Ralph Waldo Emerson was born
in 1830 and was brought up in Boston, Massachusetts in U.S.A. He was one of the most important figures in the history
of American literature. He lived through the age known as the ‘Flowering of
America’ He had the distinction of being the ‘Man thinking of the New England Renaissance’. He was the Sage of
Concord and the Father of American Transcendentalism.
Emerson
has left behind many poems and essays. He published his essays in two different
series: First and Second Series published in 1814 and 1844. The new form which
Emerson developed is neither whole essays nor whole lecture. Its unit is
carefully wrought sentences. S. Carlyle immediate recognize,
“Pure,
genuine Saxon; strong
and
simple; of clearness; of a beauty.”
Scripture
of thought is the foremost
characteristics of Emerson’s essays. To
open anywhere any of the volumes (belongs to the Essays) by Emerson is to open
at once in the world of thought in a very particular sense. The
abruptness of the transition is a part of the sensation. Emerson seems inspired
in his Essays. And the mood of inspiration is the proper mood to read him. Very
soon the reader begins thinking in his diction. Emerson creates an ideal world
of moral thought which is superior to ‘mere understanding and the senses’. As
Brownell thinks,
“The Essays are the scripture
of thought, the Virgilian Lost
of modern literature.”
Quite
early in his career, Emerson began to not down his thoughts in his journals (means
a diary or a memorandum book) and he continued to do so upto the end of his
days. These journals are the raw material for the finished product of lectures
and the essays. Therefore Emerson’s essays
have a remarkable consistency of thought. There may be elaboration, but
the basic thought his essays and lectures remains the same. The essays reveal growth and evolution but
no real change in the thought-content. According to Bronwell,
“Every
statement stimulates
thought
because it is suggestive
as well
as expressive. Everything
means
something additional…..
Every
thought is potent rather
than Purely Reflective.
As
Marcus Cuncliffe has pointed out his essays are twice born. Out of Journals
came the lectures, and out of the lectures came the essays. His essays strike
one as being oratorical for are all re-worked lectures. They are very much like
Bacon’s essays ‘dispersed meditations. Thus Emerson’s prose-style acquires an epigrammatic terseness,
finish and polish as in the following.
1. “Books are thus a record
of the immortal truths discovered by scholars of part.”
2. True thyself, 3. “Life is
our dictionary,”4. “All things are double, one against another.”
5. ‘Fear always springs from ignorance”
Emerson’s true mentor was the
infallible voice of his own conscience. He looked within his own heart and
wrote with a compelling vigour and sincerity. So his Emerson’s essays are representation of the Spirit
of the America. They are fruits from all past cultures strangely
reconciled. They are strangely transformed beneath the place glow of his
transcendentalism. His essays encounter the true spirit of American
civilization. In words of W.F.Taylor,
“Here is
the record of a whole
epoch in
American history,
the epoch
of the romantic
agitations
against slavery, of
the New England Renaissance.”
Each of Emerson’s essays is a finely
wrought work of art into which he threw his most mature and careful efforts. The appreciation of his essays automatically
constructs a web of thought in the weaving of which the reader shares. Here is some glimpse of some of his famous
essays.
Nature:-
The first published book of Emerson,
Nature appeared in 1836. It is based on philosophical discussion about the
relationship of nature of the three; God, Man and Nature. It is divided into eight
chapters. In first chapter he discusses the importance of nature and its
influence on human mind. The second chapter discusses the commodity aspect of
nature, and the next is about its beauty. The simple perception of natural
forms is a delight. Further he states that language is medium of expression.
The law of nature is a discipline of understanding. Above the spiritual
relationship between man and nature, he writes. Man must trust Nature fully to reach God.”
In the closing chapter of the essays the author observes that the foundations of man are
not in matter, but in spirit, whose element is eternity.
‘The American Scholar’
‘The
American Scholar’ represents Emerson at the exuberant beginning of his career
as a transcendental spokesman. In August 1837, Emerson delivered before the
‘president and gentlemen of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College the
address which O.W. Holmes characterized as ‘our intellectual Declaration of
Independence’ The essay has remained revolutionary in bringing American
Flowering. Having heard the present
address, Lowell called it ‘our Yankee version of a lecture by Abelard.
He remarked it as
“Event
without any former
parallel
in our literary annals.”
The Divinity School Address
The Divinity School Address was delivering before the senior class in divinity
college, Cambridge which shook the Boston city and at once became the ‘Talk of the Town’. In this essay,
Emerson attacks on the hypocrisy and vices prevailing in the Christian churches
on the name of religion. His rejection of the supreme and monopolized authority
of the churches to every individual is the central idea of the whole lecture. In
comparison to the western scholars, he praises the vision and doctrines of the
Eastern philosophers.
To
Summing up, in most of the essays, there is a sense of rising intensity in both
meaning and form, which suggests Emerson’s own images of the spiral the ladder,
the swift flight upward. The conclusion brings a quite sense of completion and
of whole vision which has the dramatic finality of the curtain of a play. Finally
to conclude in the words of Matthew Arnold,
“Emerson’s
essays are, I think
as they
seemed to the wisest
English
critic of the nineteenth
century, the
most important
work done
in English prose
of that century.”
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