Topic > The Criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson - 2180

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. He was the son of a Unitarian minister and a descendant of New England clergymen. This led him to become a minister himself and later to stop focusing on his philosophy called transcendentalism. Emerson began writing in his youth and later attended Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard in 1821 she taught at a girls' school. The Anthology of American Literature book says, “Like his philosophy, his writing seemed to lack organization, but teemed with epigrams and memorable passages” (939). Although Ralph Waldo Emerson's works had flaws, "he was the most notable American essayist of the nineteenth century" (Anthology of American Literature 938). According to Daniel G. Payne Emerson's point Standing on the bare earth, with your head bathed in the crisp air and lifted into infinite space, all petty egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see everything; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God" (942). The book Anthology of American Literature is not the only source that supports Emerson critic Eric Wilson's claim: "Emerson's famous "transparent eyeball" passage all he beginning of Nature is often interpreted as being an exemplary statement of the transcendental sublime. However, if we read it as a reaffirmation of his vision in the Jardin des Plantes, we realize that it reveals Emerson as a sign in the text of nature, a hieroglyph, describing his own design, dissolving his own solution” (Wilson). The solution Emerson wanted was to discover who he was through nature and still be divine. Emerson proves that it's okay to find confidence in yourself separate from everyone around you. People tend to begin this mediation process by asking questions about the future, love, religion and much more. This is how you discover who you are by uniting with nature and allowing yourself to be free to transcendentalism, if God exists, he can be found through human intuition. In the book “Anthology of American Literature” it is mentioned that “Emerson believed in a correspondence between the world and the spirit, that nature is an image in which human beings can perceive the divine” (939). If a Puritan were to read this, they would think he was an atheist because he went against God's will, which they called predestination. Everything related to nature was against predestination, but Emerson did not agree with the Puritans. Emerson believed that God is still found through nature because he created the world. In his writing “Nature,” he says, “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship” (Emerson 962). He believed that the more you emerge with nature the more divine you will be, because God created nature as art. He also raised the argument that if you do not associate with nature then you do not understand your surroundings, just as you will not understand God. In the writing “Nature”, he says “We are as alien to nature as we are alien to God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and the tiger tear us apart... Isn't it the landscape, every glimpse of which has its own grandeur, its own face? Yet this can show us what the discord is between man and nature, since you can freely admire a noble landscape if workers dig