LITERARY TRANSCENDENT ALISM Style and l1ision in the American Renaissance LITERARY TRANSCENDENTALISM Style and Vision in the American Renaissance LAWRENCE BUELL Cornell Paperbacks CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London Copyright © 1973 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850 , or visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 1973 by Cornell University Press. First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1975 The lines from Howl and Other Poems , by Allen Ginsberg, copyright © 1956, 1959 by Allen Ginsberg, are reprinted by permission of City Lights Books. International Standard Book Number 978-0-8014-9152-8 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-8409 The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attributi o n-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ TO MY FAMILY Acknowledgments This book owes its existenee to a sueeession of teaehers who showed me the possibilities of literary study by example as well as preseription. For support and eriticism in my studies of Transeendentalism, 1 am grateful to James MeConkey, G. Ferris Cronkhite, Walter Slatoff, and especially Jonathan Bishop. Equally important has been Arthur Mizener's constant eneour- agement through the years. To Oberlin College 1 am indebted for support (through a leave of absenee and two grants-in-aid) to pursue researeh. The George and Eliza Howard Foundation also supported my re- seareh with a generous grant in 1969-1970. My colleagues Dewey Ganzel, Robert Pieree, and John Olm- sted read portions of this manuseript at various stages of its evolution and eontributed valuable insights. Richard Brown, in many long eonversations, helped my understanding of New England history. 1 am also indebted to former Oberlin students for suggestions on a number of topies, especially to Suzanne Bernstein, Dan Campbell, and Bruee Nygren. Ms. Bernstein also served as my researeh assistant in 1971. The offieers of several libraries have given me permission to examine and quote from manuseripts in their possession. Quo- tations from manuseripts by Emerson, Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, and William Ellery Channing II are by permission of the Harvard College Library. The Massaehusetts Historical Soeiety has granted permission to quote from manuseripts by vii viii Acknowledgments Theodore Parker and Christopher Cranch; the Andover-Har- vard Theological Library of the Harvard Divinity School, from Theodore Parker; the Boston Public Library, from Elizabeth Peabody; and the "\Vellesley College Library, from Jones Very. For permission to quote from manuscripts by Emerson, Alcott, Channing, and Cranch l am indebted also to the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association, to Mrs. F. Wolsey Pratt, to Mr. Laurence M. Channing, and to Mrs. Emerson Evans, respec- tively. Doubleday & Company, Inc., has granted permission to re- print "A Transcendental Conversation" from The American Transcendentalists, edited by Perry Miller. Earlier versions of a few portions of this book appeared in American Quarterly (1968, 1972) and in American Transcen- dental Quarterly (1971). l am grateful to the editors for permis- sion to use this material here. l am grateful also to the staff of the Oberlin College Steno- graphic Services Department for typing my manuscript. Finally, l have dedicated this book to my family, to whom l owe much more than any public acknowledgment can tell. LAWRENCE BUELL Oberlin, Ohio Con ten ts Abbreviations Introduction PART I. BACKGROUND AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1 The Emergence of the Transcendentalist Aesthetic from XI 21 American U nitarianism 23 2 Transcendentalist Literary Method: Inspiration versus Craftsmanship 55 PART lI. THE LIVING WORD 75 3 From Conversation to Essay 77 4 From Sermon to Scripture 102 PART IlI. WORD AND WORLD: NATURE AS A MODEL FOR LITERARY FORM 141 5 Emerson and the Idea of Microcosmic Form 145 6 Catalogue Rhetoric 166 7 Thoreau and the Literary Excursion 188 8 Thoreau's A Week 208 9 Ellery Channing: The Major Phase of a Minor Poet 239 PART IV. THE FIRST PERSON 263 10. Transcendentalist Self-Examination and Autobiograph- ical Tradition 11. Emerson and Thoreau: Soul versus Self 12. Transcendental Egoism in Very and Whitman Index 33 1 Abbreviations JA The Journals o/ Bronson Aleott. Selected and edited by Odell Shepard. Boston: Little, Brown, 1938. JE Journals o/ Ralph Waldo Emerson. 10 vols. Edited by Edward Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes. Boston: Houghton MifHin, 1909-1914. JMN The Journals and Miseellaneous Notebooks o/ Ralph Waldo Emerson. 8 vols. to date. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960--. JT The Journal o/ Henry D. Thoreau. 14 vals. Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. Bastan: Hough- ton MifHin, 1906. Ossoli Memoirs o/ Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Edited by James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William H. Channing. Boston:Phillips, Sampson, 1852. Tr The Tmnseendentalists: An Anthology. Edited by Perry Miller. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. W The Complete Works o/ Ralph Waldo Emerson. 12 vals. Edited by Edward W. Emerson. Bastan: Houghton Mif- fiin, 1903-1904. Wa Henry Thoreau. Walden. Edited by J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Wr The Writings o/ Henry David Thoreau, vols. I-VI. Bos- ton: Houghton MifHin, 1906. LITERARY TRANSCENDENTALISM Style and Vision in the American Renaissance Introduction The purpose of this book is to survey the literary art and criti- cism of the American Transcendentalists and to contribute in the process to a better understanding of the relationship be- tween style and vision in aH nonfictional literature. Most of what the Transcendentalists wrote falls into this cate- gory of nonfictional literature, presenting a mixture of piety, poetry, and sententiousness that is neither art nor argument but a compound of both. Their criticism shows a similar ambiva- lence. Largely for this reason, their aesthetic is still imperfectly understood, even though much scholarship has been devoted to various aspects of the movement. It is relatively easy, for exam- pIe, to picture Emerson as a romanticized descendant of Jona- than Edwards or as a harbinger of America's literary indepen- dence; it is harder to explain how his combination of the roles of clergyman and poet distinguishes his work in its own right, beca use he did not realize either role in a profound or consistent way. Compared to the great European romantics, Emerson seems provincial and inhibited; compared to Edwards, he seems dilettantish, a gourmet of spiritual ideas. The Transcendentalist movement as a whole, by the same token, has appealed to schol- ars more as a symptom of New England's inteHectual flowering --or decay-than for its intrinsic merits as a body of literature or as a system of thought. From one point of view this consensus is justified: undoubt- edly Emerson and his circle are more important for historical 1 2 lntroduction reasons than for the quality of their achievements in art, philos- ophy, and theology. As is often pointed out, however, their stature increases when one considers them as "thinkers" or "prophets" rather than in terms of a particular intellectual dis- cipline. One then begins to get caught up in the excitement of their vision; their very lack of discipline begins to seem a source of greatness; and it is the critics of their impure art or shallow theology who begin to seem parochial. Even those readers who are fundamentally unsympathetic to Transcendentalist idealism often come to respect the suggestiveness, rhetorical power, and fineness of discernment in works like Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and Theodore Parker's Discourse 01 the Transient and Per- manent in Christianity. Neither is fully satisfying as an exposi- tion of theology or as a work of art, yet one feels that such classifications do not matter, that the two discourses are in any case impressive literary-religious performances. Criticism needs to find better ways of measuring the qualities of such works, in order to account for the impression of excel- lence they convey and to explain their impact upon large num- bers of readers both then and now. This book attempts such an inquiry. Through a combination of intellectual history, critical explication, and genre study, it undertakes to outline the nature and evolution of the Transcendentalists' characteristic literary aims and approaches, and the ways in which these express the authors' underlying principIes or visiono So far the word "Transcendentalism" has be en used in a very general sense; to avoid confusion, it should be defined more pre- cisely, since the term is notoriously vague. 1 "Vagueness" was in- 1 Of the many short overviews of Transcendentalism, perhaps the most satisfactory are Howard Mumford Jones, "Transcendentalism and Emer· son," in .-Jt!ief and Disbelief in American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicag<> Press, 1967), pp. 48-69: and Alexander Kern, "The Rise of Tran· scendentalism, 1815-1860," in Transitions in American Literary History, ed. Harry Hayden Clark (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1953), pp. 245-315. Introduction deed what "Transcendentalism" chiefly connoted in its first popular usage in New England. As Le Corbusier has remarked of the term "abstract" in art criticism, avant-garde movements always have ridiculous names, because they are baptized by their enemies; Transcendentalism was no exception. The label was first applied in disparagement, to suggest outlandishness. The implication of an organized school of thought with fixed doc- trines was misleading: actually, the Transcendentalists had no specific program or common cause, and their beliefs were often in a state of flux. Sorne therefore refused to accept the ru bric, and those who did differed in their interpretations of it. James Freeman Clarke called himself a Transcendentalist simply be- cause he did "not believe that man's sen ses tell him all he knows." 2 For George Ripley the term meant, more specifically, a belief in "the supremacy of mind over matter" (Tr, p. 255). Christopher Cranch, however, considered Transcendentalism as nothing more than "that living and always new sPirit of truth, which is ever going forth on its conquests into the world" (Tr, p. 301). Jonathan Saxton claimed that "every man is a transcen- dentalist"; 3 Emerson denied that there was such a thing as a "pure Transcendentalist" (W, I, 338). Small wonder, then, that at one time or another studies of every major Transcendentalist have tried to disassociate their hero from the charge of Tran- scendentalism. 4 N evertheless, the term does have an accepted core of meaning, which can be stated briefly and I think uncontroversially. Fur- ther ramifications are possible, and sorne will be introduced be- low, but for the moment a short working definition should suffice. 2 John Wesley Thomas, James Freeman Clarke: Apostle of German Cul- ture to America (Boston: Luce, 1949), p. 131. 3 "Prophecy-Transcendentalism-Progress," Dial, 2 (1841), 87. 4 For a list of instances, see William R. Hutchison, The Transcenden- talist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 28n. This book is the best avail- able study of the theological and ecclesiasticaI aspects oI Transcenden- talism. 4 Introduction Historically, New England Transcendentalism can be viewed as one of many instances of the widespread religious ferment which took place in America during the first half of the nine- teenth century.5 As a self-conscious movement, Transcenden- talism served as an express ion of radical discontent within American Unitarianism (which, in turn, was a liberal movement within Congregationalism), arising from objections to Unitarian epistemology and the Lockean psychology upon which it was based. Locke held that all human knowledge is derived empiri- cally, through the experience of the senses; the Unitarians, ac- cepting this as a premise, held that God and his laws are ap- prehended by rational reflection on the natural creation and the revelations of scripture, rather than by direct intuition. 6 To the young Unitarian radical s of the 1820S and 1830s, however, this position was oppressive, for it seemed to cut man off from God. Stimulated by post-Kantian thought, as interpreted chiefly by Goethe, Carlyle, and especially Coleridge, they began about 1830 to contend, with the aid of a distinction adapted from Coleridge, that in addition to his "understanding" or capacity for empirical reasoning man has a higher mental faculty, or "Reason," which enables him to perceive spiritual truth in- 5 For a general sense of the contemporary religious context of Transcen- dentalism, see Perry Miller, The Lite ot the Mind in America, trom the Revolution to the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, 1965), Book 1; Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1944), Parts 1 and II; William Warren Sweet, The Story ot Religion in America (New York: Harper, 1930), pp. 258-284; Winthrop Hudson, Religion in America (New York: Scribner, 1965), pp. 158-2°3. 6 A thorough discussion of the Unitarians' relation to Locke would take into account discrepancies between them and Locke resulting from the fact that the Unitarians received his ideas largely through the medium of his Scottish successors, the so-caBed Common Sense School. See, for exam- pIe, Edgeley Woodman Todd, "Philosophical Ideas at Harvard College, 1817-1837," New England Quarterly, 16 (1943), 63-9°, and especiaBy Daniel Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, r805-r86r (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 27-44 and passim. Introduction 5 tuitively.7 The Unitarians' idea of reasonjunderstanding (they used the two terms interehangeably) was aetually more liberal than their erities realized; as we shall see in Chapter 1, Unitari- anism ean be said to have paved the way for the radieals' posi- tion. N evertheless the distinetion made by the latter between two sharply differing mental faculties was a significantly new de- parture. The eoneept of a higher Reason is the heart of what carne to be called Transcendentalism. Those who recognized sueh a fac- ulty sometimes called it by different names, such as "Spirit," "Mind," "Soul," and they also differed in the claims they made for it. For sorne Transcendentalists it was simply an inner light or conscience; for others is was the voice of God; for still others it was literally God himself immanent in mano Sorne regarded the informing spirit primarily as an impersonal cosmic force; others continued to think of it in traditional anthropomorphic terms. Ecclesiastically, the Transcendentalists ranged widely in their radicalism: James Freeman Clarke, William H. Furness, and Convers Francis were moderates who eventually became pillars of the Unitarian establishment; Jones Very claimed (briefly) that he was the new Messiah. 8 Though this might seem to have been an unacceptably nebulous situation, in fact the Transcendentalists did not differ among themselves as much as Kant did from sorne of his German successors. The vagueness of the principIe "uniting" the Transcenden- talists seems to pose more of a problem when it comes to decid- ing who was a Transcendentalist and who was noto As we shall 7 Precisely what Emerson and other Transcendentalists meant by the intuitive perception of truth is a nice question which is discussed at length in Chapter 2, below. In calling the intuitive faculty by the name of Rea- son, they were faced from the start with a semantic paradox which they never satisfactorily resolved. 8 Individual Transcendentalists also differed markedly in their radi- calism on specific issues. Thus Alcott insisted more than Emerson on the idea of immanence, but also retained a belief in a personal God, as did Very.