Transcendentalism

(about 1836-1860)

Transcendentalism

• a New England literary movement

which held that spiritual reality was
discernible through intuition,
transcending empirical or scientific
knowledge.

• (Prof. Arnold Weinstein, Brown

University)

Transcendentalism:

• a pragmatic philosophy, a state

of mind, and a form of
spirituality.

(Prof. Paul P. Reuben)

The authors who contributed the most to

American Transcendentalism:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Margaret Fuller

Other writers:

• Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes

Augustus Brownson, William Ellery

Channing, William Henry Channing,

James freeman Clarke, Charles

Anderson Dana, John Sullivan Dwight,

Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Sophia

Peabody- Hawthorne, Fredrick Hedge,

James Marsh, Theodore Parker,

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George and

Sophia Ripley, Jones Very, and others.

Transcendentalism:

• 1. To go beyond: scendere, means “to climb”. Its prefix trans-

means “over”. Thus , to transcend is to “climb over” or more

broadly “to go beyond”.

• 2. To go beyond what? For the transcendentalists of the

middle part of the nineteenth century , the “what’ was the

limitation of the senses and of everyday experience, moving

from the rational to a spiritual realm.
Thoreau writes “ I have never yet met a man who was quite

awake.” (We do not see to the roots of things.)

• 3. How do we go beyond everyday experience? By

depending upon our intuition ( inner light, inner voice) rather

than reason or logic The chief aim is to become fully aware

not only what our senses record, but also recognize the

ability of our, our intuition – to wisely and correctly interpret

the sensory input.

• 4. What happens when, by use of intuition, we go beyond

human experience? We discover higher truths and insights.

Basic Assumptions of American Transcendentalism:

(certain important concepts shared by many

American transcendentalists.)

• 1. Listening to intuition- pure hearted pilgrimage to the temple of

the living God. Man’s ideas come not through but are the result

of direct revelation from God, his inspiration and his immanent

presence in the spiritual world. God is found both in nature and

human nature.

• 2. There is God, but he is not something apart from human

beings or nature. The human soul is part of Oversoul ( Universal

Spirit, Prime Mover, Life Force, Aboriginal Self, Ever-Blessed One,

Over-Soul, God to which it and other souls return after death).

Divinity is self-contained, internalized in every being. There is

unlimited potential of human ability to connect with both the

natural and the spiritual world. God is energy, force not a

separate being. He breathes through nature and man, and man

attempts to open himself up to this influx. Thoreau thought God

was so much a part of himself that when he was asked on this

deathbed whether he had made peace with God he answered “I

didn’t know we had ever quarreled”. Calling for independence

from organized religion, no need for any intercession between

God and man.

Basic assumptions, cont’d.

•

3. Nature is a living mystery full of things (symbolic).

The external symbols of nature can be read through

intuition and translated into spiritual facts. There is

meaning in everything and the meaning is good, all

connected by and part of a divine plan.

•

Evil is not active in itself . It is only absence of good.

“One ray of light can penetrate darkness.” Light is more

powerful than darkness. We can all go beyond the

confusion, chaos of the world, and understand nature’s

signs.

•

4. There is no rejection of afterlife, but the emphasis is

on this life. “the one thing in the world of value is the

active soul” (Emerson). Emphasis on here and now

“Give me one world at a time” (Thoreau).

•

5. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe.

Disregard the external authority and rely on direct

experience. True reform comes from within.

• 6. All knowledge begins with self-knowledge.

The emphasis is placed on human thinking

and action. (Some examples of great

leaders, writers, philosophers are

important). It is foolish to worry about

consistency. An intelligent person changes

beliefs and opinions. “A foolish consistency

is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Emerson).

• 7. Individual virtue and happiness depend

upon self-realization and the reconciliation

of two tendencies – the desire to embrace

the whole world and to remain unique.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803-1882)

Life:

• - born in Boston

• - Boston Latin School and Harvard Divinity School (1817-

1821), a middling student

• - married Ellen Tucker (1829), ill with tuberculosis, she

dies in 1831.

• - pastor of the Second Church of Boston

• - resigned from the church (Unable to believe the

sacraments) and traveled to Europe, where he met

famous writers ( Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle)

• - public lecturer

• - settled in Concord Massachusetts (The Sage of

Concord),

• - in touch with Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne. Intellectuals

met in his home to discuss philosophy, religion and

literature.

His works:

• Nature (1836)- a great breakthrough text.

• - announces a new beginning for America, break from the

past.

• - new relationship between man and nature.

• Complete erasure of the lines separating self and

environment:

• “Standing on the bare ground- my head bathed by the blithe

air, and uplifted into infinite space--all mean egotism

vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see

nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate

through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

• - concept of language-- “words are signs of natural facts” and

“nature is the symbol of spirit.” Writers should search for

“original language’ that most closely describes the thing, to

describe the reality by “opening it up”, to “speak” the riddle

of the sphinx.

• capture the essence of America.

• “The American Scholar” (1837). Emerson’s

famous speech at Harvard, a wake-up call to the

country’s young intellectuals.

• - America should measure up to Europe:

• “ We have listened too long to the courtly muses of

Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is

already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. […].

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our

own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

• - the need to apprehend “Universal Man” (divisions

of labor and specialization blind the society) “Man

is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but

he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman,

and producer, and soldier.”

• - The Scholar is the Man Thinking- “In the degenerate

state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a

mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men’s

thinking.”

• Set your own principles.

• “Meek young men grow up in libraries believing in their

duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which

Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon

were only young men in the libraries when they wrote these

books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking , we have the

bookworm.“

• “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among

the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which

all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.”

• “The book, the college, the school of art, the institutions of

any kind stop with some past utterance of genius. This is

good, say they; let us hold by this . They pin me down. They

look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward:

the eyes of man are set in his forehead not in his hindhead:

man hopes: genius creates.”

• Man Thinking “him Nature solicits with all her placidity, all

her monitory picture; him the past instruct; him the future

invites. Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all

things exist for the student’s behoof ? And, finally, is not

the true scholar the only true master? “

• - Aim of teaching “not to drill but to create” , “set the hearts

of youth on flame”

• - “Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we

know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

• “The Poet”(1846) – main statement about the

literary agenda of the future.

• - poetry is America’s commonwealth, enriches

Americans, and makes them wealthy as a nation.

• - America is the great new poetic subject. The

poet writes it to make readers see what is

timeless and enduring in the moment.

• - There is a need for a vernacular language , so

that the poet may move his audience, and bring it

to his vision of America.

• - Calls for the poet of the future, outlines the

poet’s duties.

• Self- Reliance

• “To believe your own thought, to believe that

what is true for you in your private heart is true

for all men; that is genius”.

• “A man should learn to detect and watch that

gleam of light which flashes across his mind from

within, more than the luster of the firmament of

bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice

his thought, because it is his.”

• “Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide.”

• “The power which resides in him is new in nature,

and none but he knows what that is which he can

do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

• “A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into

his work and done his best; but what he has said or done

otherwise shall give him no peace.”

• “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood

of every one of its members”.

• “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”

• “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own

mind. [..] No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

[..] A man is to carry himself in the presence of all

opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but

he.”

• “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the

people think […] the great man is he who in the midst of

the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence

of solitude.”

• “ A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of

little minds, adored by little statesmen and

philosophers and divines. With consistency

a great soul has simply nothing to do. […]

To be great is to be misunderstood.”

• “There is simply the rose; it is perfect in

every hour of its existence. […] He cannot

be happy and strong until he too lives with

nature in the present, above time.”

• “Insist on yourself; never imitate.” “Every

great man is unique.”

• “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

Henry David Thoreau

(1817- 1862)

Life:

• - born in Concord, Massachusetts, lived most of the

time in and around the village, died, and was buried

there.

• - preparatory school in Concord and Harvard University

(undistinguished scholar).

• - member of the Transcendentalist Club that met in

Emerson’s home.

• - a teacher and tutor; also doing different jobs:

gardening, carpentry, land surveying, magazine editor,

curator of the lyceum.

• - he resolved that making a living should never

interfere with the living itself- earned only the

minimum to live.

• “ Working six days a week and vacationing only one

day of the week is a conflict within.”

• - studying nature, meditating on

philosophical problems, reading
Greek, Latin, French and English
literature, talking with his neighbors.

• - involved in antislavery movement,

which he supported with his
speeches.

Thoreau’s character:

• - strong-minded
• - restless individual
• - a man of dry wit and frank opinion
• - a man of unquestioned integrity
• - in love with life, especially in love

with the natural world

His works:

• - He was confiding his inward life in his Journals

which he began writing in 1837, just a few

months after graduation from Harvard and made

the last entry a few months before his death.

• - In 1845, he built a crude hut on the shores of

Walden Pond (a mile and a half south of Concord;

the land belonged to Emerson). He stayed there

slightly more than two years and two months,

writing a description of the trip he had taken with

his brother John in 1839, A Week on the Concord

and Merrimack Rivers (1849). He paid for 1000

copies, sold 219, publishers shipped them back,

he wrote:

• “ I have now a library of nearly nine hundred

volumes, over seven hundred of which I

wrote myself.”

• He also started working on his most famous

book, Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854).

• He moved to Walden to simplify his life:
• “ I wished to live deliberately, to front only

the essential fact of life, and see if I could not

learn what it had to teach, and not, when I

came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

• He thought of himself as a philosopher and
• “to be a philosopher is not merely to have sublet

thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to

love wisdom as to live according to its dictates […]

It is to solve some of the problems of life not only

theoretically but practically.”

• “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection but

to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning,

standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors

up.”

• Walden is addressed to “the mass of men who are

discontented and idly complaining of the hardness

of their lot or of the times.”

In Walden Thoreau

• -offers advice
• - expresses severe criticism
• - offers encouragement
• - offers practical remedies

• It is written in first person narration, relaxed,

informal tone. Thoreau reduces Concord
and Walden Pond to a capsule of the human
condition. He is writing not merely about life
in the 1840’s , but about us.

• During his stay at Walden, Thoreau was

arrested for this refusal to pay his poll tax.
He was imprisoned only for one day, but this
inspired his famous essay “Civil
Disobedience.”