РАЛЬФ УОЛДО ЭМЕРСОН.
ОСВОБОДИТЕЛЬ АМЕРИКАНСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ.
Классифицировать Эмерсона — дело немалое. Он был
философом, он был эссеистом, он был поэтом; все трое были настолько выдающимися
, что едва ли двое его друзей согласились бы, к какому классу он больше всего
принадлежит. Оливер Уэнделл Холмс спрашивает:
«Где в царстве мысли, чей воздух — песня,
принадлежит ли Будда запада?
Он кажется крылатым Франклином, нежно мудрым,
Рожденным открыть тайну небес».
Но все, что он делал, было сделано с поэтическим оттенком. Философия, эссе
или песня, все было наполнено духом поэзии. Что угодно
он был, Эмерсон был преимущественно поэтом. Именно этим золотым
ключом он открыл палаты оригинальной мысли, освободившей
американскую литературу.
Пока не пришел Эмерсон, у американских авторов было мало независимости. Джеймс
Рассел Лоуэлл заявляет: «Мы были социально и интеллектуально связаны с
английской мыслью, пока Эмерсон не перерезал кабель и не дал нам шанс
испытать опасности и славу голубых вод. Он был нашим первым оптимистичным
писателем. До него пуританская теология видела в человеке только гнусную
природу и считала его инстинкты красоты и удовольствия доказательствами
его полной испорченности». В таких условиях воображение
было сковано, и здоровая литература была невозможна. В качестве реакции
на этот пуританский аскетизм возник унитаризм, который стремился
установить достоинство человека, и из этого произошел дальнейший рост
идеализма или трансцендентализма Эмерсона. Именно эту идею и
эти устремления новой теологии Эмерсон воплотил в
литературе. Косвенное влияние его примера на сочинения
Лонгфелло, Холмса, Уиттиера и Лоуэлла и его прямое влияние на
Торо, Хоторна, Часа. А. Дана, Маргарет Фуллер, Г. У. Кертис и
другие легли в основу прекрасной структуры нашей
репрезентативной американской литературы.
Эмерсон был глубоким мыслителем, размышлявшим об отношении человека к
Богу и ко Вселенной. Он задумал и проповедовал самые благородные идеалы
добродетели и духовной жизни. Глубокое исследование, которое Эмерсон посвятил
своим темам и своему философскому складу ума, сделало его писателем для
ученых. Он был пророком, который без аргументов провозглашал истины
, которые он, по-видимому, постиг интуитивно; но мысль
часто бывает настолько призрачной, что рядовой читатель ее не улавливает. По этой
причине он никогда не будет любимцем
масс, как Лонгфелло или Уиттьер. Не следует, однако, понимать, что все сочинения Эмерсона
тяжелы, туманны или трудны для понимания. Напротив
, некоторые из его стихов носят народный характер и легки
для понимания. Например, «Гимн», спетый при завершении монумента
Согласия в 1836 году, был у всех на устах во время
празднования столетия, в 1876 году. «Добровольцы:» Так близко величие к нашему праху, Так близок Бог к человеку, Когда долг тихо шепчет: «Ты должен», Юноша отвечает: «Я могу». Это лишь два примера из многих, которые можно привести. Пожалуй, ни один автор не приносит большего удовольствия тем, кто его понимает. Он был мастером языка. Он никогда не использовал неправильное слово. Его предложения являются моделями. Но он не был логичным или методичным писателем. Каждое предложение стоит само по себе. Его абзацы могли быть расположены почти случайным образом без существенного ущерба для эссе. Его философия состоит в основном из множества золотых изречений, полных жизненно важных советов, которые помогут людям сделать все возможное и максимально возможное. У него не было компактной системы философии. Ральф Уолдо Эмерсон родился в Бостоне 25 мая 1803 года, в пределах « воздушного змея места рождения Бенджамина Франклина», с которым его часто сравнивают. Сходство, однако, состоит только в том , что оба они были решительно типичными американцами совершенно другого типа. Франклин был прозой, Эмерсон поэзией; Здравый смысл Франклина , настоящий; Эмерсон творческий, идеальный. В этих противоположных отношениях они оба были в равной степени представителями высшего типа. Оба были полны надежд, добры и проницательны. Оба одинаково сильны в создании, обучении и руководстве американским народом. На восьмом году жизни юного Эмерсона отправили в гимназию, где он добился таких быстрых успехов, что вскоре смог поступить на более высокий факультет, известный как латинская школа. Его первые попытки писать не были тупыми усилиями школьника; но оригинальные стихи, которые он читал с настоящим вкусом и чувством. Он закончил свой курс и окончил Гарвардский колледж в восемнадцать лет. Говорят, что он был туп в математике и не превышал среднего в своем классе по общему положению; но он был широко начитан в литературе, что, возможно, ставило его далеко впереди любого молодого человека его возраста. После окончания школы он пять лет преподавал в школе вместе со своим братом; но в 1825 г.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
TO classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a
philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet;;all three so eminently
that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most
belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks:
“Where in the realm of thought whose air is song
Does he the Buddha of the west belong?
He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”
But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay
or song, it was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else
he was, Emerson was pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden
key that he unlocked the chambers of original thought, that liberated
American letters.
Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James
Russell Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to
English thought, until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at
the dangers and glories of blue waters. He was our first optimistic
writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had seen in man only a vile
nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, proofs of
his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination
was fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction
against this Puritan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to
establish the dignity of man, and out of this came the further growth
of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emerson. It was this idea and
these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson converted into
literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of
Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on
Thoreau, Hawthorne, Chas. A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and
others, formed the very foundation for the beautiful structure of our
representative American literature.
Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to
God and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of
virtue and a spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted
to his themes and his philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for
scholars. He was a prophet who, without argument, announced truths
which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived; but the thought is
often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. For this
reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with
the masses. Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s
writings are heavy or shadowy or difficult to understand. On the
contrary, some of his poems are of a popular character and are easy
of comprehension. For instance, “The Hymn,” sung at the completion
of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips at the time
of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also
beautifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his
“Voluntaries:”
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”
The youth replies, “I can.”
These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is,
perhaps, more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master
of language. He never used the wrong word. His sentences are models.
But he was not a logical or methodical writer. Every sentence stands
by itself. His paragraphs might be arranged almost at random without
essential loss to the essays. His philosophy consists largely in an
array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men make the
best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, within “A
kite-string of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is
frequently compared. The likeness, however, consists only in the fact
that they were both decidedly representative Americans of a decidedly
different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson poetry; Franklin common
sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these opposite respects
they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were
hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training
and guiding the American people.
In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where
he made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher
department known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were
not the dull efforts of a school boy; but original poems which he read
with real taste and feeling. He completed his course and graduated
from Harvard College at eighteen. It is said that he was dull in
mathematics and not above the average in his class in general standing;
but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in advance,
perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, he taught
school for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825,
gave it up for the ministry. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian
Congregation in Boston; but his independent views were not in
accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he resigned in
1835, and retired to Concord, where he purchased a home near the spot
on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which
he commemorated in his own verse:;;
“There first the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which
occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of
his age.
Illustration: HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS.
It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the
advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits
who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing
society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition
in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous
“Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s,
however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding
such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson
regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus
Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of
about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury, Mass., and a stock
company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution
of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the
enterprise. The principle of the organization was co;perative, the
members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of
romancers, Chas. A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of
Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson
Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy
sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were
prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that
Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and
frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school.
The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of
the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the
membership scattered.
But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing
together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for
five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce
of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than
its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the
advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into
every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper,
“The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was
transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.
Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered
around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful
mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that
have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as
his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation
of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for
generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in
Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such
a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive
thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or
“Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps,
for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works,
that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was
through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more
famous in American letters than the city of New York.
The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,;;and
it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no
less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His
life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He
“practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature
so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he
was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since
his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the
cherished possessions of our literature.
The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship.
Amos Bronson Alcott,;;father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,;;one
of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and
several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his
great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled,
“The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ
stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to
himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,;;as his
mood and matter invite it;;dying like
Music of mild lutes
Or silver coated flutes.
... such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.”
Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer
acknowledges in a poem, written after the sage’s death:
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.
* * * * *
HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836.
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.
* * * * *
THE RHODORA.
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook;
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay;
Young RAPHAEL might covet such a school;
The lively show beguiled me from my way.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.
* * * * *
THE TRUE HERO.
AN EXTRACT FROM “VOLUNTARIES.”
The following story is told of the manner in which the poem,
“Voluntaries,” obtained its title. In 1863, Mr. Emerson came
to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with
him the unfinished sketch of a few verses which he wished
Mr. Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to
the centre of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed
giving to the press. They were written on separate slips of
paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr. Emerson
frequently wrote in such independent paragraphs, that many of
his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them
serious violence.) The question arose as to title of the verses
read, when Mr. Fields suggested ;“Voluntaries,” which was
cordially accepted by Mr. Emerson.
O WELL for the fortunate soul
Which Music’s wings unfold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtle thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought;
But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Telling only the fiery thread,
Leading over heroic ground
Walled with immortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain,
Him duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this,;;and knows no more,;;
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before;;;
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain
Forever: but his erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.
He, the poor for whom angels foil,
Blind with pride and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,
Reserved to a speechless fate.
; ‘Voluntaires’ replaced with ‘Voluntaries’
* * * * *
MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRREL.
THE mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”
Bun replied:
“You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”
* * * * *
THE SNOW STORM.
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet
Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north-wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnish’d with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are number’d, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
* * * * *
THE PROBLEM.
I LIKE a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature roll’d
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,;;
The canticles of love and wo.
The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,
And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O’er England’s Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought’s interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,
And the same power that rear’d the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentacost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken,
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost
I know what say the Fathers wise,;;
The book itself before me lies,;;
Old _Chrysostom_, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger _Golden Lips_ or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear.
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
* * * * *
TRAVELING.
I HAVE no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe,
for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man
is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding
somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get
somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows
old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will
and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to
ruins.
Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the
discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at
Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack
my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake
up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self,
unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I
am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper
unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is
vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness.
Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We
imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our
houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to
and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her
mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished.
It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was
an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the
conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the
Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint
expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist
will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him,
considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants
of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create
a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and
sentiment will be satisfied also.
* * * * *
THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY.
WE cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do
not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are
idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul,
in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is
any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday.
We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and
shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover and
nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful.
But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, “Up and
onward for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, neither will we
rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those
monsters who look backwards.
And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure
years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing
but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius;
for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates
an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks
up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows
the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the
reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to
the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny
garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for
its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener,
is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide
neighborhoods of men.
* * * * *
SELF-RELIANCE.
INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every
moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but
of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous,
half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can
teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has
exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare?
Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington,
or Bacon or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of
Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will
tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he
performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach
him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that
which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too
much.
* * * * *
FROM “NATURE.”
TO go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as
from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody
is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.
The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between
him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made
transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies,
the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities,
how great they are!
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how
would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the
remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night
come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their
admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, always present,
they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred
impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never
wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her
secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.
Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals,
the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as
they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most
poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made
by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick
of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming
landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and
Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye
can integrate all the parts;;that is, the poet. This is the best part
of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not
see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun
illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the
heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other;;who has retained the
spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with
heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of
Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs,
he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every
hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and
change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,
from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that
fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the
air is a cordial of incredible virtue. 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. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the
woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and
at what period soever of his 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.
* * * * *
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the
suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am
not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving
of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.
It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like
that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I
deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not
reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary
to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always
tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed
perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread
with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness
in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him
who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it
shuts down over less worth in the population.
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF EMERSON