LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Sample Student Research Project, fall 2004

Jennifer Horner

Due Date: November 16, 2004

American Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

Transcendentalism

One way to describe the group known as Transcendentalists is to is to express them as a group of well-educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War. Pre-Civil war times were very hard on everyone in the world. However the Transcendentalist always have evaluative the purpose of the war but most of them were said to evaluate where God stood in their own lives. Transcendentalists lived for the most part in New England and some around Boston. The transcendentalists are defined as attempting to create a unique independence from England. These people were seen as a generation of people stressing to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understandings their age made available.

Biographies

Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most profound and influential figures of his time. “Ralph Waldo Emerson is known as a key figure in the “New England Renaissance”“. He was born in the city of Boston, Massachusetts in 1803. As a boy Emerson attended Boston Latin School. Emerson finished his education at Harvard University. For a few years after the graduated he taught at an all girls’ university, he soon discovered that he did not enjoy teaching as much as he hoped he would. After trying the teaching route, Emerson followed in the footsteps of his father and became a religious minister. He soon learned that being a religious minister is not an easy job. It was especially difficult for Emerson because after a few years he began to question his beliefs and the purpose of his life. In 1831 he resigned from the church because he believed that God is not found in systems and words, but in the mind of people. This is the first sign leading to Emerson’s role in Transcendentalism. When Emerson began writing and speaking in the 1830s, conservatives saw him as a radical, wild and dangerous. When it came to the younger generations they felt he spoke words of self-dependence. One of Emerson’s points that he stressed to his audiences was to demand it own laws and churches and works. Emerson published his first book “Nature” in 1836. It made conservatives see him as a revolutionary figure. A revolutionary figure according to Webster’s dictionary is someone who is a radical supporter of political or social revolution. However the students at Harvard University saw “Nature” as a new declaration of independence.   Emerson soon made his living by writing and making speeches. His ideas seemed right for a new country just beginning to enjoy its independence. However, Emerson’s health soon began to fail. In the early 1870s he died of pneumonia. He lived to a righteous seventy-nine years old. Emerson’s death became national news. In Concord and other places, people hung black cloths on houses and public buildings as a sign of mourning. In Concord at the Emerson’s funeral his friends carried branches of the pine trees that Emerson loved. Emerson was buried near the grave of another early American writer, Henry David Thoreau.

Henry David Thoreau, who was 14 years younger than Emerson, was born in 1817, however, he played an important role in the transcendentalist era. At the young age of 16 he entered Harvard University, which was not only Emerson’s alma matter but Henry David’s grandfather’s alma mater as well. During his college career Thoreau studied Latin and Greek grammar and composition. As did Emerson, Thoreau after graduating accepted a job as a schoolteacher in Concord. However, Thoreau’s refusal to beat his students led to his dismissal after only two weeks. That same year, Thoreau began to keep a journal in which he would write for the rest of his life and was published at a later date. This journal told the story of Emersons life and went in to details about how him and Emerson became friends. Soon after this newfound friendship Thoreau became a follower of Transcendentalism. Thoreau opened a school house with his brother John called Concord Academy; this academy differed however in its lack of corporal punishment. The students there also learned though scientific experiments and nature walks. However three years later John became sick and Henry closed the schoolhouse down.

 Emerson and Thoreau’s relationship

Thoreau was a student at Harvard University years after Emerson was. However no one ate up Emerson’s non-conformist words like Thoreau did.  In Thoreau’s eyes Emerson had became a God, speaking about everything that Thoreau had though about. Emerson and Thoreau slowly formed a friendship; Thoreau looked up to Emerson almost with a father like image. However they soon learned that they did not have that much in common with the exception of Emerson’s wife, Lidian. This relationship soon grew into a love hate relationship and Thoreau began to see things in Emerson that he did not see before. Thoreau’s uncertain feelings about his male idol caused him to reject the idea of God as a Father. However, years after this let down Thoreau and Emerson buried the hatchet and became friends again. As cited in Richardson’s book “Emerson the Mind on Fire”,

“Fortunately the break did not prove to be final: they were reconciled and remained friends, though the degree of intimacy would change significantly. The hard names, the sense that each had poisoned as well as inspired each other… After anger, unnecessary honesty, bitterness, and impossibly high standards, finally there was forgiveness in both of them. Emerson at the end of his life still thought of Thoreau as having been his best friend.”

Emerson and Thoreau were often seen as voices in the wilderness, as angry prophets warning the cities on the plain of the coming of night and the vengeance of a too-long ignored God. But, more recently, they have been recast as virtually the opposite: dupes of capitalism who shore up the various ideologies of profit and consumption they purport to disdain. When two points of view are as polarized as this, the truth resides at neither end and might best be looked for in the middle. Emerson exercised a considerable influence upon Thoreau, who was fourteen years younger, from the time when they became acquainted in 1837.  Thoreau might have viewed Nature, man, and God in something the way he did if there had never been an Emerson.  Thoreau was looked upon as an imitator of Emerson in speech and gait as well as in ideas.  Thoreau was a more strongly marked individual than Emerson himself and it would not be surprising to find that Thoreau’s peculiar attitudes revived, as something of his awe for Emerson had Emersonism dwindled. The comparative dominance of Thoreau in their relationship is to be found in their journals. There are over sixty important references to Thoreau in Emerson’s Journals; while in Thoreau’s journal there are only between twenty and thirty really significant references to Emerson, most of them very brief.  Thoreau’s references to Emerson are often ironic and entirely lack the tone of discipleship.  Emerson, however; ordinarily quotes a choice remark from Thoreau and commends him.  Thoreau is clearly something of a marvel to Emerson, though perplexing and often a positively irritating marvel.  Emerson admires and praises Thoreau in him magnanimous fashion. Thoreau was jealous of Emerson’s complete independence.  Nature seems to be Thoreau’s only road to God; whereas, Nature is one road, but not the straightest road, to the over-soul, Emerson’s God.  To Emerson, Nature was a healthy aid to the understanding of God, for him; yet it was not essential.  The way in which each man responded to Nature may be partly foreseen by one who appreciates his attitudes toward God.   Emerson loved God and Thoreau loved Nature.  Still, Emerson may have lavished considerable incidental love upon Nature, partly impelled by Thoreau; and Thoreau may have dwelt with occasional enthusiasm upon the super-sensuous Over-Soul (GOD). Thoreau ordinarily viewed nature rather sensuously and concretely where Emerson viewed it as the veil through which god was half visible.  The two men were also frequently at odds in their attitude toward, and opinions of, mankind.  Emerson’s comparative inability to observe nature accurately, while it made Thoreau a precious companion to him, may have made him seem inferior to Thoreau.  As their relation grew over the years, there were obvious signs that Thoreau no longer feels the deference towards Emerson that he used to feel.  Their talks are generally disagreements.  The friends no longer inspire one another; fresh thoughts do not spring up between them; instead, disagreements and arguments.  Thoreau condemns Emerson for what he is not, no longer praising him for what he is; and Emerson is annoyed at the persistent opposition from a friend so much younger and one whom he wishes to respect highly. Thoreau would not serve as the practical hand and Seeing Eye for Emerson.  Thoreau chose to remain in his last year essential out of Emerson’s reach, perhaps not intentionally so much as through an indifference of slow growth.  Some say that Thoreau was jealous of the great man with whom he was no longer associated.  It was noted later that Thoreau’s journals read more like the records of a naturalist than the reflections of a philosopher. 

Emerson and Thoreau’s writing styles

Emerson problem that occurred to him in Ministy, the problem that he believed that God was found in systems and words but not in the mind of the people this problem affected the writing of Emerson. Emerson then traveled to England; he returned home and began a very important time of his life. The lectures, poetry, and the essays seemed to make more sense to Emerson after this journey in which some would say the journey he took to was to find himself. Emerson essays are of course the most brilliant of his time. Emerson’s style of writing was learned by his observance of nature, and this inspired him in his writing. He continually wanted a charged writing style, energetic, and electric. He had an ambivalent viewpoint towards nature, and he had a passion for natural things some of these would be wood, sunsets, sunrise, and the warmth of the days. He desired that his words be as dynamic as nature itself. This is where Emerson got the inspiration for his essay “Nature”. This essay was written with the intention to agitate the essays readers, however, nature excited but did not agitate Emerson. This did not capture the hearts of everyone mostly repelling conservatives. On the contrary the students at Harvard really took the essay to heart and enjoyed it so much they invited Emerson to speak at the college that in turn inspired “The American Scholar”.  Many of his later published works, both poetry and pose, essays and addresses, regularly returned to and demonstrating the constant growth of Emerson’s views and ideas. Emerson has always been in a state of recurrent growth and never-ending development and this shows in all styles of Emerson’s work. 

Henry David Thoreau began to identify himself as a writer at about the time he graduated from Harvard College, which as we know was a little later than Emerson’s writing identity was found. In 1837 Thoreau started a journal in which he kept entries for twenty-four years, until November 1861. Preparation of an edited version of that journal, which was contained in forty-seven manuscripts volumes, is arguably the Thoreau Edition’s most significant contribution to his scholarship. Like Emerson Thoreau’s writings had a lot to due with nature and the effects of nature. In his nature and philosophic writings alike, Thoreau works out the relations between such dualities as mind and body, fact and order, individual and society by examining the actual and then formulating the idea that should correspond to it. He is a practical metaphysician, a transcendental communist, and cutting through society’s institutions just as he cuts through the forest in search of the facts. Though Thoreau’s life was short, it was fully lived. Thoreau recorded his thought in a journal that extends to many volumes over more than twenty years. Consequently, he has something to say about many of the issues that concerned people in his own time, and that still raises concerns today.

Thoreau and Emerson’s technically features fit the writer’s purpose: they nearly always talked about themselves, what they did and what they saw. Emerson and Thoreau must have had some sort of obsession with nature. Their writings were also aimed to hit the same type of audiences, college students. No one is really sure if the two authors did this on purpose or if they just happened to hit the hearts of the college students with out an effort.

There are many other essayist, poets, and authors that can be included in the Transcendentalist era; however Emerson and Thoreau were the two that closely resembled each other from their personal lives to their writing styles. You can find out more about these two authors and many more authors in the transcendentalist period on the following web pages.

Web review

The web page that I found to be most informative while working on this journal was http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/criticism/histcrit.htm

This web page could help anyone with identifying the authors of the Transcendentalist era. It not only tells you about each individual author but it also will give information from critiques to their influences. On this web page I mostly found the authors and their backgrounds.

Another helpful web page to explaining transcendentalism is

http://www.transcendentalists.com/

This web page like the other one identifies the transcendentalist authors, this web page also tells you what makes the authors transcendentalist.  I found a lot of information on Transcendentalism and what it means as well as when it occurred and who all was involved.
Works Cited

Books

Richardson, Robert D. Jr. Emerson; The Mind On Fire. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California UP, 1893.

Sacks, Kenneth S. Understanding Emerson; “The American Scholar” and his Struggle for Self-Reliance.  Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003

Web Pages

 http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm What is Transcendentalism?

 www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/ralphwaldoemerson.html Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography