Author: Casey Morris

Few movements have defined American literature and culture as Transcendentalism. Often associated with the lectures of Emerson or essays of Thoreau, Transcendentalism was a heterogenous movement that drew on a variety of sources spanning the arts, philosophy, literature, theology, and social activism. Unitarianism, German Idealism, Romanticism, Neoplatonism, and Hindu and Buddhist philosophy largely comprise its theoretical basis. Transcendentalist writers and artists later sought to exceed such influences and forge a uniquely American intellectual identity. Core principles of this identity form the tenets of Transcendentalist thought: individualism and self-reliance, the intrinsic goodness of humanity, the power of insight and intuition over reason, and the immanence of God in both nature and humankind. And in perhaps no other medium than poetry do these lead to a distinct aesthetic ideal. The poems of Emerson, Thoreau, Hooper, and Whitman evoke this ideal from the vantage of Transcendentalism in mid-nineteenth century America. More than this, these poets speak to the historic formation of American letters, one that is as layered and nuanced as America itself. 

One of the most widely celebrated Transcendentalists was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, Emerson’s life and career as a Unitarian minister turned philosopher, essayist, and poet embodied the Transcendentalist credo. He was a living portrait of self-reliance, of nourishing intuition and insight over established Western epistemological traditions, whether in the Church or contemporary philosophy. Emerson also co-founded and was editor of “The Dial,” a Boston-based magazine that published some of the major poems and essays of the Transcendentalist era. A keen observer and lover of nature, Emerson’s own poetry often focuses on the unity between subjectivity and Nature, the soul and the Oversoul. One such poem is “The Rhodora.” In this piece, Emerson writes about a flower he encountered while visiting a cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Written in 1834 and originally published in the “Western Messenger” in 1839, “The Rhodora” rhymes aabbcdcd. Here is the poem in its entirety: 

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 water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, 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 self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

The poem opens with a rousing gale of sea-wind, one that “pierced our solitudes.” Elsewhere in Emerson’s lectures and essays, he speaks of the wind as a stirring, invigorating force that vitalizes the soul as much as the sea, the land, and the sky. In the poem, Emerson is roused to the “fresh Rhodora in the woods.” The image develops as one of pure joy, fragrant and vibrant as the flower graces “the sluggish brook” with “purple petals fallen in the pool.” This leads subtly to personification, as the black water is “gay” and the red-bird courts “the flower that cheapens his array.” Transcendentalist themes emerge. The poet’s and nature’s shared joy in the rhodora suggests the unity Emerson would later describe as the Oversoul. Simply put, the Oversoul is the overarching unity of all creation, of subject and object as one in Nature. Gaiety flows from the Oversoul, enthusing poet and nature alike. Emerson develops this idea in later lines, as he quips “Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why/ this charm is wasted on the earth and sky.” Throughout his life, Emerson was deeply adverse to dogma of any kind (i.e. religious, academic, political, etc.). The sages grasping for truth, straining eyes “made for seeing” represent the religious and philosophical dogmas of nineteenth century America: the predominance of Christian morality in a then-new republic founded on Locke’s liberalism and empiricism, republican theory, and (especially during Emerson’s time) Scottish realist philosophy. Emerson turns from these to the flower itself. If “beauty is its own excuse for Being,” the good, the true, and the beautiful are not fruits of the philosopher’s or metaphysician’s labor. They are as free, as accessible as the sea or the rhodora’s fallen petals. The “self-same power,” the Oversoul encompasses and permeates all. Intuition, not reason or logic, brings such revelatory gifts to the individual consciousness. 

Emerson’s close friend and fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau was likewise a passionate student of nature and proponent of what he called “simple living.” In his now famous 1854 book “Walden,” Thoreau detailed the over two years he spent living in a cabin near Walden Pond in Concord. Though autobiographical and part social critique, the work is regarded as a seminal example of nature writing and of Transcendentalist philosophy. The ideas he developed around mainstream culture and the freedom of simple living have exerted vast influence on figures as diverse as Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau was also a poet, publishing many pieces in “The Dial” about his experiences in nature. One of his poems “Tall Ambrosia” depicts an autumn day at Walden Pond, specifically after exploring nearby woods and observing its flora and fauna. Unpublished until 1950, nearly a century after Thoreau’s life, “Tall Ambrosia” does not follow a particular meter or rhyme scheme. Here is the poem in its entirety: 

Among the signs of autumn I perceive

The Roman wormwood (called by learned men

Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,—

For to impartial science the humblest weed

Is as immortal once as the proudest flower—)

Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes

As I cross the now neglected garden.

—We trample under foot the food of gods

And spill their nectar in each drop of dew—

My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray

Far from my couch, thus powdered, countryfied,

Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure,

At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss

Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew

Nor Roman wormwood have never been through,

Who never walk but are transported rather—

For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.

Roman wormwood is a perennial often found in New England with herbal uses dating back thousands of years. Its leaves bear a yellow, nectar-like dust with a scent of camphor. Historically used in the production of absinthe or vermouth, its scientific name (“Ambrosia,” as Thoreau notes) is the food for gods in Greek mythology. When consumed, Ambrosia was the source of immortality for both gods and humans. Such allusions stir Thoreau’s imagination. An easily overlooked plant, one considered a weed, held a great purpose in ages past. This extends to any plant or “proudest flower,”  as one unknowingly tramples “under foot the food of gods” and spills “their nectar in each drop of dew.” Thoreau does not merely reclaim and affirm something lost to time. He reorients our perspective: the same essence that fills the air, Walden pond, or wormwood sustained gods and humans in antiquity. The divine essence transcends time and place. It abides and is immanent in all things, imbuing each with sacred value and vitality. As the poem continues, Thoreau returns to the present. He reflects on his shoes: they are “powdered, countryfied,/ bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure.” The poet’s well-trodden shoes symbolize intimate knowledge and experience of nature. By contrast, they offend the stuffy “Gallic gloss” of others in town. The post-house, usually a traveler’s inn during Thoreau’s time, is a synecdoche for a materialist, industrialized society alienated from the natural world. The final image of polished shoes, of urbane townsfolk “who never walk but are transported” speaks volumes. Thoreau critiques the conveniences of city life as divorced from nature’s transcendent gifts. An ironic use of half and full rhymes seems a ploy to common taste at the expense of free verse. Formally and thematically, the poem decries its own return to civilization. Such a “crime” does not just estrange us from our roots; it stifles the divine from which all things, even us, have come.

Ellen Sturgis Hooper was active in Transcendentalist circles and made many contributions to “The Dial.” Emerson and Margaret Fuller admired her genius and encouraged her interest in poetry. Though no formal attempt was made to collate and publish her poems, several still survive. Among these, “I Slept, and Dreamed that Life was Beauty” stands apart. Originally published in 1840 in “The Dial,” the piece is renowned for its pithy yet rhythmic lines. Hooper articulates some of the characteristic ideals of Transcendentalism in three couplets, rhyming aabbcc. Here is “I Slept, and Dreamed that Life was Beauty” in its entirety: 

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; 

I woke, and found that life was Duty. 

Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? 

Toil on, sad heart, courageously,

And thou shalt find thy dream to be

A noonday light and truth to thee.

If the first couplet sounds familiar, there’s a good reason why. Variously attributed to Louisa May Alcott, Lord Byron, and even Confucius, it has become a proverb of the Transcendentalist movement. Even Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore is said to have penned a version. Aside from reality tempering her dreams, what’s important is how Hooper persists in the following two couplets. She interrogates the dream. What is its truth-value, its purpose? Without an immediate answer, she accepts its transience and illusion. Hooper instead vows to “toil on.” In doing so, her industrious dream-weaving yields “a noonday light,” a “truth” by which to live and thrive. But what does this all mean? From a Transcendentalist lens, some core tenets are at play. The first is intuition. In his 1841 essay “The Oversoul,” Emerson writes that the soul “is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie.” Channeling the soul through faculties (i.e. the intellect, the will) is a natural process. Emerson’s metaphor is breathing: “when it [the soul] breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.” This breathing is driven by intuition. Dreams, as products of intuitive experience, raise the soul to mingle with preexisting faculties of will and intellect. Such intermingling reveals truth in one’s innermost being, one’s soul in communion with the Oversoul. Here lies the second tenet. If, as Emerson writes, truth is a manifestation of the soul, is “an influx of the Divine mind into our mind,” such a fusing also signals the immanence of God, of the Oversoul in all things. When Hooper describes her dream as a “light” and a “truth,” she means this universal divine essence revealed in her soul. Truth as revelatory affirms the innateness of virtue: the good, the true, and the beautiful inhere as embers in the soul. They wait to be breathed into luminous fire.

In his famous 1842 lecture, Emerson called for a new poet to galvanize America’s literary establishment and break free of its residual continental influences. Unbeknownst to him, Walt Whitman was in attendance. Little over a decade later, Whitman published “Leaves of Grass” and sent a copy to Emerson. Though reviews were initially mixed, Whitman’s masterpiece has come to define American poetry. Even Ezra Pound once remarked that Whitman “is America.” With his expansive and sensual lyricism, Whitman captured America in its infancy while also evoking Transcendentalist ideas. A poignant example is the poem “On the Beach at Night Alone.” Published in his 1856 collection “Leaves of Grass,” the poem showcases Whitman’s free verse style. Here is the “On the Beach at Night Alone” in its entirety: 

On the beach at night alone, 

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, 

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the 

    universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all, 

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, 

All distances of place however wide, 

All distances of time, all inanimate forms, 

All souls, all living bodies thought they be ever so different, or in different 

    worlds, 

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, 

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, 

All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, 

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, 

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, 

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. 

Whitman opens with an image of the ocean and night spreading above, its blackness dotted with “bright stars.” Motion of the tides is personified, as the ocean or “the old mother” sways “to and fro.” In this line, Whitman leaves the object unidentified: we do not know whether “the old mother” soothes and rocks the earth or perhaps the nation. If the latter, Whitman would likely have in mind the political turmoil of 1850s America, in which northern and southern states were deadlocked in debates around slavery’s westward expansion after the end of the Mexican-American War. Taken literally, the phrase “clef of the universes” suggests possible pitches in a piece of music. More figuratively, it implies tension around competing visions of America. Whitman’s perspective then broadens to the greatest of possible scales, as he addresses the cosmos: “A vast similitude interlocks all.” The poet gathers all matter in rhythmic lines full of “suns, moons, planets” and “nations, colors… civilizations, languages.” Whitman’s anaphora lends a propitiating quality to the lines, as though existence were both an offering and a blessing to enjoy in psalmic meditation. By the poem’s end, he addresses the “vast similitude” with the more concrete demonstrative “this.” Yet “this vast similitude” remains unnamed. What actually spans and holds together all things? The answer may lie in the final line. As the tapestry that “shall forever span them and… enclose them,” he implies the same omnipresent divine essence, the Oversoul. For Whitman, the Oversoul circumscribes all things on account of its “vast similitude.” It resolves and urges creation onwards. It is the resolution of its own “clef of the universes,” its boundless possibilities in space and time.

Transcendentalism coincided with a time of painful growth for early America. Since declaring independence from Britain in 1776, the new nation had fought several wars without an eye for the bloodiest, most tragic one yet to come. The American Civil War in 1861 began after decades of political infighting and disagreements over slavery, particularly which new territories would legalize the institution as borders slowly moved westward. American universities experienced a similar, lower stakes shift best captured in Emerson’s 1837 lecture “The American Scholar.” Demanding a break from European modes of thinking, philosophical systems, and aesthetic tastes, Oliver Wendell Holmes famously called the speech “America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence.” Americans certainly answered Emerson’s call. The war ended. Tensions cooled. Reconstruction under President Grant’s leadership helped the country recover and begin to prosper. America’s Industrial Age was marked by sweeping innovations in energy production and transportation technology. The nation’s market economy grew rapidly, raising millions into the middle class as millions more immigrated from abroad. A distinct American culture took shape, one embracing core tenets of Transcendentalism: an insistence on individual liberty, self-reliance, and protection of ingenuity in the name of progress; an, albeit slow and uneven, expansion of civil rights to previously enslaved people and those newly arrived; and a stronger belief in American exceptionalism, one grounded in self-determination and economic freedom. Of course, such privileges were not equitably distributed among everyone at the time. Transcendentalism nevertheless exerted a lasting influence on American culture and society. Its legacy lives on in the poetic imagination of Americans past and present. It continues to define Americans’ self-understanding and public discourse, the nation’s moral fiber and soul. 

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