Romanticism and Transcendentalism

Romanticism

The Fire Side Poets concentrated mainly on domestic topics. They are also called school room poets since they were taught at schools, their poems were clear, easily accessible, conservative, sentimental, didactic and promoted common sense and honesty. There were partly poets Emerson called for because they relied on American sources.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT came from the Calvinist background, was influenced by Romanticism and started writing psalms. His famous poem Thanatopsis shows fascination with the dark melancholic themes and reminds of Burn's poetry. He believed that America is great inspiration for poets with natural resources for poetry without turning to Europe. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was a Romantic writer who became the most widely read American poet. Both parents were descendants of early settlers. He was invited to teach literature at Harvard and translated Aligheri's Divine Comedy which is considered to be the best modern translation. 

The Hymn to the Night is the most famous poem of the collection Voices of the Night. Paul Revere’s Ride celebrated an American patriot. He used a very American theme, Indian tradition, and created a figure of a noble savage. His poem Song of Hiawatha is about a heroic and very intelligent Indian chief whose tribe has to make room for the white and he is murdered.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL succeeded Longfellow as a professor at Harvard when he left to be only a writer. He is famous for satirical pieces in The Biglow Papers where he created a fictional character Biglow who is a simple farmer. It is a criticism of slavery, Mexican war, politics of the South and the Civil War. A Fable for Critics is a series of jokes and open comments on contemporary literary representatives. He did not spare Emerson, Poe or Longfellow.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER was an open critic of slavery, influenced by Burns and Scott. Unlike his contemporaries he never received university education. He was devoted to political poetry as in his long poem Panorama.

  

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was the first American philosophical movement based on neo-Platonism and Immanuel Cant that started as a reaction to the 18th century rationalism. It originated in Concord (Massachusetts)  in 1836 which was a small New England village where Emerson and Thoreau lived. It was the first American movement that influenced Europe and this disobedience influenced in the beat generation and feminist movement. They did not publish a common manifesto as they insisted on individual differences. Transcendentalists believed that organized religion and political parties corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that man is at his best when self-reliant, one with nature and independent.

They were inspired by British Romanticism so they shares their idealistic vision of the world, appreciation of nature, belief in individuality, emotions over reason and creative potential of artists but they called from unique American forms. Transcendentalists started their own magazine The Dial (1840-1844). They were also against slavery and founded utopian community Brook Farm where they tried to be self-sustainable and ate what they grew. However, their utopian experiment failed.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

He was a founder of the movement that influenced American literature a lot, also one of the founders of symbolism with Whitman and Poe as followers. He studied at Harvard, was a priest but he was too liberal so he had to leave the Church. He went to England where he met members of the first generation of Romanists, mainly the Late Poets. When he came back, he wanted to use Romantic attitude in American culture, gathered scholars who shares his vision and starts giving lectures, later rewritten into essays like Over-Soul, The Poet.

Emerson was also the first American scholar and tried to urge audience to become independent and start to rely on American sources; he wanted national literature and culture and found inspiration in nature. He said that Americans should forget obsession with the past in all aspects and metaphors should be taken by direct observation of nature (until then symbols were mainly religious – cross: suffering of Jesus, bird – the Holy Spirit) because Emerson believed symbols should not have fixed meaning. People should not just read books but explore nature themselves; they should not fall under tyranny of books but rather create their own thoughts.

Nature (1836) was an essay published anonymously, the first attempt to understand nature since the Puritans who hated it and Republicans did not care. Emerson studied Hindu and Buddhism but maintained Protestant who believed in individualism, harmony with nature and was against slavery. He says that people are too fixed on history, books and traditions but just observing nature and trusting it is enough and can answer any question. We look too much into past and do not have own our vision but Americans have new nature and therefore new thoughts. Why can we trust nature more than history? Nature has answers for everything because God created world including nature so it is a reflection of God´s perfect order so everything can be learned from the nature.

Universe is composed of Nature and Soul. Soul means me and Nature is all that is not me and surrounds us. Nature with small “n” are only parts we see, with capital “N” it includes everything, the whole universe. Everything created by men are Arts, useful arts is Technology. Soul creates Arts that imitate Nature. Men also create something = art is an imitation of creating process. Soul and Nature were created by God and everything together is Over-soul. Watching nature is mysterious but often we just walk and do not see what is around us, only children see it, they are naturally curious about things. People see nature differently, for carpenter the tree is timber, for poet something poetic. Whatever happens in the nature corresponds to current mood you are in so what happens in Nature happens also in Soul. And body belongs to Nature.

Commodity is any material found in nature (birds build nests) so it is nature that provides us commodity. Kosmos comes from Greek work kosmein –> cosmetits = attempt to make us more beautiful but everything in the world is beautiful. In the sentence “I become a transparent eye-ball, I am nothing I see all” he refers to Buddhist view since when we forget ego, we see things how they really are. The eye is the best of artists because the eye is finding beauty where others cannot find it and see it beautiful even if nobody else does.

When it comes to beauty, first is sensual and more than a writer could say, second is spiritual with combination of human will like wisdom and morality (what is moral and for God is beautiful), third is intellect that searches the absolute order of things and wants to see that everything in nature has purpose and function. We can find even ant beautiful sensually and then we ask what its function is and why it was created? Even Language is in relationship with nature. All words are derived from some nature facts, nature metaphors to describe what is in your head so there indeed is a link between soul and nature. Corruption of language happens when speakers use words they do not understand so language is separated from nature, also lying and using language wrongly.

Emerson was also a poet. In his Concord Hymn he celebrates the heroes who died at the Battle of Concord (1775), the first battle of the American Revolution. He believes that their revolutionary spirit and deeds will be remembered. The Rhodora is a poem about a simple flower called rhodora whose beauty, according to the narrator, rivals even roses. In addition, it blooms freely in the nature, making its surrounding "with their beauty gay." The narrator just accidentally finds "fresh rhodora in the woods" and is blown away by its beauty. "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for Being."

Brahma is named after Hindu god of creation but Brahm can also refer to the soul or self. Uriel is regarded as a poetic summary of Emerson's early philosophy. Uriel is a young angel who preaches against the linear perceptions as he claims "line in nature is not found, unit and universe are round." He fights with the old gods who believe in the linear doctrine but the idea of round time and nature remains "a sad self-knowledge" of only Uriel. Give All to Love promotes to "obey thy heart, nothing refuse" and give everything to love. In poems Water and Parks and Ponds he celebrates nature.

  

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) /forou/ was more practical and tried to put transcendentalism into everyday life. He ended for a year in the Concord jail because he refused to pay taxes for six years, he did not want to support government that run the Mexican War and. He found the first American ecological movement and he is the only author one still influential nowadays to writers like Gary Snyder.

Civil Disobedience (1849) is his most influential work in which he tried to persuade Americans not to follow government; people should have the right to oppose if something goes against their conscience. It influenced Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He went to forest, lived there for two years, two months and two days and wrote Walden or Life in the Woods (1854) where he describes his year of solitude (though, there was some lady that was bringing him food). He was reading, observing nature and writing a series of meditations about relationship of men and nature. He refers to the Buddhist teachings and Latin classics. Animals are described metaphorically as people teaching us lesson as he compares ants to vicious warriors.

He was also a poet. In his poem The Moon Now Rises to Her Absolute Rule, Thoreau celebrates the moon as it rises at night and personifies it as a female aspect, giving it "absolute rule" over the night. Men "acknowledge her for their mistress" as the moon shines upon the ground.

MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850) was interested in German Romanticism and translated Goethe into English. Later she became an editor of The Dial and became the first professional American female journalist – a founder of American feminism. Her legacy is Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the earliest American reflection of women's role in the society which stresses the importance of self-dependence which woman lack. She went to Europe, married and had a child but upon returning their ship sunk the whole family died. She also wrote poetry but her poems, styled after Emerson, do not have the same quality as her criticism.