LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question A2

Matt Chavez

Transcendental Thought & Form

          The iconic writers of America’s antebellum period wrote with Romantic principles in mind, seeking truth in all aspects of life.  Emerging from one war and, unknowingly, headed for another, these American Renaissance writers devoted themselves to concerns which transcended questions of legality and monetary value.  The morality of slavery, man’s relationship to man, government, and God—these were the questions of the period, and such concerns gave rise to the American Transcendental movement.  Headed by figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Transcendentalism sought to explore the sublimity of the world around them, a world in which man shares an intimate connection to his fellows linked through the soul to the divine, and a world in which the divine can be found in the natural, thus interacted with on a daily basis.  In their discourse, the Transcendentalists found a divine law to follow, a law superseding the machinations of man and providing order to a universe otherwise harsh and unforgiving.

          This appeal to a divine law which marks all Transcendentalists is powerfully evoked in Thoreau’s essay Resistance to Civil Government, a striking critique of manmade governments, particularly the U.S. government of the early 19^th century, which holds men in chains, referring to both the abolitionists’ bane and the taxation of its citizens.  The demands Thoreau makes are quite drastic in terms of the changes that would need be made to the civil system, but it is only for the reason that he is calling for a government, if there’s to be government at all, which is based on the authority of a higher power, rather than on the dictates of men.  This higher authority deals in issues of universal truth, indeed a “truth [that] is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.”  Thoreau refers to a truth which permeates all and holds true in all situations, as opposed to the laws of men, which tend to shift in tandem with private interests.

          This truth is universal in that it is ubiquitous, an important point to Transcendentalists who look to sublimity in nature, sublimity being a semblance of the divine, the higher authority.  Seeking a personal relationship with the higher authority, one that the individual may immerse himself in, it is important that nature houses and even comes to represent the authority itself.  In the selections from Nature by Emerson, “the moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates,” an understanding of the sublime law that can be found throughout the nature world as viewed by Transcendentalists.  There is no desire to understand empirically this morality found in nature; it is unnecessary to count and measure or find correlations in a reasoning or logical sense.  The desire is to an empathetic connection, an unconscious and emotion based connection to the universal truth found in nature.  This universal truth is God, it is a higher authority that the Transcendentalists can immerse themselves in and become one with, it is a group consciousness, or an over-soul, which connects all.

          This concept of an over-soul is another of the gems which Transcendentalists bestowed on the world.  The harmony which Thoreau calls on in his essay, and a unity between man and nature, is all due to a group consciousness and connection to God.  For this reason, correspondence plays an important role in transcendental work, showing a reflection of sublime nature in man, and vice versa.  In seeking to find one’s self in nature, the person discovers more and more of the divine aspect which is imbued in him.  “As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions”—words of Emerson’s from Nature on the perfect correspondence between the sublime in man and in nature, but all of the aspect of a higher authority.