THE NEW ENGLAND RENAISSANCE

"When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Elaborate theories have been devised to explain why sudden bursts of creativity occur at certain places and times. In New England from 1840 to 1855, a group of writers made an astonishing contribution to American letters. Their names loom large on the American national consciousness: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.

The Sage of Concord: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

 "The only way to have a friend is to be one. (Emerson)

How many of these quotations have you heard?

To be great is to be misunderstood. (Emerson)
"Life only avails, not the having lived. (Emerson)

"That government is best which governs not at all. (Thoreau)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. (Thoreau) "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (Thoreau)

TRANSCENDENTALISM
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau contributed considerably to the American national consciousness.
They created a new philosophy, transcendentalism, which is responsible for America's strong optimism and determined self-reliance.

There are always two parties: the establishment and the movement." (from Nature)
The movement towards transcendentalism started around 1820, when a group of young Unitarian ministers became agitated that the party line had become too rational and lacked the essentials of a religious experience, intuition, emotion, and mystery.

Emerson and his followers didnt coin the term transcendentalism. Rather, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) did.
Transcendentalism didn't develop in a vacuum; a similar philosophical movement called romanticism had already occurred in England and Germany. The Romantic movement supported individual worth, the goodness of humanity, the glory of communion with nature, and individual freedom of expression. This appealed to Americans beginning to react against the restrictions of an already declining Puritanism.

The Transcendental party started in 1836 with the formation of the Transcendental Club in Boston. The core members were:

Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson Writer/naturalist Henry David Thoreau Feminist writer and lecturer Margaret Fuller Unitarian preacher and social reformer Theodore Parker Educator Bronson Alcott Philosopher, minister, and author William Ellery Channing George Ripley, Unitarian minister, leader of the transcendentalists, and contributor to The Dial Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, publisher of The Dial

 The group published a slender magazine, The Dial. Big Three Beliefs:
1. There's a direct connection or correspondence" between the universe and the individual soul. As a result, Nature is where it's at. Nature is the gospel of the new faith. As Emerson wrote in his "Divinity School Address,

The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can findso entire, so boundless. And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modem precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

2. By contemplating objects in nature, people can transcend the world and discover union with the Over-Soul (also known as the Ideal or Supreme Mind) that unites us all.

 As Emerson said in Nature, the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me, I am part or parcel of God.

3. Follow your own intuition and own beliefs, however divergent from the social norm they may be. Since all people are inherently good, the mantra ran, the individual's intuitive response to any given situation will be the right thing to do. Here's where we get our robust strain of selfreliance. As Emerson said (yes, also in Nature),

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."

 "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. (Emerson)
On the low end of the scale, Herman Melville mocked Emerson in his novel The Confidence Man as a philosophical fraud; on the other hand, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson worshipped him as a fount of inspiration.

 He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others. (Emerson, from Nature)
Emersons first work, Nature, did little to establish his literary reputation at first, at least in part because he published it anonymously. The publication did become the unofficial manifesto of the Transcendental Club, founded in 1836, which kicked off the Transcendental party and eventually transformed the American identity.

 This long essay (Nature) is Emerson's hymn to individualism, in which he explains how Nature's green breast can restore our confidence and release our powers, as religion once did. The basic concept: Nature is God's work made visible to humanity. "The whole of Nature is a metaphor of the human mind," he wrote. "The relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poets, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men."

 "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. 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 all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. Emerson concluded that the way to God's truth is by communicating with nature, not through reason

The American Scholar

Emerson's 1837 speech to Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, "The American Scholar," expressed the practical aspects of transcendentalism. The speech had huge impact from the very start. Oliver Wendell Holmes called the speech "our intellectual Declaration of Independence," which is precisely what Emerson had in mind. It was a call for American intellectuals to trust their individuality and act as noble representatives to the world. It helped establish a national consciousness, not a religion.

 In his speech, Emerson encouraged the students to become more confident in their abilities and to take pride in Americanism: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe We will walk on our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds. The main influences on the scholar's education are nature, books, and action, Emerson declared. Scholars who are free and brave will be rewarded amply; their minds will be altered by the truths they discover.

Divinity School Address

In this oration, Emerson declared that true religion resides within the individual, not in Christianity or in the church. Emerson said, "It [the truth] cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul." According to Emerson, since everyone has equal access to the Divine Spirit, all that people need in order to validate religious truth is their inner experience.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stem condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.''

The Fame Game

"To be great is to be misunderstood." (from Self-Reliance) Emerson's fame grew when Essays became famous in 1841 and made him the unofficial prophet from Massachusetts. Self-Reliance and Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836 struck a chord in Americans who were eager to establish their national identity. Transcendental Clubs sprang up in New England; writers began to adopt Emerson's ideas.

Self-Reliance
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide." (from Self-Reliance) This essay further elaborates on the familiar Emersonian thesis Trust thyself (because "every heart vibrates to that iron string" of intuition and confidence).

 Emerson declared, "Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist." If nature reveals the moral truths of life, then people must focus on nature, humanity, and humanity's attitude toward nature. Since "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," people should "absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." Emerson continues. "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.

 There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 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. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836

Self-Reliance shows Emerson looking inward, but many of his poems and essays also look outward to explore how Transcendentalism applied to current events. The "Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836," for example, is Emerson's reaction to a key event in American history.

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, or leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee."

 Emerson was the first to define what made American poetry American. it is verse that celebrates ordinary experience rather than the epic themes of the past. In addition, American poetry focuses on facts rather than eloquence. As a result, the poet of democracy should be equally a prophet, an oracle, a visionary, and a seer. Scorning imitators, the poet should create verse that is fresh and new. Emerson pointed the way to a unique "American" voice in poetry, but it was Walt Whitman (Chapter 13) who finished the job.

Master of His Domain

"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy. (from Letters and Social Aims) Unlike Henry David Thoreau, Emerson was a jovial and generous fellow who enjoyed a wide circle of friends. Emerson was so well liked, for example, that when his house burned to the ground in 1877, his friends and admirers sent him on an all-expense-paid vacation to Europe and Egypt. The house was rebuilt in his absence at his friends' expense. Emerson's mind collapsed before his body, and he spent the last decades of his life in benign senility, beloved as a prophet of individualism, idealism, optimism, and self confidence.

 "Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."

Walt Whitman

(1819 - 1892)

"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck hand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the dayat night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs." (from "I Hear America Singing" )

 More than 100 years after his death, Walt Whitman continues to be relevant to the national discourse. Walt Whitman created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American idiom.

 "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death."
(from "Song of Myself)

 Whitman cut himself loose from conventional themes traditional literary allusions and rhyme all of the accepted poetic customs of the 19th century.

Family Background
"He was a very good, but very strange boy," his mother remarked. One of five children (a sixth died in infancy), Walt categorically refused to do the farm work that was expected of him. "You are stubboner, Walt, than a load of bricks," Walt's brother George once claimed.

 Never much interested in school, Whitman left the classroom at age 11 and held a number of McJobs office boy, gofer, printer's assistant before turning to teaching. At 17, Walt was younger than some of the 70 or 80 farmer's sons who were his pupils. Although his students were quite fond of him, Whitman lasted only a year in the classroom. A mellow teacher, he spent most of his time writing and daydreaming.

 Walt spent his twenties in the school of hard knocks, roaming around, picking up various odd jobs to keep the wolf from the door. Whitman next became the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, a respected newspaper, but he got canned two years later because of his outspoken opposition to slavery. He was then around 30.

Soul Man
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." ( from "Song of Myself)

 In 1855, Whitman published the first version of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass. In the opening manifesto, he declares that the new American poet, referring to himself, will create new forms and subject matter for poetry, rejecting conventional language, rhythm, and rhyme. Whitman declared that his poems would have: Long lines that capture the rhythms of natural speech Free verse (poetry that doesn't have a regular beat, rhyme, or line length, but instead uses a rhythm that reinforces the meaning and sound of spoken language) Vocabulary drawn from everyday speech A bards voice to represent all of America A base in reality, not morality

Leaves of Grass
Ralph Waldo Emerson called the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet to contribute. The well-known poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy of the book into the fireplace. Whittier wasn't alone. Another critic dismissed Leaves of Grass with a sneer and the comment, "It's just a barbarbic yawp."

 The grand poetry of the day, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, weren't impressed. Even Henry David Thoreau was appalled by Whitman's poetry and he wasn't exactly following the party line. People just weren't ready for Whitman's intense, complex, and sexually explicit poems.

I Sing the Body Electric

I Sing the Body Electric" first appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, the third poem in the "Children of Adam" sequence. What do you think Walt's first readers might have thought of this hymn in praise of human sexuality?

 I Sing the Body Electric

1 "I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul

This is the female form, A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot, It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction, I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it, Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed, Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,

 Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused, Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching, Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice, Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, Undulating into the willing and yielding day, Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweetflesh'd day."

 Not surprisingly, the poem caused an uproar. Whitman's homoerotic longings were not a great resume-builder. Even Emerson, Whitman's strongest supporter, urged him to cut this poem out of the book. But Whitman refused, believing that sexuality should not be concealed, because it is one of the most vital aspects of life. He even added the "Calamus" poems, which are unmistakably homoerotic.

 Section 1 describes the interconnections among everything the poet loves. Section 2 describes the entire female body, top to bottom, concluding with a statement of his unity with it all. The body and soul are united with each other and with the poem: Bodies are "the soul" and "they are my poems," Whitman declared.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

"A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul."

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

1

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

2 O powerful western fallen star! O shades of nightO moody, tearful night! O great star disappear'dO the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerlessO helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul."

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

Whitman wrote "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," his elegy to Abraham Lincoln, a few weeks after Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865. The 16 numbered sections of free verse express his grief over Lincoln's death and his attempt to transform the tragedy into an understanding of the cycle of life and death.
Sections 1 and 2 lament the President's death. Section 3 shifts focus to the lilac bush in the dooryard. Section 4 brings forth the image of the warbling thrush. Section 5 describes Lincoln's coffin and society's grief. Sections 7 to 14 show Whitman merging his grief with society's grief. Sections 14 and 15 bring in images of death from the Civil War and transform suffering into visions of peace and rest.

 The conclusion shows how Whitman has found a way to deal with his grief. That way was through nature: ''Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,

Whitman saw Lincoln as the representative democratic man, the living symbol of his own message to America. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" succeeds in transforming his personal grief into an expression of national mourning. There in the fragrant pines Implicit in this process is Whitman's belief that the and the cedars dusk and meaning of Lincoln's dim." death is so vast that it can be grasped only through poetry.

Correspondences
Symbol Lilacs Meaning Everlasting spring (the poet's love for the president) Lincoln himself Universalization of the poet's grief

Fallen western star Thrush's song

 Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the shower'd halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive, Out from the patches of briers and blackberries, From the memories of the bird that chanted to me, From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

 From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease, From the myriad thence-arous'd words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any, From such as now they start the scene revisiting, As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, A reminiscence sing."

 Like Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" and Longfellow's "My Lost Youth," Whitman's ''Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" explores how childhood prepared the poet to assume the mantle of Art. The poem opens with a description of LongIsland, which Whitman calls by the Native American name "Paumanok," and his childhood there. The end of the poem focuses on listening to the ocean's song of death.

But for Whitman, death is a natural part of the cycle of life, as the poem's strong rhythm and repetition suggest. The form of the poem echoes its content. Look again at the first three lines: Each opens with the word "out," and the poem rocks with rhythm envy. The images also reinforce the cyclical nature of life. The rocking cradle, the singing bird, the youthful poet, and the sea recur throughout, reminding readers both of life's constancy and of its change.

Advertisements for Myself

"Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy I celebrate myself" (from "Song of Myself)

 Determined to spread his message, Whitman published his own reviews (under an assumed name) and co-authored his biography, The Good Gray Poet. Whitman even managed to become the most photographed poet of his century, perhaps of all time.

O Captain! my Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red,

 Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise upfor you the flag is flungfor you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreathsfor you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father!"

 Whitman's final illness began in 1873, when he suffered a "O Captain! My Captain!" memorializes stroke and a mental breakdown at his Lincoln's passing, the mother's death. death of a great man Unable to live alone, and the death of the Walt was taken in by era he dominated. his brother George Unlike Lincoln, Washington Whitman suffered a Whitman, a plainlong decline. spoken inspector at a Camden, New Jersey, pipe foundry.

 But it was not until the evening of March 26, 1892 that Whitman died. The next day, the famous artist Thomas Eakins made a death mask. The autopsy revealed that Whitman had died of emphysema.