well as China, Persia, and the Arab world) often traffics in the menagerie of 19th century Euro-American stereotypes and misconceptions. Examples can be found in Emerson’s “Indian Superstition,” a densely allusive poem that he composed for Harvard College’s graduation ceremonies in 1822. In the 156-line poem, Emerson describes how “Superstition,” the personification of religious tyranny in Asia, has enslaved “[D]ishonored India.” With its Romantic primitivism and bombastic imagery, “Indian Superstition” is perhaps closer to caricature than considered literary art. Yet, for all its excess, Emerson’s poem is notable for departing from a common formula of the period according to which a debased India could only be redeemed through Western colonialism. Instead, Emerson urges Indians to resist the shackles of the British Empire as forcefully as they should resist the mental chains of religious superstition. He exhorts ordinary Indians to look upon the example of post-revolution America as an emblem of what a modern democratic nation could achieve.

After he graduated from Harvard, Emerson’s enthusiasm for non-Western subjects waned, primarily because he devoted himself to becoming a Unitarian minister. In 1831 Emerson’s wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson, died of tuberculosis, an event that galvanized a series of personal and professional changes in his life. The next year Emerson resigned his pulpit at the Second Church of Boston, publicly citing the fact that he did not believe in the special divinity of Jesus and thus could no longer administer the sacrament of communion. After traveling through Europe, where he met literary luminaries such as William Wordsworth and Thomas Carlyle, Emerson returned to his ancestral home in Concord, Massachusetts. He began a career as a public lecturer, which lasted almost 50 years, and married Lydia Jackson, whom he affectionately referred to as “Mine Asia” - a pun on Asia Minor, the location of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. 

In 1836 Emerson published Nature, the first major statement of his mature philosophy and a groundbreaking book that catalyzed the Transcendentalist movement in New England. Along with Emerson, the New England Transcendentalists were an eclectic group of religious, literary, educational, and social reformers that included Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, and Henry David Thoreau. The movement grew out of Unitarianism in the greater Boston area; was deeply influenced by British and German Romanticism, especially as interpreted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and revolved around a form of philosophical and spiritual idealism that valued intuition over the senses.

Partial Chronology of Emerson’s Life - Part 2:

1824 Dedicates himself to religious study.

1825 Leaves the School for Young Ladies and enters Harvard Divinity School.

1826 Becomes licensed to preach; fearing tuberculosis, he travels to Charleston, South Carolina, and later to St. Augustine, Florida.

1829 Is ordained pastor of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston; marries Ellen Tucker in September,

1831 Nineteen-year-old Ellen dies February 8 of tuberculosis.

1832-33 Resigns from Second Church and travels in Europe; visits Carlyle, Mill, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.

Explorations

Exploration 1: What are your thoughts about Emerson’s claim that the poet has “a superior calling”? Is the claim accurate? What about writers of other genres?

Exploration 2: Emerson “acknowledges an interdependence between the spiritual and the material worlds” – the connection between “the ideal” (Buddhism calls this the “Absolute”) and “the real” (Buddhist terms are “conventional” and “mundane”) Critics and analysts cite this as a central issue and exploration in the essay. Thoughts, so far?

Exploration 3: Continuing the image of the child from the epigraph, Emerson states that we are "children of the fire," and the energy and brilliance of this fire is similar to the spirit in each of us. Agree or disagree?

Side Notes:

*Maybe the names “Ralph” and “Waldo” were popular back in Emerson’s day. But with a melodic name like Emerson, his parents could have done him a solid by coming up with better first and middle names. Or maybe one of Emerson’s uncles had assets. Just sayin’.

** Don’t worry. We haven’t abandoned our buddy, Horace, on the ash heap. He will reappear in future posts. In his own modernized words and in Arnold’s unique tone, Horace promises, “I’ll be back!”