Emerson’s Appearing as a Philosopher and as an Inspired Soul:
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays Are as Vehicles of Philosophical Thought. Emerson’s essays are condensed meditations. He believes in what he says whereas Bacon is the meanest, brightest of mankind, Emerson is the wisest and brightest of mankind. He is also a very sane writer.
His essays are a catalogue of wisdom, of wisdom divine and wisdom garnered. It is because of the philosophical and moral nature of his essays that T. S. Eliot rightly viewed Emerson as one of the out-mounded guardians of the faith. Emerson is the voice of American conscience, the sanest voice of America. He is the treasure of wisdom and pearl of morality. Matthew Arnold observes: “Emerson’s essays are the most important work done in prose.” There is hardly any better American exponent of American transcendentalism than he. He as a transcendentalist looks for enlightenment beyond the limits of narrow physical experiences.
Three Categories of Emerson’s Essays:
Emerson’s essays are of the three kinds:
1. Descriptions of the Universe and its Laws:
Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, the Over-Soul, Circles, Experience, Nature and Realist.
2. Analysis of the Moral Faculties in Human Relationships in General:
Love, Prudence, Heroism, Character and Manners.
3. Studies of More Nearly Particular Problems of Experience:
History, Art, The Poet and New England Reforms.
Sources of Materials for Deriving Thoughts:
Quite early in his career he began to note down his thoughts in his journals and he continued to do so upto the end of his days. These Journals are the sources from which he drew his materials for his innumerable -essays and lectures all through his life. They provide the raw material for the finished product-the lectures and the essays. That is why his thought—his philosophy, if we so like—has a remarkable consistency. There may be elaboration, there might be much shifting, analyzing and rearranging of material, there might also be freshness in presentation, but the basic thought in his essays and lectures remains the same. The essays reveal growth and evolution but not real change in the thought-content.
Subject-Matter and Theme of His Essays:
The most outstanding qualities of Emerson’s essays are transcendentalism, gravity and moral earnestness and self-reliance. He also writes on spiritual laws, the over-soul, Nature, Prudence, Character and Manners, Art, etc. Emerson’s essays teach us how to reconcile good with evil, the individual with society, the good mannerliness with bad mannerliness, scholarship with intuition, etc. His subject matter is, thus varied history, poetry, friendship, character, manners, poetics, philosophy, experience, religion, politics, prudence, virtue, love, etc. In his essays we encounter the true spirit of American civilization, its preoccupation with individual liberty, individual judgement and insatiable love adventure.
Remarkable Treasure of Wisdom:
Like Bacon’s, Emerson’s essays are also a treasure of wisdom. Emerson is the Carlyle of America. His essays can be placed along with the proverbs of Solomon, the essays of Montaigne and the essays of Bacon or the poetry of Wordsworth. They are the Bible of wisdom. They are remarkable for their deep thoughts. To open anywhere any of the volumes of Emerson is to open at once in the world of thought.
A Fine Combination of Opposites:
Representative Men (1850), based on lectures delivered in England during an intensive lecture tour in 1847; English Traits (1856), a by- product of his lecture series after his return; and The Conduct of Life (1860), lectures mainly in the west, complete the list of Emerson’s major prose-works. The first was the closest to a straight printing of the lectures as delivered, the second the nearest to a complete rewriting. In the last, the philosopher again attempted, as he had in his first book, Nature, to sum up the essence of his thinking. More unsettled in its inconsistencies than in its inconsistencies than in its system, the matured Emersonian’s view of life presented a suspended judgement, a calm of soul, obtained by the balance between forces and admission of both fate and free will, of both divine and human sanctions. In his essays are reconciled good with evil, the individual with society, the rival claims of non- conformity with neighbourliness, scholarship with intuition, the need to be up and doing with equally imperative need to sit down and think.
No Extension of Design:
Each of Emerson’s essays is a finely wrought work of art into which he threw his most mature and careful effort, yet each book as a whole is little more than a miscellany. The design of the individual essays does not extend to the volumes in which they are collected. Emerson meant them to be read one at a time, and in any order. His method was to enter in his voluminous Journals, begun in 1820 and continued throughout his life, his first thoughts on life and books. These entries, which often have an incisive freshness that might later be lost, then become the ‘savings bank’ to be drawn on for the lectures which, after 1833, constituted his main interest. The essays were a device for polishing these ideas, never designed to be delivered as lectures, except for occasional addresses like that on The American Scholar, but inevitably retaining much of the tone of spoken discourse and the awareness of an immediate audience.
Twice-Born Essays and Oratorical Note:
Emerson’s essays are twice-born. Out of the Journals came the lectures, and out of the lectures came the essays. His essays strike one as being oratorical for they are all re-worked lectures. They are very much like Bacon’s essays ‘dispersed meditations’. He has also an ear for music. The thought is embodied in the most concrete terms. The rhetorical prose of Emerson is meant for the ear. Repetition, emphasis, rhetoricism are some of the qualities of the lecture. Plain and easy language, brevity and economy of words are the journalistic features revealed by his essays.
Poetic Touch and Fondness for Paradox:
Emerson’s essays have a poetic touch. They are prose poems. They producing the elevating excitement of soul. There is rising a gradual intensity in meaning and in form like a poet, Emerson was fascinated by the music of words. He balances sound through contrast and repetition: “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.”
There is another example: “Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.” The expression is condensed and it focuses our attention on what he says. The thought is presented in its generality, but it so offered as to involve a specific action and an analogy.
Thus, he uses words like fate, illusion, fine, find, hold, action. character, fact, friend, virtue, circumstances, element, being, form, God, life, man, mind. nature, nothing, power, thought, time and world quite appropriately.
He has also a great fondness for paradox. He observes that the secretest presentiment becomes the most public and universally true. He would say that “the drop is a small ocean”: “The near explains the far.”
Infallible Voice of His Own Conscience:
Emerson looked within his own heart and wrote, with a perspicacity of prophetic vision and a compelling vigour and sincerity. Emerson’s writings, particularly his Essays, one encounters the true spirit of American civilization-its pre-occupation with individual liberty, individual’ judgement and insatiable love of adventure. The ultimate worth of Emerson’s writings is that they reveal, by means of an art peculiar to himself, the resources of a rich, and beautiful mental life.
To read through his essays, poems, and journals is to explore a range of speculation only less amazing than Goethe’s. Here, in the recorded mind of Emerson, are fruits from all past cultures strangely reconciled, often strangely transformed beneath the pale glow of his transcendentalism.
His Language and Style:
Emerson’s prose is simple and quaint. To the poet’s privilege of metaphor, Emerson adds the idealist’s prerogative of paradox which is at once a way of seeing things as well as a way of saying them. His aphoristic and epigrammatic qualities-terseness, brevity, and condensed expression are apparent in the following quotations:
1. “Life is our dictionary. It is the query from whence we get tiles and copestones for
the masonry of today.”
2. “Books are lamps to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.
3. “Trust thyself”.
4. “The drop is a small ocean.”
5. “All things are double, one against another.”
6. “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads.”
Though his essays lacked structure, the form he achieved reveals his resources of illustration, observation, and rhetoric. His models gave him the manner. He wrote in the aphoristic style and yet in a personal manner. The aphorisms are terse and simple.
His style is influenced also by Milton, Berkeley, Swedenbrog, Coleridge, Carlyle, German philosophy, and Oriental scriptures and poetry. What he said of Montaigne and Browne applies more to himself: “When they had put down their thoughts, they jumped into their book bodily themselves.”
He is eminently quotable and his sentences are charged with gnomic wisdom. He gives the witty phrase and sharp sentence. He has an insight into the etymology of words. Authentically balanced sentences are frequent in the essays of Emerson. He handles skillfully the rhetorical devices like invention, repetition and interrogation.
The Solid Foundations of His Greatness as an Essayist:
1. He treats of elemental things of nature, love, friendship, heroism, self-reliance, in
which all men are forever interested.
2. He treats these themes in an independent way, speaking straight from his own
convictions and always appealing to the nobility of our human nature.
3. His words seem as vital now as when they first came from his lips.