Emerson’s Using a Number of Stylistic Devices:
Emerson’s prose style is remarkable and worth praising. Emerson has used figures of speech, analogy, antithetically balanced sentences, epigrams, rhetorical etc. The use of these various devices can easily be illustrated from any one of his essays.
For example, take the following: “It is one enteral fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna. lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.” Here there is the fine cooperative contact achieved between the phrases, ‘the lips of Etna’ and ‘the throat of Vesuvius’ and between the verbs lightens and illuminates, enabling Emerson to repeat himself without repetition.
Twice-Born Style:
According to Marcus Conliffle: “Out of the journalism came the lecture, out of the lecture series the volumes of essays.” Basically, the form of his essays is oratorical. He uses all the tools of an orator, rhetoricism, balance, antitheses, paradox, and aphorisms. So, there is a blend of oratory and journalism in his essays. He is the master of ‘spoken word’. Every sentence is addressed to the mind directly.
Vocabulary and Structure:
Emerson presents certain semantic difficulties. He sometimes uses words in senses not generally accepted or familiar. He can use the same words with different connotations. For example, the word fact has been used in different senses in the following sentences:
1. “The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them
facts amidst appearances.”
2. “The true nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact.”
In the first sentence the word fact means truth; in the seconds it means spiritual reality that lies at the back of the phenomena of the material world. Emerson constantly moves from the particular to general, and the emphasis upon generalization produces an aphoristic quality. Sometimes he is very bold and sharp e.g., “The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan.”
Highly Oratorical Style:
In spite of the fact that Emerson’s style is highly oratorical, it is remarkable for brevity and epigrammatically. According to William Van O’ Conner: “Emerson was the master of pithy sentences.” He commands wide-ranging wisdom. He has striking power of intellect. Like Goethe, he has an extraordinarily unerring intuition. Mark the brevity and epigrammaticality of the lines like the following:
1. “The love of beauty is taste.’
2. “The creation of beauty is art.”
3. “The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts.”
Influence of Milton and Bacon and Having an Ear for the Music:
Emerson reminds us of Milton, especially in The American Scholar, by his eloquence, by the amplitude and sweep of his sentences, the rhythm and the poetry of his descriptions. He reminds us just as often of Bacon with his confident aphorisms. The fullness of the longer sentences is balanced by the sharpness of epigram and the greatness of antithesis. He has a whole series of antithetically balanced sentences, where he describes how experience becomes truth and art in the crucible of the scholar’s mind. Readily noticeable also is the skilful use of rhetorical devices, like inversion, repetition or interrogation. Emerson has the poet’s ear for the music of words, and something even of the more obvious phonetic and musical satisfaction of verse may be found in Emerson’s prose. Apart from the usual balancing of sound with the sense, characteristic of the antithetical construction, we notice also the devices of rhythm, the balancing of sound through repetition and contrast in passages like this one:
“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 and beholding.”
Meaning Order and Arrangement:
It is idle to analyse Emerson’s style, if we think of style as meaning order and arrangement: for his method of writing by stringing together selections from his note-books—made it impossible that his works should have any continuity of thought or unity of expression. But if we think of style simply as manner, as the reflection of personality, and then consider Emerson’s most characteristic paragraphs which suggest stars, flowers and glimmering crystals, then there is no style to compare with his in our literature.
Faults and Shortcomings:
There can be no denying the fact that Emerson is one of the greatest of prose stylists in the English language, but he has also glaring faults and short-comings. He lacked the gift of sustained construction. His style is best illustrated in selected passages. The sentences are terse, vital, epigrammatic; yet they are always poetic rather practical, and always hint at much more than they express. Because he lives much out of doors and is intimate with earth, air and water, Emerson figures have an elemental quality unlike those of any other writer. The dew and fragrance of the morning are in all his works. Because he has read widely, he gives an air of culture to the homeliest matters by associating them with the great characters and the great books of the world. He has a large vocabulary at perfect command, but his instinct leads him to the simplest and most picturesque words.
In this way his work lacks unity and good principles of composition. His is distinctly the style of a writer who is artistic, but not an artist. He had little sense of composition. his essays have no construction, no organic quality, no evolution.