Friday, February 6, 2009
Second Thoreau Question
Now that we have almost two dozen responses to the question of what stands out in Walden (see "Comments" to the question in the January 19th posting below), I would like you to consider your readings of Thoreau and his mentor, Emerson. How do you think the ideas of Emerson and Thoreau contributed to the tradition of nature writing in America? What are the specific issues, ideas, concerns, or examples provided by Thoreau and Emerson that led so many subsequent writers to see them as the originators of a new literary genre: nature writing. Some say that American concern for the environment begins with these two Transcendentalists. Others say that no one had written about humans' relations to their surroundings in this way until Emerson and Thoreau began, respectively, thinking about "Nature" and Walden. Offer us 300-400 words that help to explain the link between these two authors and "American nature writing."Due date: February 18 (2/18/09).
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Thoreau and Emerson contributed to the tradition of nature writing in America through their similar ideas of solitude and self-reliance. Thoreau wrote about his experiences at Walden Pond and how he felt that he did not need human interaction to survive. He could feel more alone in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by a bunch of people he didn’t know then he could at Walden Pond by his cabin with no one around. Thoreau felt one with nature and believed it could give man more joy then anything else. “Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house like an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant” (Walden 150). Emerson had a similar idea as Thoreau through self-reliance. Emerson, like Thoreau did not criticize human interaction but was confident that humans were only being true to themselves if they thought their own thoughts and did not imitate others. “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a while life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession” (Essays of the Young Emerson 34).
ReplyDeleteSince both of these writers found beauty in nature they decided to write about it. Both Thoreau and Emerson describe physical aspects of nature that they observed throughout their time in nature “The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness” (Walden 196). Thoreau’s description of Walden Pond is one of the first recorded documents of human relation to surroundings.
Through reading Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac we see many similarities between Leopold’s writing style and ideas and that of Thoreau and Emerson. This shows how big of an influence both Thoreau and Emerson had upon “American Nature Writing” during Leopold’s time. Today they have continued to have a huge influence. The fact that Colleges and Universities still teach classes on Thoreau and Emerson today shows how influential they have been.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his protégée, Henry David Thoreau, are arguably the two writers that provided the catalyst for American nature writing. Emerson and Thoreau both believed that a person’s connection with nature is the one of the more fundamental components of his or her being. It is the ability to connect, or form a genuine relationship, with nature that changes the concept of loneliness as a negative term into solitude, a positive term. Thoreau put forth the idea of solitude as something to be desirable; he asserted that people are lonely because they do not attempt to connect with the larger scope of our lives: our environment. According to Emerson and Thoreau, our environment functions as an external representation of our inner selves. If one can learn to appreciate nature as an entity to be respected and understood, then he or she is truly alive. Thoreau and Emerson placed extreme importance on how nature is understood in relation to how fulfilled the person is who is making the judgment on its value. If nature can be seen as part of society, then that gives people no possibility of ever feeling alone. Thus, since the connection with nature eliminates loneliness, internal happiness and satisfaction will follow. Furthermore, Thoreau and Emerson believe that people in society are looking for self-actualization through the wrong means. Instead of looking to the power and divinity of nature, they seek to connect with a God who cannot be fully understood, touched, or experienced in a tangible way. As an alternative to this practice, Thoreau and Emerson encourage people to understand that nature itself is the highest form of spirituality. Thoreau’s statement, “It was no longer beans that I hoed nor I that hoed the beans…” and Emerson’s concept of the “Over-soul” highlight this belief in an altered perception of both reality and spirituality. By equating such concepts as the relationship between a man and some beans and a man and his soul, each author is asserting that the importance of nature is in its all-encompassing capacity for everyone and everything that it touches. This belief is what certainly sparked the trend of American nature writing, because though it is an idea that is quite radical in its ideals, it is also most fundamentally basic. In the aftermath of Thoreau and Emerson’s work, American nature writers continue to impress upon others the profound synergy between men, women, and their environment.
ReplyDeleteHenry David Thoreau and his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson contributed many things to “Nature Writing” seeing as though they are argued to be the pioneers of the genre. I think that many of the ideas of the two authors have carried on through the years. One idea that these two authors seem to agree on is that of self reliance/ solitude. These two ideas are similar and are ideas that I think are extremely relevant to nature. In Walden, Thoreau talks about solitude because he is in the woods with no other humans, yet believes that he is not alone because of the fact that he is surrounded by millions of living organisms. I think the point that Henry brings up in his blog post about being in the middle of Manhattan could make Thoreau feel more alone than being in the middle of the woods is very interesting. While talking about this in class, there were many mixed arguments. It all comes down to making connections and concluding that loneliness is the refusal of one to make no connections. If one makes no connections in a city full of people, they can grow to feel lonely just as one would feel lonely if they lived in the woods and made no connections with the raindrops as Thoreau had done. Emerson had a similar idea in his thoughts of “self reliance.” Emerson believed that people would be true to themselves as long as they did not rely on others and did not imitate them. We discussed in class about how imitation is suicide, and that if you imitate someone else than your true self is dead. By blindly following others, you are killing yourself. “Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” (Emerson 21). Here Emerson says that whoever is a man is a non-conformist, and that nothing is more important than the truth of one’s own mind. After reading these two authors, I found myself in a different state of mind; being more aware of these ideas and how they apply in my own life.
ReplyDeleteEmerson and Thoreau defined themselves in the world as transcendentalists by finding and defining a spiritual existence without using formal religion as a means of discovery. Their means of discovery came from the world around them, from their innate and instinctual selves, and from the belief in a subconscious greater power than themselves and everything humans experience. Emerson devotes an essay to what he terms the “over-soul” in an attempt to define this power. In his essay “Self-Reliance”, Emerson states that once man unearths this power “he will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends” (31). While serving his two years on the shore of Walden Pond, Thoreau had most definitely done his share of hoeing his garden and rowing across the pond. He echo’s Emerson in his book Walden, “When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor that I hoed beans…” (175). Both naturalists claim that God, or a form of such deity, can be found in the most simple and natural actions or states of mind. Thoreau cites that hoeing his bean field became a sort of prayer to a natural force of immeasurable power for which he and Emerson shared a huge amount of respect. This aspect of both authors and thinkers defines them as two of the pioneering nature writers in history. Nature writers have always been captivated by their subject material. They describe majestic vistas, the ferocity of nature and her inhabitants, or the incredible mechanisms of some of nature’s smallest bugs and plants. Emerson and Thoreau dig a little deeper and attempt to discover the reason behind the majesty. They’ve done a hell of a job.
ReplyDeleteThese days there seems to be a romantic idea of “getting back to nature” that people have started to focus on since our relationship with the environment has taken a turn for the worse. Some people believe that Emerson and Thoreau were the first “nature writers,” however I believe that they were the first romantic nature writers. Nature writing has existed in some essence forever, but has been expressed in different terms. For example, in my Early American Literature class, we have been studying Anne Bradstreet’s Puritan poetry. Bradstreet describes nature as God’s kingdom in the most beautiful terms. There is no argument about whether or not Bradstreet is connected to nature in one way or another, and other writers of Bradstreet’s time and other periods have reflected some kind of relationship with the natural world and nature.
ReplyDeleteEmerson and Thoreau’s ideas came at a time when development in commerce, business, and technology began to dominate society’s thoughts and preoccupations and move society away from “nature”. Life was not so simple anymore, hence Thoreau’s push for “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.” Thoreau and Emerson seemed to believe that by creating things for ourselves, we also created the need for them, when the need for these items had never existed in the first place and did not need to exist. Emerson’s approach was more theoretical than Thoreau, but they spoke of human nature, not simply the wildness or wilderness we commonly refer to as “nature.” I believe that Emerson and Thoreau were the first writers to address human nature as connected to the natural world / wildness, but they were not the first to write about nature as it was seen and experienced.
Self-reliance, religion, loneliness, economy, and literature are all discussed in terms of connection to the natural world. To me, Thoreau’s most important idea is this: “The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective individual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. […] I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor” (Thoreau 107-108). If this about nature, it is about human nature. Likewise, Emerson says, “We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake” (Emerson 105). Emerson and Thoreau relate their transcendental ideas to nature and “wildness,” but when one takes a closer look, he or she can see that their writing is not just about the natural world but more so about human nature than anything else.
Megan N. Liberty:
ReplyDeleteThoreau and Emerson are historically considered the pioneer “nature writers.” However, what both Thoreau and Emerson coined is more than just writing about nature, but rather writing that preaches the significance and humanity of nature and the advantages of a more integrated life with nature. Along with this trend, American Nature writing is not just writing about nature or preaching environmentalism. Instead, American Nature writing seeks to emphasis the value of nature to our current society. In the same way that Thoreau argues for a day spent in simply the company of trees and pine needles, the American Nature writers who follow his example advocate for the things that nature has to offer the average busy American. Gretel Ehrlich, for example, sees the value in the open spaces of Wyoming. Aldo Leopold explains the importance of recognizing nature as more than just birds and trees, but as soil and earth.
Thoreau experienced the ways that nature has elements of humanity in it. In the ants, and even in the pine needles, Thoreau argues that every part of nature can be our friend, can comfort us and offer us a sense of peace that we no longer have in our busy daily lives. From this idea of humans in nature, and humans with nature, American Nature writing was born. Ehrlich suggests that a coexistence with nature can offer a slower and more comfortable pace than the lives without nature. Leopold similarly explains that it is from an appreciation of nature that people can gain something, not from a false sense of protection and conservation.
What made Thoreau and Emerson such pioneers was not writing about trees and animals and plants, but about the coexistence of humans and trees and animals and plants. This was revolutionary thinking. While the idea of “environmentalism” or “preservation” may have already existed—or not, Thoreau and Emerson began to preach not the value of nature alone, but the value of our interaction with nature. It is through that interaction that we can gain something from nature.
Calling Thoreau and Emerson “nature writers” is not a good way to describe what they did. They were writers who wrote about nature, or, better yet, philosophers who wrote about nature. Even saying they wrote “about” nature is a little bit misleading, in that it was more like they were writing about their philosophical outlook in terms of nature.
ReplyDeleteMost of Emerson’s essays had nothing to do with nature except in their implications and subtexts. The exception, obviously, would be “Nature.” His other essays, though, had more to do with humans and interpersonal relationships, hence we get things like “Self-Reliance,” which preaches a particular philosophical outlook and says nothing about nature.
Thoreau did spend two years at Walden Pond, but it’s pretty clear that he wasn’t writing solely about nature. He was (very skillfully) using nature as a frame for his own discussions of philosophy. “Economy,” as we’ve said, is more about living simply than anything else. He devotes a whole chapter to reading ancient works of literature, and another chapter to visiting a poor farmer. Walden contains descriptions of nature, but it is not about nature.
Just because Thoreau and Emerson were not nature writers doesn’t mean they didn’t influence writers like Aldo Leopold. Aldo Leopold is a nature writer more than Thoreau or Emerson because his main thesis about conservation and the land ethic has specifically to do with nature. His ideas are inextricably connected to nature. You can see Leopold emulating Thoreau and Emerson in a couple ways, though; mainly in that Leopold invokes nature to bolster his arguments the same way that Thoreau and Emerson did. For example, Leopold talks about the beauty of “goose music” and the “green fire” in the eyes of a wolf he kills in ignorance. Then he goes on to make an argument for conservation that ties in the wolf and the goose perfectly for maximum effect.
If there had been no Thoreau or Emerson, then, would there have been a Leopold? Getting into hypotheticals is tempting but doesn’t yield and definitive answers. The most sensible way of putting it, though, maybe, is that although nature writing as a form would have come about with or without Thoreau and Emerson, they greatly influenced the form that it did take.
Thoreau and Emerson talked about human nature in regards to society, tradition, and the distance humans keep from nature physically and psychologically. These authors discussed the beauty of nature as well, in its complexities, simplicities, and interaction amongst its inhabitants. Thoreau and Emerson believed that by being one with nature, nature would in turn help the human condition. Nature writers in present day discuss how the human condition has hurt nature. Thoreau and Emerson could not have had the foresight to see how the relationship between nature and man would turn out, but their writing discusses the discrepancy in the relations between man and nature that we still discuss today.
ReplyDeleteIn the tradition of Thoreau and Emerson, modern nature writers have taken Thoreau and Emerson’s ideas about how humans and nature should live more symbiotically. Writers now have the knowledge beyond, a gut instinct to know that something is wrong. We now have proof that the relationship between man and nature Thoreau and Emerson worried about more than one hundred years ago has impacted the earth. The Nature Writing genre, initiated by these gentlemen, has asked people to pay attention to the earth. By paying attention, nature writers are convinced that humans will feel a beneficial connection to nature. This connection would deter us from pumping food with chemicals, littering, wasting water, and so on, for the well being of the plants and animals as well as our own stomachs and bodies. By observing how nature has reacted from the human footprint we might stop to think whether the processes we go through on a daily basis, in the end have good outcomes, for the majority of individuals.
I believe this genre, not that it began as a genre, has expanded more than Emerson or Thoreau could have ever imagined. Both were incredibly accurate in their anxieties about man and nature. Nature writers today rely on a tradition Thoreau and Emerson created and the demands of nature’s desperation.
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ReplyDeleteEmerson and Thoreau were not the first nature writers. They cannot have been if the words “landscape” and “flower” have descended into English from their cognate brothers “leodscipe” and “flor” from Olde English. All Present Day English words with cognates in Olde English share one common trait: they are all basic words for concepts humans would have dealt with from the origin of their existence on earth: head, foot, landscape, flower – the list goes on. So certainly the common belief that Emerson and Thoreau were the first “nature writers” is romantic, but farfetched – humans had been writing about nature for thousands of years. Instead the reason for such a belief, in my opinion, is that these two naturalists wrote in such an intoxicating manner as to inspire future generations to follow in their footsteps and thus create a new literary movement in the genre of nature writing.
ReplyDeleteThe movement of this new brand of nature writers involved total immersion in nature itself as well as a true, deep-rooted interest in everything that can be learned from the world. In Emerson’s essay, “Nature,” he writes that “A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of the fields is no better than his brother of Broadway” (198). While Thoreau argued that farmers were slaves to their own fields, Emerson was by his side calling these men who worked on their land day after day fops—fools, pretenders of a knowledge that comprised their entire livelihood. They felt that a man could not know the land he plows if he is ignorant to its intricacies. Instead, Thoreau explained at the end of the chapter “Higher Laws” in Walden of a new intoxication with nature as he describes a farmer sitting on his farm after a long day of work: “A voice said to him, – Why do you stay here and live his mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these. – But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practice some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect” (237).
It was a new approach to understanding nature that Emerson and Thoreau challenged the world adopt. It was this approach that likely inspired Aldo Leopold to live with his entire family in a hut of similar dimensions to Thoreau’s or Bill McKibben to compare watching a day’s worth of television programming from every channel – some 2,400 hours to a single day in seclusion on a mountaintop.
Nature is not an inexhaustible resource that humans will always have unlimited access to. In fact, we have succeeded admirably in destroying and industrializing much of what is left of the wilderness and humans now inhabit almost all of the earth’s terrain; slowly but surely monopolizing the land and limiting space for other creatures. Both Thoreau and Emerson recognized the irreplaceable and invaluable importance of nature and sought to protect it by writing about their experiences in various essays, in hopes to both share and teach others how to preserve the wilderness. There are many “natural” concepts that both Thoreau and Emerson discuss that strangely are simultaneously discouraging and comforting. I would say, from my own experience as a reader that their belief in the unity of all things on earth has contributed to the tradition of nature writing because it emphasizes the interdependence between all living things and encourages all people to remember the delicate balance and dynamic of our ecosystem. Thoreau and Emerson raised their concerns about the threats that humans pose on nature and in a very real sense describe what we will lose if we continue to control, and essentially devour, the land. Both writers describe nature almost as the blueprints of our past. For this reason, they are originators of nature writing, for they discuss not only the use and importance of nature for all living beings, but also emphasize the knowledge that we will lose of ourselves and our history that lies in the land. Henry David Thoreau and Emerson are the “founding fathers” of nature writing because they discuss the theory and practice of “living deliberately” in coexistence with the environment. While they both at times tend to indulge in a slightly discouraging attitude, ultimately the underlying voice of their essays is really quite spiritual. Essentially, nature is a place where one can find completeness, spiritual renewal, the recognition of one’s identity. It is in this, that Thoreau and Emerson have created the new literary genre of nature writing.
ReplyDeleteThoreau and Emerson could be said to have created a new literary genre not necessarily in that they were writing about nature, but in that their works could not be said to truly fit into any pre-existing (or at least prevalent) genre. They did not merely spend time living in and studying “nature,” however one defines it, but rather also wrote on philosophy and humans’ relations with the world around them. For Thoreau and Emerson, nature writing did not simply mean describing the environment and wildlife (though Thoreau especially did more than his fair share of that). It meant nothing less than describing a way of life, seeking that over-arching power that Emerson deemed the “Over-Soul,” and finding an escape from the materialistic values of society back to their ideal of human life and oneness with nature, not just an appreciation for it.
ReplyDelete“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in,” wrote Thoreau. “I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains” (115). In manners such as this, both Thoreau and his predecessor and mentor, Emerson, speak of nature as much more than a picturesque landscape or backdrop; it becomes not just a part of everything, but in fact incorporates everything and everyone. As Emerson wrote, “If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest form” (209). Both Thoreau and Emerson thus reminded their readers that humans are neither able nor should they be permitted to dominate their surroundings as if it were their innate right. On the contrary, we are a part of it, that which “streams through us,” and in this way nature writing (as Thoreau and Emerson defined it, at least) involved writing about humans and philosophy just as much if not more so than it did writing about wildlife and ecology. Our ability to have an impact on “nature” in some ways is undeniable, but, as Thoreau and Emerson would point out, that comes about from our place in nature as players, not as rule makers – it is time to reevaluate the rules we have set for ourselves, if any.
H.D. Thoreau and R. W. Emerson might be the most famous nature writers in literary history, but they were not the first to write about man’s relationship with the natural world. In the early Renaissance, Amelia Lanyer and Jonson wrote the first country-house poems, which celebrated the depth of connection nature had with mankind, and Margaret Cavendish wrote poetry criticizing her English countrymen for exploiting natural resources. These three authors weren’t the originators of this genre, either. I believe that as long as people have written about the environment around them, nature writing has existed.
ReplyDeleteAlthough they did not invent nature writing, Thoreau and Emerson certainly revived it. They offered new ways of connecting with nature and discovering meaning in the world around us. Emerson stated that humanity – perhaps subconsciously – missed nature. Our urbanizing species, he pointed out, attempted to “call in nature” with their “hanging gardens, villas, garden houses, islands, parks, and preserves” (196). Man needs the beauty of nature, he argued. Meanwhile, Thoreau’s Walden was a guidebook to finding “the essential facts of life,” how to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” (108). He explained that by ridding himself of all luxury and immersing himself in the sights, sounds, tastes, and textures of nature, he could find self-improvement. He could become intimate with the natural world. Eventually, he found that “it was no longer beans that [he] hoed, nor [he] that hoed beans” (175). In other words, he had arrived at oneness with nature. It was through this oneness, Thoreau detailed, that he cultivated peace within himself.
The romance of the works of Thoreau and Emerson inspired generations of nature writers after them. Their legacy lives on through preservationist movements dedicated in their names and in the ambitions of writers like Aldo Leopold. It isn’t difficult to imagine where this author came by the idea to pack up his family and live in an isolated shack in the woods for recreation.
Thoreau and Emerson, the fathers of nature writing, introduced the notion that nature was an intricate part of the self. This idea made individuals look inward and shift from materialism back to a simplistic world by the re-immersion of the self into nature. While both believed in this ideal they each addressed the ideal of self and nature differently. Emerson focused on the larger picture; used universal terms, and wrote with abstract ideologies. He believed that the self experienced life differently. Whereas, Thoreau believed nature affects everyone the same. He used specific terminology and events from, personal experiences; at Walden Pond to support his belief. Emerson’s Experience essay opens up with a poem that sets supports his belief of individualism. “Walked about with puzzled look:--/Him by the hand dear Nature took” (l.16, 17). The three lines describe how experiences become individualist. Experiencing nature at fist is confusing and can leave the individual walking around puzzled. Yet, when the individual opens up to nature it speaks to them, leading them by the hand to new experiences, which makes each experience distinctly specific to each individual. He was stressing this notion of individuality. Truth becomes individualist because understanding the affects of nature on the self were different. Yet, Thoreau discussed the idea concretely by focusing on the affects of nature on the self as a whole. Thoreau cultivated a garden only large enough for what he intended to eat. While planting beans in the field he came to a realization, “they attached me to the earth” (171). This was the first moment in the Beanfield where Thoreau started to break down the liminal spaces. Thoreau no longer saw a distinction between nature and the self. “It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor that I hoed the beans” (175). The liminal space dissolved causing Thoreau to view nature and the self as one. Thoreau’s taken an insignificant bean and changed its identity by dissolving it and gave it a new perspective of significance as a part of the self.
ReplyDeleteThoreau and Emerson’s discussion of the self and nature was what started the genre of nature writing. The influence of their ideals and concepts are still seen in contemporary nature writers. Thoreau’s ideal of nature and the self is seen influencing Aldo Leopold in A Sand Country Almanac. Leopold takes Thoreau’s ideal a step further by anthropomorphizes nature. This reinforces the notion that the breakdown of liminal spaces caused nature and humans to be indistinguishable. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Anthropomorphizing Thoreau’s ideals brought awareness to a current issue. Individuals directly affect nature, which affects the self. If we do not preserve nature then the self will not be preserved. It is evident that the fathers of nature writing’s ideals and concepts are still influential in bringing awareness to current natural issues. Thoreau’s influence in Aldo Leopold writing aided him in drawing awareness that nature and the self are interconnected, and if one is affect then the other is inadvertently affected.
Emerson might be what some consider the forefather of Nature Writing. Similarly, Thoreau might be what some consider, “the apprentice,” the successor to Emerson, eventually the man who practically applied many of Emerson’s theories and brainchildren. Nonetheless, this does not mean that Thoreau and Emerson, though categorized homogenously as “Transcendentalists,” were entirely identical in their ideological constructs. Emerson seemed to hold society in damnation for its transgressions. He was scathingly critical of the propensity in all humans for materialism, frivolity, and convolution. He saw nature as the answer to the emptiness in Thoreau’s “mass of men,” and believed that we could find it through natural divinity and introspection—a connection with the ambiguously conceived, “Oversoul,” a concept Emerson defined by unclearly describing what it was not.
ReplyDeleteThoreau took this notion a step further when he expressed a state of mind and soul known as “wildness”. Naturally, “wildness” contained an element of spirituality like Emerson’s Oversoul, but it also presupposed that every living human being had the ability to achieve a meaningful, somewhat primordial contentment with the world independent of physical location. In this “wildness,” there is a sense of hope, an underlying belief that, at the very least, people have the potential for change. Thoreau is more optimistic and progressive than his mentor Emerson, and clearly more pragmatic. After all, “wildness” is a psychic experience that can be enjoyed regardless of place and time; in this sense, everyday laymen need not abandon their urban dwellings and journey to Walden. They need only make the psychic connection to wilderness, realize the subtle, symbiosis of spirit and mind that accompanies it, and cast away, if for only a brief moment, the societal minutia of mainstream existing.
Emerson and Thoreau represent an ideology that “transcends” traditional modes of thinking. The transcendence is based mainly upon their proclivity to look beyond liminal spaces, and to seek a meaning in life outside the social sphere in which we have all become so desperately entangled. In order to do so, however, one must logically turn to nature. After all, the only thing that existed before society reared its head was wilderness. Wilderness is the lifeblood of our existence, whether we stop to realize it or not.
Although Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are undoubtedly the biggest influencers of the “American nature writing” tradition, I think that their effect on the genre had more to do with their approach to their writings rather than the content of their works.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the term “nature writing” is somewhat of a misnomer; while the subject of the writing is often about the natural world and the author’s environment, I think that the two adjectives of “American” and “nature” in the title give the reader a false sense of confinement. Emerson and Thoreau were fixated on, and concerned with, their surroundings, but the importance of their works is not vested in a tree or the sky. Rather, the mentor and his pupil focused on the internal. They established that the concept of nature was no longer just a place; it was a state of mind, an emotion, a relationship, and a central component to a person’s very being. The nature of the writer is what mattered and, as we have seen thorough subsequent author’s works, it is entirely up to the individual to define and interpret.
Emerson and Thoreau wrote from the heart and advocated their beliefs in an attempt for society to see the error of its ways. In many cases, the most effective way for them to achieve this is by dissecting human nature and their own natures. Thoreau wrote, “I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another” (Walden, 153). He recognizes that people have the capability to become completely disjointed with themselves and their environment. The important thing to remember is that nature can be man’s solution to the problem of himself.
There is a conflict between the internal nature of man and the external nature of man’s surrounding environment. Without understanding and respecting the former, there is no way to contribute to, or be in touch with, the latter. Emerson and Thoreau proved that “nature writing” was a relevant American literary genre. But while their texts are anchored by natural environment, individuality and human nature drove their ideas. As Emerson put it, the purpose of his discourse was when “the inmost becomes the outmost” (Self-Reliance, 9). They created “American nature writing,” but it was up to the individual reader or later writers to interpret it for themselves.
It is my opinion that Emerson and Thoreau created the American Nature Writing genre through their unique and groundbreaking perspectives on the world around them. These two writers introduced the ideas that now form the basis for all nature writing. They encouraged their readers to be more aware of their surroundings, to examine their relationship with their surroundings, and to appreciate the need to preserve or conserve the natural world.
ReplyDeleteThese three themes, which have since been carried on by the nature writers that followed him, are readily apparent in Thoreau’s Walden. On the most basic level, Thoreau’s descriptions of the natural world around Walden Pond preserve the beauty of his surroundings for all future readers and assure that the things he describes will be appreciated for years to come. Simply by having his readers see the world as he saw it he builds an appreciation for the world around him. But Thoreau does more than just describe the natural world; he scours it for wisdom and connection to human life. By searching out the wisdom and connections with the natural world, Thoreau built a strong case for conservation and appreciation of the natural world. This change in perspective changed nature from a resource to be tapped into a resource that needs to be appreciated and cared for as it is. By looking at the natural world in this way, not just as surroundings but rather as something we can relate and connect to, Thoreau contributed, with the help of Emerson, to the creation of American Nature Writing.
Emerson’s perspective on the interconnectedness of all natural things was another important part of the foundation of American Nature Writing. Emerson’s ideas that all parts of nature rely on each other for survival are not only scientifically correct, but they also make us see how damaging one part of nature will inevitable effect nature as a whole. This type of understanding about how the world works and survives is a key component of conservation and preservation because it forces us to realize that we must maintain every part of nature for the whole to survive.
“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!” –Emerson
ReplyDelete“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” –Thoreau
There are many connections between Emerson and Thoreau. This should be obvious because of the apprenticeship of Thoreau to Emerson. Emerson originated many ideas and Thoreau expanded on those ideas. What are these ideas? Are they strictly about Nature outside ourselves? Or are they an appeal to the Nature within us. This is what I believe generates the brand of American nature writing. Of course there have been many other writers before Emerson and Thoreau to explore this idea of separation of Natural Environment and Human Environment. These authors took a different approach to this optimistic philosophy, for those of us in search of answers of why these divides have kept us apart from that piece of nature we are seeking. These authors are able to transfer their connection to this Nature and place it conveniently into their essays for those of us that maintain divided, for whatever reason. Both authors chose prose in order to highlight the qualities that we value from this rival.
I believe that every human desires the essential specifics of nature. Humanity as a whole has been at this constant struggle to become one with nature and transcend pass its own limitations; that of nature’s limits and our own, since they are one in the same. What these two authors were able to achieve is to suggest that transcendence is not achieved in separation from nature-nor is it found in surpassing nature. Real transcendence is found when you become one with this parallel we call nature.
Taking into account the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and specifically Walden and Nature, these two men are credited with developing American nature writing. They created a table of contents of sorts for future writers to work off of and to think about. Ideas of solitude and our connection to the wilderness and nature are presented. Latter writers have taken these ideas and developed them into deeper and further thoughts, while the whole drawing back to these two men as their inspiration. Thoreau, when he went to Walden Pond, pondered about the connectivity that we as humans have to nature. What is nature, and why do we separate ourselves? He commented that human beings have lost touch with nature and have put ourselves on a platform above other creatures. While humans could easily argue that our brain power and ability to create does separate us, we neglect to acknowledge then how important all beings are to our existence. While in nature, one is truly never alone because they are surrounded by the trees, birds, and bugs. Emerson commented about a sense of a natural instinct that we as humans have lost. Our ability to comprehend and interact with each other has left us vulnerable to insecurities about making our own right decisions. He talks of imitation as being the complete loss of one’s self. There was much argument in class about this purely because the philosophy is hard to see without badmouthing ourselves. Humans, he argued, conform to be like each other, thus ignoring our true nature and the wildness of our own decisions. These writers have caused me to think about ideas that I have never thought of before. Where does nature end? Since we are part of the ecosystem, aren’t our skyscrapers and Starbucks part of nature just like we consider a beaver dam to be part of nature. Leopold took these ideas and developed his theory of land ethic. There is an inherent good and bad, he said, when it comes to lands ability to preserve. Without the ideas brought forth by Emerson and Thoreau, we might be lacking the hypotheses that latter nature writers have given us.
ReplyDeleteI recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
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