5 April 21 Emerson – “The Poet” and his Poetry

Ralph Waldo Emerson – An Exploration of the Essayist and the Poet – Segment 1

Worthwhile it is to Recall and Read our Forebear’s Written Legacy -- CS

With today’s post, we begin a new series about one man – Ralph Waldo Emerson – essayist, poet, spiritual seeker, New England Transcendentalist (see “Background” below), and much more. I first thought about presenting Emerson over a series of posts when I re-read his essay, “The Poet,” and soon after, revisited many of his poems. So here, like Horace, we have a writer who writes about writing, and offers thoughts on what writers (poets in particular) can mean to society at large. Unlike Horace, Emerson was a hugely wide-ranging thinker and writer, probably because his world was so much larger (think North America) than was Horace’s terrain. To be fair, Emerson had the advantage of living in the 19th century, nearly 2,000 years after Horace. A few things happened between the times of these two men. Ahem.

Why Emerson? If you have followed this post dedicated to poetry, you will know that I, personally, am interested in anyone who has anything to say about poetry and/or who writes poetry. Emerson did both. He wrote the essay, “The Poet, which we will examine closely in this series, and he wrote a sizeable oeuvre of poetry himself. This is only the beginning. So much more can be said about “why Emerson.”

I admit, I tend toward hyperbole when it comes to Emerson. In the hall of fame of the world’ greatest writers, Emerson holds a lofty place. His legacy to us includes some of the most honest and brave writing ever done in North America. In his work, he goes straight to the core of the human experience and even to the much-cliched purpose of life. One might cautiously say that he is the progenitor of modern thought. This humble series attempts to present a look at only one of his essays, “The Poet,” and several of his poems

I know some of you reading this may be skeptical of Emerson’s importance and his relevance to our current era. I answer, “Yes, he is.” Any thoughtful reader who samples even a modest selection of his work will likely be impressed by his incredible philosophical thought that can still be practically applied to everyday living. Like Walt Whitman (See Song of Myself posted on Wednesdays), Emerson celebrates the individual life in spirit, mind, and thought.

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

SECTION OF ESSAY – Epigraphs

A moody child and wildly wise

Pursued the game with joyful eyes,

Which chose, like meteors, their way,

And rived the dark with private ray:

They overleapt the horizon's edge,

Searched with Apollo's privilege

Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,

Saw the dance of nature forward far

Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,

Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes

Second Epigraph

Olympia bards who sung

Divine ideas below,

Which always find us young,

And always keep us so.

Comments on Section

The epigraphs that open the essay are Emerson's. The "moody child" described in the first epigraph prefigures the essential qualities of the poet, who sees with a penetrating gaze deep into the true nature of things. The four lines of the second epigraph come from Emerson's "Ode to Beauty"; this fragment alludes to "Olympian bards" and continues the reference in the first poem to Apollo, the Greek god of music and poetry. These bards' words prompt listeners to recover a fresh vision of youth, similar to Emerson's wanting his fellow Americans to rediscover America's indigenous character rather than continue to rely on models from their European past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poem

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

Background – Biography - Part 1

Ralph Waldo Emerson—a New England preacher, essayist, lecturer, poet, and philosopher—was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the 19th century in the United States. Emerson was also the first major American literary and intellectual figure to widely explore, write seriously about, and seek to broaden the domestic audience for classical Asian and Middle Eastern works. He not only gave countless readers their first exposure to non-Western modes of thinking, metaphysical concepts, and sacred mythologies; he also shaped the way subsequent generations of American writers and thinkers approached the vast cultural resources of Asia and the Middle East.

Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. As a boy, his first contact with the non-Western world came by way of the merchandise that bustled across the India Wharf in Boston harbor, a major nexus of the Indo-Chinese trade that flourished in New England after the Revolutionary War. Emerson’s first contact with writings from and about the non-Western world came by way of his father, William Emerson, a Unitarian minister with a genteel interest in learning and letters.

In 1817, at the age of 14, Emerson entered Harvard College. While at Harvard, Emerson had little opportunity to study the diverse literary and religious traditions of Asia or the Middle East. The curriculum focused on Greek and Roman writers, British logicians and philosophers, Euclidean geometry and algebra, and post-Enlightenment defenses of revealed religion. As his journals and library borrowing records attest, however, in his spare time, Emerson paid keen attention to the wider European Romantic interest in the “Orient” or the “East,” which to him meant the ancient lands and sacred traditions east of classical Greece, such as Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, China, and India. An aspiring poet, Emerson also gravitated to selections of poetry that took up Eastern themes and Eastern poetry, including the works of Saadi and Hafez, which he would embrace in adulthood.

NOTE ON Transcendentalism a philosophical and social movement which developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures.

Individualism lies at the heart of Transcendentalism. Every individual needs to be self-reliant and thus not depend upon others if he or she is to be free and to live life fully. Self-empowerment is attained by defying the authority of “empty” conventions and senseless rules.

Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form.

Partial Chronology of Emerson’s Life:

1803 Born May 25 in Boston, Massachusetts, to the Reverend William and Ruth Haskins Emerson.

1811 Father dies May 12 of stomach cancer.

1812 Enters Boston Public Latin School; begins writing poetry. [Note: 9 years old]

1817 Enters Harvard College.

1821 Graduates from Harvard College in August; begins teaching at his brother William's School for Young Ladies.

Explorations

Exploration 1: Should we trust the opinions of a 19th century transcendentalist? 

Exploration 2: What kind and quality of poetry could Emerson have written at 9 years old?

Exploration 3: Did Robert Frost plagiarize Emerson in Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”?