Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Visionary Architect of
America's Literary Renaissance
Nibir K. Ghosh
A
new world swam within the vision of civilized man when, on October 12, 1492,
Christopher Columbus, and his crew sighted land after a perilous voyage of six
weeks across the Atlantic in search of the fabled Indies. While discovering the
new world, perhaps by default, five centuries and thirty years ago, Columbus
may not have imagined that he was setting his foot on what would be, in due
course of time, the most advanced nation and the most powerful democracy in the
world. In a span of over two centuries and a half after Columbus’s discovery,
America was predominantly known as the cluster of thirteen English Colonies, each
one independent in terms of economic as well as political governance but still
owing common allegiance to the King of England and observing all traditions and
customs essentially British in nature and origin. The idea of America as a
nation evolved when these thirteen Colonies, hitherto loosely bound by common
economic interests, joined hands to oppose the imposition of the “Stamp Act” by
the British Parliament on March 22, 1765 on the Colonies. The act of joint
rebellion by the Colonies became evident with what is historically known as the
“Boston Tea Party,” an incident that saw the Americans throwing (instead of
unloading) 342 chests of tea belonging to the East India Company into the
Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773. This unprecedented act of protest set in
motion the great American Revolution against what they called the tyrannical
rule of the King of England. In the realm of thought and ideas, a large share
of motivating the rebellion must go to the Englishman Thomas Paine whose
47-page pamphlet entitled Common Sense (1776) addressed to the
“Inhabitants of America” gave the clarion call for severing their ties with the
mother country:
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are
the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is
something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an
island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary
planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the
common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England
to Europe, America to itself. (Paine 69)
According
to Susan Manning, Common Sense “made instantaneous and innumerable
converts to the cause of American independence” and The American Revolution
became “the country’s political Great Awakening.” (Manning 21)
With
the adoption of the Declaration of
Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 the thirteen
united Colonies were absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and were
given the status of free and independent States which came to be known as the
United States of America. The Declaration
of Independence recommended the dissolution of all political connection
between America and Great Britain. Bound no longer either by political or
emotional ties with Britain, the citizens became an integral part of the newly
constituted American nation, a feeling that found beautiful expression in
Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Gift Outright,” which the poet himself recited
at the Inauguration Ceremony of the 35th U.S. President John F.
Kennedy on January 20, 1961: “Such as we were we gave ourselves outright/To the
land vaguely realizing westward/ But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,/
Such as she was, such as she would become.” (Frost 246)
It
is evident that the Declaration of
Independence gave the United State of America the freedom to assume the
separate and equal station of a nation independent in all respects—social,
economic, and political. But the fact remains that in the sphere of literature
and culture this autonomy remained in abeyance for over half-a-century with independent
America continuing to speak to the world in the language of the English
tradition.
Thomas
A. Bailey mentions in his book The American Pageant how a British critic
questioned the very existence of an indigenous literature: “’Who reads an
American Book?’ sneered the British critic Sydney in 1820. The painful truth
was that the nation’s rough-hewn, pioneering civilization gave little
encouragement to ‘polite’ literature. Much of the reading matter was imported
or plagiarized from England.” (Bailey 371) Similarly, communicating with The Tribune, Margaret Fuller wrote from
Rome in 1847: “Although we have an independent political existence, our
position towards Europe, as to literature and the arts, is still that of a colony,
and one feels the same joy here that is experienced by the colonist in
returning to the parent home.” (Spender 7)
These
observations do indicate that the shadow of the colonial existence continued to
haunt the American writer whose preference for the British/European tradition
did not seem to wane. However, it is significant to point out that a few
exceptions like Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Washington Irving (1783-1859) and
James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) stood out in a marked way. The Autobiography
of Benjamin Franklin (1818) was one of the first books by an American
author to be taken seriously by Europeans. In Washington Irving’s writings
“Europe was amazed to find at last an American with a feather in his hand, not
in his hair.” (Bailey 371) Likewise, Thackeray spoke about James Fennimore
Cooper: as “the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the
old.” (Bailey 371)
Notwithstanding the isolated instances cited above, the
emergence of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) as the herald of intellectual and
social individualism and as one of the founding fathers of the American
“Transcendentalist” Movement decisively impacted the opening of the American
mind to a floodgate of ideas unprecedented in the short history of the new
nation. In his “Introduction” to Selected
Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Signet Classic edition), Charles Johnson emphatically
remarks: “His journals, letters, poetry and addresses
are…the vivid and invaluable transcript of one of the nineteenth-century’s
finest, most cultivated minds as it grappled with perennial, social and
theological dilemmas shirted in the specificity of a young nation confronting
the all to obvious failures of its Revolution.” (Johnson ix) Johnson lauds
Emerson’s ability to combine “the historic glories of the old” and “the rich
possibilities of the new” to probe and explore the intractable belief in
“infinitude of the private man.” (Johnson ix)
Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts to
Ruth Haskins, daughter of a prosperous Boston distiller, and Reverend William
Emerson, a Unitarian Minister of Boston’s First Church. Ralph was only 8 years
old when his father died. After his early education in various schools in
Boston, Emerson entered Harvard College at the age of fourteen in 1817. Among
the formative influences that shaped Emerson’s restless mind was that of his
aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who “with her Calvinist
outlook, early individualism—with its belief that the individual both has power
and responsibility—and hardworking nature clearly inspired Emerson throughout
his life.” (Rockefeller) Though an unremarkable student, Emerson began writing his journal, which he called
“The Wide World,” a habit which was to last for most of his
life. (Rockefeller) Distressed by the mediocrity of talents and conditions
around him, Emerson joined the Harvard Divinity School in 1825 and two years
later in 1827 he became the Unitarian minister
of the Second Church of Boston. He married Ellen Louisa Tucker in 1829, a lady
whom he deeply loved. Unfortunately, the death of Ellen in 1831 at the age of
nineteen left him deeply desolate. Disenchanted with the Church that followed
weather-beaten rituals, he left the pastorate in September 1832.
Emerson’s visit to
Europe in 1833 brought him into contact with William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill,
and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle introduced Emerson to Oriental thought and gifted
him the Gita. Inspired by the romantic individualism of these
intellectuals, he returned to the U.S., married Lydia Jackson and settled down
in Concord, Massachusetts in 1835. He began writing and preaching in his new avatar as “The Sage
of Concord” and undisputed leader of “Transcendentalism.” The Transcendental
Movement primarily rested on the belief that
“truth ‘transcends’ the senses: it cannot be found by observation and
reflection alone. The highest truth comes to light through inner faculties that
every man possesses. It must be sought by permitting the individual to follow
his divine instinct.” (Bailey 372)
Inspired by the ideas of individualism, self-reliance and self-culture, Emerson began in right
earnest to articulate his passionate rebellion against the orthodox and the
traditional. He addressed audiences throughout
New England, challenging the status quo and speaking vehemently in favor of intellectual
independence of both the individual and the nation. Brian Harding notes in American
Literature in Context – 1830-1865: “Emerson deplored the lack of
faith in contemporary literature and clearly implied that his work expressed
his belief in what he called the ‘pristine sacredness of thought’ marked by
spontaneity and independence of all human authority.” (Harding 42)
Emerson’s
address “The American Scholar” delivered by him on August 31, 1837 before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard literally took the Harvard academic world by
storm. Contrary to the expectations of the audience, who came to hear the usual
run-of-the mill stuff like glorification of Harvard tradition and values,
Emerson simply shook them out of their complacence with his spontaneous and
bold utterances. At the very outset, he reminded them that the time had come “when
the sluggard intellect of this continent will look
from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with
something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of
dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a
close.” (TAS 225) He reminded the erudite audience to give
up relying on “sere remains of foreign harvests” (TAS 225) and construct,
through the depths of their own creative instincts, a new era of action, events
and songs that would endure for a thousand years. He emphasized that he did not
view the American Scholar as a member of a particular profession. To him the
American Scholar was exclusively “Man Thinking” and
not simply “the parrot of other men's thinking.” (TAS 226-227)
The
first and the most important prerequisite for a true scholar, Emerson pointed
out, was to remain connected to Nature and learn the boundless wisdom it offers:
“There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable
continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into
itself.” (TAS 227) According to him, the ancient precept
"Know thyself," and the modern
precept, "Study nature," (TAS 228) blend into a single maxim.
Once the Scholar learns to appreciate the value of his own inner divinity, he
will find it convenient to move beyond dogmas and established principles to
create what is of value to entire mankind. Books have their own inestimable
value but, warns Emerson, “Man Thinking must not be
subdued by his instruments … Books are for the scholar's idle times. When
he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's
transcripts of their readings.” (TAS 231)
Rather
than remain a mere bookworm, Emerson stresses that “Man Thinking” must come to
recognize the active soul that resides within him for “The soul active sees
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; … The
book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with
some past utterance of genius.” (TAS 230)
The
aim of the Scholar, states Emerson, should be “to cheer, to raise, and
to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.” (TAS 236) He
must “relinquish display and immediate fame” and strive for the
betterment of humanity in “poverty and solitude” by “exercising
the highest functions of human nature.” (TAS
237) At a time when people found unbounded joy in aspiring for material
gains and the glory of power, Emerson boldly declared:
Men are become of no account. Men in history, men in the
world of to-day, are bugs, are spawn, and are called "the mass" and
"the herd." … Men such as they are very
naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,—the
"spoils," so called, "of office." And why not? For they
aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest.
Wake them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave
governments to clerks and desks. (TAS 240)
Admonishing
the seekers of power and material wealth, Emerson proclaimed his marked
preference for creating an indigenous literature that talked not about kings and
generals but of the simple annals of “the poor, the feelings of the child, the
philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life,” (TAS 242) in
fact anything that highlighted the life and predicament of the lowliest of the
low. Having experienced a series of personal tragedies, he humbly stated, “I
ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or
Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I
explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low.” (TAS 242-243) To
illustrate his admiration of literature grounded in reality of day-to-day living,
he cited the creative renderings of writers like Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, writings that were “blood Warm.” (TAS
243)
Emerson
reiterated the need for the American Scholar to evolve the concept of
self-culture rather than be fascinated by the superstition of emulating
something that was alien. Emerson attacked the mind of the educated American
for pursuing the illusion of tradition which was no longer American in thought
and feeling. Only if the artist would gaze within in self-reflection, he could
visualize a real world which he could call his own. Instead of allowing himself
to be awed by an alien culture, the American artist would be doing a greater
service to both his art and the nation by discovering his own path that would
be self-derived. Emerson was clearly in favour of the exercise of individual
talent rather than the blind emulation of tradition in a spirit of conformity. Emerson
urged the American Scholar to abandon the courtly muses of Europe and draw
sustenance from the material available to him in his own soil for things near
to one’s own area of experience are not less beautiful and wondrous than things
remote. Emerson set his hopes on the “Thinking American” (that included the
writer/artist/intellectual) who would be prepared to experiment in the new
climate and new culture with whatever resources at his disposal to cultivate a
tradition of his own. The primary responsibility of the American Scholar lay in
understanding that the “world is nothing, the man is all … it is for you
to know all; it is for you to dare all.” (TAS 244)
What
one was required to do was explore the richness and the vastness of the
Continent one had been inhabiting for so long instead of remaining stuck up as
a Colonial construct in thought and spirit. Towards the end of his historic
address, Emerson urged the “American Freeman” to give up being tame, imitative
and timid and learn to develop the “confidence in the unsearched might of man.”
(TAS 244) Once the Scholar becomes aware of the power that lies within him
of this “unsearched might” and he learns to “plant himself indomitably on his
instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” (TAS 245) The
belief of Emerson in the emergence of such a “Thinking” Scholar who could forge
the much-needed new American identity is evident from the optimistic conclusion
to his unique address:
We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own
hands; we will speak our own minds. Then shall man be no longer a name for
pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence … A nation of men will for the first
time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which
also inspires all men. (TAS 245)
Based
on the wisdom of his own inner reflections that led him to question authority
wherever it tried to oppose the integrity of the individual soul, Emerson’s
historic address “The American Scholar” laid the strong foundation for the dawn
of America’s literary and cultural Renaissance, free from the fetters of
Colonial moorings. James Russel Lowell saw the Address as “an event without any
former parallel in our literary annals” while Oliver Wendell Holmes pronounced
it as “our Intellectual Declaration of Independence.” (Spiller 372)
The
echoes of his inspiring vision of intellectual independence that he espoused in
“The American Scholar” can be heard in his numerous addresses, essays and
journal entries. His exemplary utterances pertaining to the assertion of true
individuality can be best seen in his essay “Self-Reliance.” In this work,
Emerson states “imitation is suicide” (SR 267) and goes on to add that “the highest merit
we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and
traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.” (SR 266-267)
As a prerequisite for
Self-reliance, Emerson lays emphasis on the instinctive power of the individual
soul: “The soul created the arts
wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought
his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and
the conditions to be observed.” (SR 288) Instead of allowing himself to be awed
by an alien culture, the American artist would be doing a greater service to
both his art and the nation by discovering his own path that would be
self-derived, he averred. The genius, according to him, was not someone who
descended on the earth as an exceptional being but one who had faith in his own
thought and who believed that “what is true for you in your private heart is
true for all men.” (SR 266) The truly individual man, he says, “must be a
nonconformist” and adds, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your
own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the
world.” (SR 269)
His
prescription for self-reliance was precise and unambiguous for he stated: “what
I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. It is easy in the
world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after
our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” (SR 271) Yet, it must be borne
in mind that “independence of solitude” does not imply that the “American
Scholar” needs to work in isolation seated in ivory tower of self-beliefs. He must
also essentially be a man of action endowed with the ability of transforming
his ideas into concrete reality.
The
immediate transformation that came in the wake of Emerson’s role as an
architect of the American Renaissance can be visualized in the appearance of
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1855. Defying traditional approaches
to creativity, Whitman sang of the power of the individual in glowing terms: “One’s-Self
I sing, a simple separate person,/ Yet utter the word Democratic, the word
En-Masse ... The Female equally with the Male I sing…/ Of Life immense in
passion, pulse, and power,/ Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws
divine,/ The Modern Man I sing.” (Whitman 3). Whitman defines true democracy
where the consent of the governed is paramount to the relationship between an
individual citizen and the nation he belongs to. His “En-Masse” is not a
picture of a crowd but the configuration of an individual who must have the
freedom to remain “a simple separate person.” Whitman’s creation in terms of
both content and style immediately evoked the unqualified appreciation of
Emerson.
It
is of utmost importance to understand that Emerson’s appeal and renown was not
limited to the nineteenth century alone. The enduring appeal of his life and
work continues to exert its influence even in our own times. We are all
familiar with the names of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Michael
Dell, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Jack Dorsey among many others who have
distinguished themselves as successful entrepreneurs and created a niche
for themselves in the enviable international hall of fame and fortune after
dropping out of prestigious universities and colleges in the U.S.A. What better
proof can there be of the power of individuality than the contribution of the
personalities mentioned above who defied the laws of imitation and conformity
to grasp the quintessential wisdom propounded by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Every
great man is unique. Abide in the simple and noble regions of the life, obey
thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.” (SR 289)
WORKS CITED
Bailey, Thomas A. The
American Pageant: A History of the Republic. Sterling Publishers (P) Ltd.,
4th Edition. (Indian), 1974.
Emerson, Ralph
Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” (Abbreviated in the text as SR). Selected
Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H. Gilman. Signet Classic
published by New American Library, 2003. pp. 266-292.
Emerson, Ralph
Waldo. “The America Scholar.” (Abbreviated in the
text as TAS). Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H.
Gilman. Signet Classic published by New American Library, 2003. pp. 225-245.
Emerson,
Ralph Waldo. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H.
Gilman with a New Introduction by Dr. Charles Johnson. Signet Classic published
by New American Library, 2003.
Frost,
Robert. “The Gift Outright.” The Pocket
Book of Modern Verse. ed Oscar Williams. Washington Square Press, 1958.
Johnson,
Charles. “Introduction” to Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed.
William H. Gilman. Signet Classic published by New American Library, 2003. pp.
vii-xvi.
Manning,
Susan. “Literature and Society in Colonial America.” American Literature
Vol 9 Edited by Boris Ford. Penguin Books, 1991. pp. 3-26.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. Ed. Edward Larkin. Broadview
Editions, February 14, 1776.
Rockefeller, Lily. “Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American
Essayist.” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-ralph-waldo-emerson-4776020.
Accessed May 25 2022.
Spender,
Stephen. Love-Hate Relations: English and
American Sensibilities. Random
House, 1974.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves
of Grass. Eurasia Publishing House, 1970.
*Dr. Nibir K.
Ghosh, UGC Emeritus Professor in the Department of English at Agra College,
Agra, has been Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington,
Seattle, USA during 2003-04. He is Chief Editor, Re-Markings (www.re-markings.com),
an international bi-annual journal of English Letters that has recently
completed 21 years of its publication. He can be reached at ghoshnk@hotmail.com.
Abstract
Against the political, literary and cultural
backdrop of America before and after the American Revolution that culminated in
The Declaration of Independence signed by the founding fathers on July
4, 1776, the paper explores and examines the stellar role of Ralph Waldo
Emerson in ushering the nineteenth century American Renaissance. The addresses
of Emerson and his essays revolutionized contemporary American thought that had
hitherto remained circumscribed by English traditions and practices of the
erstwhile British Colonies. Emerson’s Address “The American Scholar” and his
unique essay entitled “Self-Reliance,” that are elaborately dealt with in this
paper, set the scene that emphasized the imperative of autonomy in ideas,
thoughts and actions of both the individual and the nation. The enduring appeal
and contemporary relevance of Emerson’s prophetic utterances have also been
taken into account.
Keywords
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Declaration of
Independence, American History, Transcendental Movement, Walt Whitman, Robert
Frost, Autonomy
Published in The Indian Journal of English Studies Vol. LVIII. 2022, pp.61-72.
Copyright: Nibir K. Ghosh 2022
