Emerson's Romantic Style

by Julie K. Ellison

Overview

Professor Ellison demonstrates that the characteristic difficulties of Emerson's prose—its repetitiveness, discontinuity, and tonal peculiarities—are motivated by his use of interpretation to free himself from recurringly intimidating aspects of tradition.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691639987
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1216
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.80(d)

Read an Excerpt

Emerson's Romantic Style

---

By Julie Ellison

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06612-7

---

CHAPTER 1

INVOCATIONS

As Emerson would later write of other "young and ardent minds," he was moved by "a desire, raging, infinite, a hunger, as of space to be filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of devils for souls" (W.IV. 184). This desire to conquer and to be fed, to fill and to be filled with inspiration, gave rise, during his college and school-teaching years (1820–1825) to elaborate, ambitious fantasies. The function of the journals that he began to keep regularly in his junior year at Harvard was to record daydreams too outrageous to be uttered publicly in, for example, his two Bowdoin Prize essays, and too intense to be repressed altogether. In long, passionate entries, we can trace the dynamics that organize his representations of creativity, reflection, and piety. By interrogating the style and structure of these little dramas, we can begin to understand how his desire for verbal power, his contempt for criticism, and his religious conscience combined to make him miserable. The journal selections we are about to examine have a paradoxical structure. Emerson's desire to be great is expressed through his imitations of great men. Celebrating the role of inspired reader quickly leads him to resent the role of critic. His harsh view of religion as the history of imaginative decline chastizes his naive sentimentalizing of the literary past. In the passages organized by these ambivalences, creative power is divorced from reflective self-consciousness; in a metaphoric analogue of this split between creativity and analysis, the glorious past recedes from puny moderns. These distances make genius both more alluring to and more remote from the young aspirant, who torments himself with scathing critiques of his impossible desires. Close readings of the rhetoric of Emerson's early journals and college essays — their tone, the plot of their fables, the point of their allusions, the logic of their transitions — will provide us with a way to measure his subsequent self-revisions. The anxieties expressed in these writings are significant, not only because they led to Emerson's initial discovery of antagonism, metamorphosis, and surprise, but also because they continued to instigate these reactions throughout his career.

In the first entry of "Wide World I," his first regular journal, Emerson identifies literary greatness with the genre of romance, which thus becomes an emblem of the exercise of the imagination. His vision is a passionate flight into a make-believe realm that mirrors his real desires. This opening flourish takes the form of jocular and clearly embarrassed allusions, almost parodies of the texts to which he refers. Although he utters the invocation in a playful tone, the excessively mannered prose reveals his wish to speak with a conspicuously "literary" voice, to mime authorial gestures, at least. It is obvious from this and similar passages that the precondition for Emerson's resentment of books was an extreme susceptibility to them. He voices an overpowering nostalgia for the golden age of English literature, and populates the domain of fancy with images from The Faerie Queene, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."

O ye witches assist me! enliven or horrify some midnight lucubration or dream (whichever may be found most convenient) to supply this reservoir when other resources fail. Pardon me Fairy Land! rich regions of fancy & gnomery, elvery, sylphery, & Queen Mab! pardon me for presenting my first petition to your enemies but there is probably one in the chamber who maliciously influenced me to what is irrevocable; pardon & favor me! — & finally Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, wherever ye glow, whatsoever you patronize, whoever you inspire, hallow, hallow this devoted paper. (JMN.I.4)

The otherwordly subject matter of the works he mimics, witches, fairies, "gnomery, elvery, sylphery," becomes an image of the dream that the works themselves represent for Emerson. His wish to exercise the magical power of poetry takes the form of imitations of stories about magic. For all the confessed silliness of this invocation, the need to begin ceremonially with an invitation to the "Spirits" created by earlier authors is palpable. Emerson's metaphors suggest an imaginative economy in which he is the needy one. The "rich regions of fancy" must "supply this reservoir" — the journal — when his own "resources fail."

The second entry in Wide World II enacts a more ambitious flight into a spiritual world pervaded by the ardent, somber mood of the sublime. Emerson takes himself more seriously, and hence more anxiously:

To forget for a season the world & its concerns, & to separate the soul for sublime contemplation till it has lost the sense of circumstances & is decking itself in plumage drawn out from the gay wardrobe of Fancy is a recreation & a rapture of which few men can avail themselves....

He wishes to lose the sense of circumstances in order to forget that he is only engaging in recreation and that his mental wardrobe is secondhand. He takes a long look at his goal, the rapture of original authorship. His fantasy of Fancy, however, immediately triggers his doubts about his own qualifications for greatness. Who can wear the robe of eloquence? Where does genius come from? Is it a matter of nature or culture? He continues:

this privilege ... is attainable if not inborn. ... Ordinary men claim the intermittent exercise of this power of beautiful abstraction; but to the souls only of the mightiest is it given to command the disappearance of land & sea, & mankind....

He momentarily tolerates the "claim" of "ordinary men," those who have learned to be intermittently inspired; that is, he makes room for himself in the event that he lacks genius. But then he negates his leniency by insisting that the true test of power is the ability not just to "forget" the world, but to "command [its] disappearance." This is an early instance of the metaphor for "abstraction" we remember better as the "transparency" brought about by idealism in Nature. Its emergence here suggests the painful discrepancy between Emerson's sense of his real status and his dream of power. Here he suspends his doubts and pursues his wish. In the entry's final scene, he imagines the figure of an "Enchanter," the master he wants to be, admired from afar.

Then comes the Enchanter illuminating the glorious visions with hues from heaven, granting thoughts of other worlds gilded with lustre of ravishment & delight, till the Hours teeming with loveliness & Joy roll by uncounted. (JMN.I. 33–34)

Emerson views the Enchanter from the point of view of the earth-bound individual whose visions are irradiated with heavenly hues. Emerson, the speaker, is not the angelic visitor, but the one who receives "thoughts of other worlds" from him. It is important to notice Emerson's delight in receptivity, in having his "space ... filled," his "Hours teeming." He often depicts the role of reader or recipient as being intensely pleasurable. Although, as an "ordinary man," his power to annihilate self and world is "intermittent," this mediated, vicarious sublimity is almost as good as the real thing. In an example of the instability of roles that makes explaining Emerson's fables so difficult, the contrast between mediocrity and genius suddenly collapses.

In other entries, fables about magic express the desire for imaginative power even more clearly. Emerson no sooner thinks about books than he imagines himself imagining them. Often this scenario contains an aggressive impulse:

Could I seat myself in ... one of those public libraries which human pride & literary rivalship have made costly, splendid & magnificent it would indeed be an enviable situation. I would plunge into the classic lore of chivalrous story & of the fairy-land bards & unclosing the ponderous volumes of the firmest believers in magic & in the potency of consecrated crosier of elfin ring I would let my soul sail away delighted in to their wildest phantasies. Pendragon is rising before my fancy. ... (JMN.I.10)

Admiration and the thought of competition ("rivalship," "enviable") come simultaneously to mind in a way reminiscent of the later journals and the essays. In this fable, the motive behind Emerson's emotional and stylistic prostration before the splendor of English literature is the desire for "potency." Reading is impelled by the ambition to be envied by his rivals; it is an instinctively conflictual activity. Nevertheless, here, too, Emerson's access to greatness is mediated. His envy of great writers is displaced as the thought of his own "enviable" position as reader; the magnificence of literature and its proud rivalries are transferred to the image of the library. As usual, it takes a litany of allusions to quest romance to incite Emerson's readerly heart to "sail away into ... phantasies."

Some of Emerson's imitations are comical, such as his attempt at the gothic extremes of "Monk" Lewis:

Would not Pestilence be a good personage in poetry for description? Wrapt in the long white robes of sickness, entering the town in her awful chariot & her slow approach heard afar off by the anxious fearful listeners — it comes — it rolls over the distant pavement — it draws near — the haggard terrifick form. ... (JMN.1.15)

But a passage based on the imagery of Paradise Lost again shows the depth of Emerson's need to place himself in relation to English classics, as well as his ambiguity about just what that relationship is. The entry is a self-conscious exercise in sublimity; as usual, his protagonist is his own mind. "It enlarges the mind & ... gratifies it to hold large contemplations regarding the ... Universe," he begins. In the lines that follow, however, it is hard to tell whether he is the figure who "imagines" the scene described or the one who stars in it as the hero, "Conjecture." His fantasy ambiguously gratifies the writer's wish to describe power and the reader's sense of participation in the figure thus invented:

We can imagine the shadow of the incomprehensibly large glorious mass blackening the infinity behind it we can send Conjecture forth to ride on the wings that are bearing the worlds forward & sit & explore & discover what is to occur when the wheels shall stop & the wings fall in the immediate presence of the source of light to which for ages past & ages to come they have been & will be advancing ... [and so on in the same vein]. (JMN.1.5)

The most exciting activity for Emerson, it seems, is the movement from "our" ordinary persepective to "the immediate presence of the source of light." He does not identify himself with that source or even with "the wings that are bearing the world forward," but with "Conjecture" — a hesitant name for a hero — who rides and sits as well as explores and discovers. The moral direction of this motion is also vague, for Emerson seems unable to decide whether the cosmic powers are diabolical or godly. The wings whose shadow blackens infinity suggest Milton's Satan, who soars heroically upward only to "fall in the immediate presence" of the light. But the "wheels" imply that what advances is Christ's chariot. The reasons why Emerson preferred to dramatize the transition between the positions of author or reader and hero will emerge more clearly in later passages, but that tendency is firmly established in these very early journals.

When Emerson's subject is "pulpit eloquence," his ambitions are less likely to be checked by inhibition. In the third entry of Wide World I, for example, he reworks the judgment scene of Henry Hart Milman's Samor, Lord of the Bright City. This episode, he writes, is the type of "the eloquence of the senate, bar, or pulpit" — of any occasion, that is, "where one is addressing a multitude on an affair ... able to produce in the orator an agony of excitement." The climax of the scene is the young minister's public investiture with the robe of eloquence. The depth of Emerson's gratification suggests why he would be slow to abandon his pulpit a few years later:

[L]et us suppose a pulpit Orator to whom the path of his profession is yet untried but whose talents are good & feelings strong & his independence as a man in opinion and action is established let him ascend the pulpit for the first time not to please or displease the multitude but to expound to them the words of the book & to waft their minds & devotions to heaven. Let him come to them in solemnity & strength & when he speaks he will chain attention with an interesting figure and an interested face. To expand their views of the sublime doctrines of the religion he may embrace the universe & bring down the stars from their courses to do homage to their Creator. Here is a fountain which cannot fail them. Wise Christian orators have often & profitably magnified the inconcievable [sic] power of the creator as manifested in his works & thus elevated & sobered the mind of the people & gradually drawn them off from the world they have left by the animating ideas of Majesty, Beauty, Wonder, which these considerations bestow. Then ... the spirit is absorbed in the play of its mightiest energies & their eyes are on him & their hearts are in heaven then let him discharge his fearful duty, then let him unfold the stupendous designs of celestial wisdom, & whilst admiration is speechless let him minister to their unearthly wants and let the ambassador of the most high prove himself worthy of his tremendous vocation. Let him gain the tremendous eloquence which stirs men's souls, which turns the world upside down, but which loses all its filth & retains all its grandeur when consecrated to God. When a congregation are assembled together to hear such an apostle you may look round & you will see the faces of men, bent forward in the earnestness of expectation & in this desirable frame of mind the preacher may lead them whithersoever he will; they have yielded up their prejudices to the eloquence of the lips which the archangel hath purified & hallowed with fire & this first sacrifice is the sin offering which cleanseth them. (JMN.I.7–8)

As in the "Conjecture" and "Pendragon" entries, the imagery of height and depth characteristic of the Romantic sublime here signifies imaginative power. The orator "ascends the pulpit," wafts the "minds & devotions" of his listeners "to heaven" with his "sublime doctrines," and, conversely, "brings down the stars from their courses" to them. The "speechless" audience is a sign of the minister's desire for power over others. He wants not only attention, but submission; he imagines bringing about that "desirable frame of mind" in which "they have yielded ... to [his] eloquence." As in so many cases of the Romantic sublime, the witnesses are both overwhelmed and liberated. The congregation's attention is "chained"; it is "sobered" and, like the orator, "drawn ... off from the world." "Animating ideas" result in a state of suspended animation. At the moment of apparent paralysis, however, "the spirit is absorbed in the play of its mightiest energies." The listeners yield up their collective will in order to admire its projection in the orator. The ritualistic element in this transaction is striking. The congregation sacrifices its volition to the preacher and is cleansed by so doing. He, in turn, is "purified" by the archangel. In the Biblical paradigm, Abraham's sacrifice requires Isaac's analogous surrender to him. Authors and orators may usurp our wills legitimately only when they have first offered up their own.

The drama of orator and audience is a complex self-portrait. The figure of the preacher exercises power, but also seems merely to conduct it, as Emerson suggests that the dynamics of influence take the form of a cycle of receptivity and conquest. The marvelous vanity that composed this scene is hardly disguised by the talk of consecration. The religious motive and themes of the young "pulpit orator" are transparent sanctions for his pleasure in the admiration of others. Because his discourse is dedicated to God, it "loses all the filth & retains all its grandeur." Even this early, Emerson's morality has a pragmatic edge; he espouses an "aesthetics of use" that does not scruple to "profitably" magnify the power of God, the institution of preaching, or "the book." As in the other passages we have examined, however, Emerson pictures himself both as the source of inspiration and as its recipient. He does homage to the Creator and submits to the archangel in the same grateful attitude that his audience assumes in relation to him. His self-characterizations will always be unstable in this way, slipping from the role of ambassador to that of author, from the vehicle to the source of power. He is, from the start, both humble and narcissistic. But for many years he is stricken with guilt when he yields to self-love.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Emerson's Romantic Style by Julie Ellison. Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. vii
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. ix
• A NOTE ON ABBREVIATIONS AND EDITIONS CITED, pg. xi
• INTRODUCTION. “THE MIND GOES ANTAGONIZING ON”, pg. 1
• I. THE DEVELOPMENTAL NARRATIVE, pg. 15
• II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAYS, pg. 73
• III. STRUCTURES WITHIN THE ESSAYS, pg. 155
• CONCLUSION. ROMANTIC PROSE AND THE ARTISTIC CRITIC, pg. 228
• NOTES, pg. 239
• INDEX, pg. 253