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4. Ralph Waldo Emerson`s contrubition to the American literature and his work importance
The expression "the American Renaissance" was used by a very famous literary critic (F. O. Matthiessen) as the title for his 1941 study on the literature of the first half of the 19th century (and essentially on Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman). Indeed, with Emerson and his followers, began a new period in US literature : after Cooper, who had created the US "romance", full of adventures and habited by the figure of the US hero, a group of thinkers, led by Emerson, very consciously proposed a definition of what a real US culture should be. [3.p1]
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir declared this speech to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence." Building on the growing attention he was receiving from the essay Nature, this speech solidified Emerson's popularity and weight in America, a level of reverence he would hold throughout the rest of his life. Phi Beta Kappa's literary quarterly magazine, The American Scholar, was named after the speech, and when printed, sold well, This success stands in contrast with the harsh reaction to another of his speeches, "The Divinity School" given eleven months later. [5]
Emerson had a tremendous influence on his period. First because he firmly repudiated the past, and advocated a national culture and literature, of course, but more than that, he celebrated the self, the individual, and he urged every American to discover their true self, to become self-reliant, to free themselves from too rigid traditions and taboos. Emerson, therefore, advocated an intellectual revolution, and dealt with new issues, suggesting new ideas as well as a new future. At the very heart of his works, one finds a notion that hasn't been mentioned yet : the "Oversoul" ("la sur-âme"). The Oversoul, in Emerson’s work, is the divine spirit of the universe, and is present both in Nature (you remember that the all-loving God is present everyhere in Nature) and in man (it is what can be called the Transcendent Self, that is the sacred dimension of man). By developing his self, by discovering it, man aims at merging it with the Oversoul, thus reaching self-knowledge and harmony. The Oversoul, therefore, is the universal spirit that men share ; but it is also the promise for self-discovery, and thus a most private and personal achievement.[3.p6]
In searching for a new, spiritual identity and way of life, Emerson came to distrust society and its rules— educational rules, religious, moral rules etc… He thought that the USA was becoming too interested in money and commerce, material success, and he saw the growing expansion and industrialisation of the country as a major danger jeopardizing the original US ideals. He therefore ceaselessly urged people to develop their individuality and to resist the uniformisation of society. In many essays, he sometimes bitterly expressed his doubts about the future of the USA if a profound intellectual and moral revolution did not take place.
Emerson was nicknamed "The Great Awakener", and this expression perfectly
conveys his influence on mid-nineteenth century America : he tried, indeed, to make people open their eyes on a new era, and new possibilities for all. He had many followers, among whom his main disciple was Henry David Thoreau. [3.p6]
Many times Emerson presents only the natural image, and the contrast is left to the reader's inference. Thus, in "The Over-Soul," the moral authority of the heart and feelings is implicitly opposed to mental or intellectual rules, which must have a divine spark of feeling in order to be worthwhile: "Speak to his heart and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law." Occasionally, he departs from rigid application of the organic-versus-manufactured dichotomy to make comparisons in which a good or desirable element is paralleled with a constructed item. This often happens when the subject is related to science, a branch of learning he admires — conditionally — because it allows us a keener understanding of nature. [10]
More commonly, Emerson refers positively to man-made items with a spiritual or emotional connection. Such is the case in "The Over-Soul" when he compares the human being with a religious building, a temple: "A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide." This is a rewriting of a familiar Christian figure of speech: the human person as a "temple" of the Holy Spirit. Although Emerson's Unitarianism precluded belief in a divine "Holy Spirit," his transcendentalism tended to transfer the spirit's divinity to the animating "Over-Soul" of all nature. [9]
The metaphor of clothing and rags also appears frequently in Emerson's statements about writing and style. In a long and elaborately developed comparison in Nature, he contrasts the artificial style of imitative writers with the natural style of true poets. Imitative writers are those who "do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature." Contrasted to these imitators are the true poets, who "pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things . . . The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images." In addition to using images that promote a more natural, and hence preferable, style of writing, Emerson asserts a few paragraphs later that nature itself provides the best images — that is, the most appropriate dress — for writing: "Because nature always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves" [9]
First published in the 1844 edition of Essays, "The Poet" contains Emerson's thoughts on what makes a poet, and what that person's role in society should be. He argues that the poet is a seer who penetrates the mysteries of the universe and articulates the universal truths that bind humanity together. Hence, the true poet, who puts into words what others feel but cannot express, speaks for all men and women.[6]
Emerson's discarding traditional ways of viewing the world indicates the importance that progress will play in the essay. Note that the worm/man relationship in the 1849 epigraphic poem contains verbs — "striving" and "mounts" — that connote the idea of progress. But Emerson also draws attention to the backward steps we too readily think of as progressive. He characterizes these steps as groping "among the dry bones of the past," and he quickly moves from this notion of a stagnant death to one of a revitalized future in which original thoughts reign. [9]
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