The American Transcendentalists
Reading Journal
Word Count: 4510
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For my reading journal I chose to use the blog because I have done many blogs for classes, and have found it to be the best way for me to keep my thoughts in order. This reading journal/blog mainly focuses on The American Transcendentalist period in English Literature.
The American Transcendentalists were a group of people that focused on new ideas in Literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that first began in New England around the beginning to the middle of the nineteenth century. American Transcendentalist writers began their work in order to protest against their current state of society and culture that was prominent within the United States during that time period.
Sept. 2, 2009
Henry David Thoreau, from "Walking" (329-335)
"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil- to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a mere member of society." (Thoreau 330)
The selection from Thoreau's "Walking" that we were exposed to as our first reading in class touched me immediately. The quote listed above was the first line from the selected reading and I remembered reading this same quote for the first time my Sophmore year of high school. The year prior I was living in Park City, Utah, and the cities public high school was nothing more than a fashion show of wealth amongst my fellow students. Because I was focusing more on the shallow aspects of life rather than my academics, my mother thought it would be a good idea to send me away to a boarding school on the east coast. The first time I drove up to Proctor Academy in Andover, NH., I remember thinking to myself, 'what is this place, in the middle of nowhere!' Completely surrounding the small white and brick buildings were small rolling hills covered completely in trees, so many trees that I felt myself becomming claustrophobic. There was a small river running through the school, a fish pond in the middle of campus, and my dorm was the furthest away from all of the other buildings on top of a hill that backed up to the forest itself. Going to school here would be something that was completely different than anything I had ever expected, but it was something that would end up changing me forever. My first class was an English course, and the teacher began his lecture with the very quote listed above. He excalimed that being a part of the Proctor community also meant being a part of the Nature and wilderness that surrounded us. Classes were often held outside by the pond or under that large maple trees that we would extract syrup from. The hiking trails behind the dorms made it feel like you were away from civilization as soon as you walked 20 feet within the woods. A lot of the classes were centered around the idea that our world is all connected and we must understand nature to understand ourselves. Even though people do not realize it, we are a result of nature, and over time have chosen to separate ourselves from it. The separation from nature has made people appreciate it less and less, and at the same time has made people not understand that while civilization is a society, the entire world is a society in itself that must work together in order for everything to survive. People do not seem to notice that nature surrounds them no matter where they are, and that they need to become more aware of the natural world. I really apprecite Henry Thoreau's take on walking because it is an action that I hold dear to my heart. If I ever felt as though the stresses of the every day world were getting to me, or that I just needed to find solace within myself, I would step out of my dorm, walk 20 feet, and be completely away from what we call society.
Here are a few quotes from "Walking" that left an impact on me while reading:
"No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independance, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers." (331)
"How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground o suspect that most of them do not stand it at all." (332)
"In one-half hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not. . .
Sept. 4, 2009
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature" (31-67)
"Nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which both only do, but not know." Plotinus.
I also really enjoyed reading Emerson's "Nature" for it described many ways in which men are consistently connected to Nature. To describe the different ways in which Nature is an important every day aspect to our lives, Emerson uses chapters to differentiate the different ways in which Nature works to better the lives of the people it surrounds.
CH. 1:
This chapter was rather interesting because right off the bat I was forced to do some deep, heaving thinking. The first few lines exclaim how a man must completely remove himself from the chambers of society to reach complete solitute. How is it possible that Emerson is not solitary when he reads and writes by himself? This quote baffled me at first, but after some 'heavy' scholarly thinking, I realized that if a person is to read a newspaper or a novel, that reader is engaging in reader response to the language someone else had initially thought of and placed on paper. And while every reader response differs from one person to another, they are mentally shifted to think about something that someone else has previousely thought of before. However, if that same person were to immerse themselves into Nature and enter a wooded area where no one had stood for a long time, they could listen to the trees preaching what music really sounds like, watch the birds mobilize themselves only using the air beneath their wings, and the trees stand tall and nourished from the sturdy soil and natural watering habits delivered from the clouds. Everything found and seen in nature gives each person a different response, whether it is a childhood memory of climbing the largest tree alive, or a memory of a quiet walk on a beach with your father where nothing else seems to exist but the world God had created around us.
CH. 2: Commodity
This chapter considered the "final cause of the world." (36) I liked the idea that nature exists to help man suceed, and after reading deeping into it, I realized that without the natural aspects in our world, we would not be able to survive. Nature does in fact help man to suceed, and it also helps to nourish the man. "The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man." (37) This quote epitomizes the fact that everything natural on this earth happens for a reason, and if even one of these natural occurances was to get out of wack, everything on the planet would lose any chance of survival. All the different parts and peices of nature are necesary for life. They are commodoties, and we must treat them as such. If the world takes these commodoties for granted, the world might lose sight of why we are really able to live on this planet.
CH. 3: Beauty
"the simple perception of natural forms is a delight." (38) This quote stood out for me because it reflected on the ideas represented throughout the rest of the chapter. If a person is in a crowded city full of cars and noise, they may not take a second to find the beauty in the nature that does suround them no matter what. A lady walking across the street may not notice that the rain fall from the night before created a puddle in the street that created a natural miror reflecting the clouds in the sky above. The man who was forced to wake up at 6 in the morning to shovel his driveway of the snow instead of getting an extra hour of sleep may not realize the beauty and how lucky he was to wake up and see a world completley covered and protected by a clean, white blanket of freshly fallen, intricate and unique snowflakes that seem to all blend together into one layer. Because different components of nature (such as the "pain in the ass" snow to shovel or the little puddle that ruined her manolo heels) are looked at as a hastle because they remove you from the "civilized" world for just an instant, one is not able to see the beauty in the world that surrounds us every day.
CH. 4: Language
Language could be said to be somewhat of a mimesis to nature. The chapter starts off with a list that says, "1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit." (42) Somehow, every word borrowed from sensible things could be "appropriated to spiritial nature." (43) Saying that right originally meant strait and spirit originally came from wind, shows that our emotions and spirits are very much connected to different aspects in nature, hence creating words that are a mimesis to the different actions or material objects seen that immitate the feelings a person may have. I loved how Emerson found a way to connect differnt words in our language to their origins in Nature.
CH. 5: Discipline
"Nature is Discipline." (48)
1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths.
2. Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience.
This chapter reminds me of Naturalism and a lot of theories that are similar to Plato. Plato beleived that everything in our world was an immitation of nature, no matter what it was. I can personally see where sensible objects can reflect the concious, for if a person were asked to draw a picture of a landscape that refelcted the way they were feeling, an outside person unaware of that persons emotions would be able to depict the type of mood the artist was in just by seeign the sensible object in nature that was reflected in their work.
CH. 6: Idealism
Men and Nature are always joined.
CH. 7: Spirit.
The quote that I felt epitomized this chapter is such: "When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some related thoughts." (60) The spirit is thought to be the single organ of which the natural world is able to speak to a person- Native Americans were so in touch with Nature because they lived with many of the same beliefs Emerson has talked about in this writing. People feel different emotions from being in nature, whether it is a feeling of nervousness when standing on the edge of a cliff, a feeling of freedom when a strong gust of wind carries their senses to a far off land, or the icy tingle that stuns an entire body when just the toes step foot into a cold river. Nature does affect the spirit and the way a person reacts to or feels when they are exposed to the Natural world.
CH. 8: Prospect
This chapter reflected respecting the laws of the world. even though they are unwritten, they are just as important as every day laws seen in society and civilization.
Sept. 9-23, 2009
Henry David Thoreau, from "Walden"
Out of all the readings so far in class, this is the one that I found to be both the most intersting, but also the most difficult. I began reading "Economy" while lying in my bed with some distant music playing in the backround, (probably some trance music seeping up through the floors and into my room from my sisters computer) the cars were rather noisy in my "desperate housewife-ish" suburban neighborhood, and every once in a while a distant noice of a train carried from the tracks all the way into my bedroom window. This was not the way to read anything written by Thoreau. The work "Walden" has acted as Thoreau's way to express to society his feelings towards his own independance in the world, his own spirituality and as a guide for people to lean how to be self reliant. In this book, Thoreau lived somewhat like a hermit in isolation from the world so that he could learn to understand what it was like to for one to be self-sufficient and live in the most simple way possible.
"Economy":
This was about the years he spent isolated in a cabin near Walden Pond. I enjoyed reading this the most because I have visited Walden Pond with my mother on one of her vacations back east to visit me at boarding school. I have included two pictures below, one of Walden Pond, the other of Thoreau's house on Walden Pond:
The reason he wanted to live in this small cabin was to show the world that one could live a more beneficial lifestyle when they simplified every aspect of their lifestyle. In "Economy," Thoreau keeps tracks of everything he spends money on to show how he understands the meaning of being economical in hopes to show the reader that one could live a rather fulfilling lifestyle by spending less and living more off the land. The only four necessities one may need for survival as Thoreau believed were food, shelter, clothing and fuel. This idea reminded me when I was working as a sushi chef and my coworker began to discuss the economy and how the world was going to enter a stage of complete chaos. He told me that anyone who owned land, had access to their own water, seeds, meat and guns would be the only people who would prevail. He said that it may come down to a time where people would have to protect what they had and live off their own means. While I did not believe that people would have to protect their homes and family with guns, I did agree that it is important for people to be able to take care of themselves no matter what and I like the idea of being completely sustainable within your own home."Where I Lived, and What I Lived For":
A quote that stood out for me after reading this included: "Live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." If one can not learn how to live off the basic means of life and be prosperous from it, then they have not lived. At least that is what I got from this quote. I don't know... I just liked it.
During these few weeks we also read "Reading," "Sound," "Solitude," "Visitors," "The Bean-Field," "The Village," "The Ponds," "Baker Farm," "Higher Laws," "Brute Neighbors," "House Warming," "Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors," "Winter Animals," "The Pond in Winter," "Spring," and "Conclusion." Because this material stressed the importance that one should get outside and be in Nature, Prof. Leubner suggested that we try an alternative approach to learning and immerse ouselves within nature for a few class periods. While most of the time the students refused to read the assigned classwork, we were sitting outside under the trees and discussing life with one another. Just being outside made me more of my surroundings, and after having read Thoreau, I was able to notice more of my natural surroundings that I had the previous week. The grass was wet from the morning dew, and the dirt underneath it was still cold from the night before. The trees had not yet began to change color, and the sky had a crisp bite to is as though fall were creeping its way to Montana. Sitting outside with the class made me realize that my initial approach to reading Thoreau in my bedroom was not a productive one, and I read the remaining stories from this reading either under a tree, or in a chair on my front porch. Just being somewhat removed from civilization made the comprehension and enjoyment of the subject matter that much more enjoying.
Sept. 23, 2009
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" (82-99)
I did not enjoy reading this speech as much as I enjoyed reading his work nature. I like the idea that he wanted to escape from the political powers and cultures of Europe that he exclaimed as, "from under its iron lids," (83) in order to try and create a new identity for America. He believed
that it was very important for every American to have a relationship to Nature. He exclaimed that the scholarly people look down upon people who work in the fields and gather their own food, and that every man, even the scholars, should try and better their relationship. This quote explains this idea: "Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is a man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry." (84) After this quote he goes on to talk about how the tradesman do not respect anything that the farmer did before he got a hold of the products, and that this appreciation gets less and less as the products reach the hands of the consumers. This was important for me to read because my family has a cattle ranch in Wyoming, something that has helped create a Western American identity. All summer, the cows are cared for, herded, vaccinated and birthed in order for people to be able to eat beef. When a person goes to the grocery store they may not realize the connection to land and nature that the producer must have had in order to bring the food to the rest of the world, hence, making almost everything we eat a connection to the land. Scholarly appearances are not the most important thing in the world. For a scholar to truly succeed in the world they must begin to think for themselves. They must not be influenced by other mans thoughts. And most importantly, they must learn to better understand nature, for nature is always a part of ones mind, body and soul.Sept. 25, 2005
Margaret Fuller, "Recollection of Mystical Experiences" (158-161)
I loved reading Margaret Fuller's "Recollection of Mystical Experiences" because I feel very similarly to her in many ways. Growing up I did not have to go to church, but as soon as my father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and lost his life, my mother wanted to attend church every Sunday. The last church I attended was in Park City, Utah, and had a large window
behind where the pastor spoke. This window looked strait out towards the mountains, and the Canyons Resort. I was never a religious person as much as I found myself a spiritual person. I would sit through the redundant sermons just waiting to get outside and enjoy the newly fallen snow, the sunshine on my face and the crisp air I would cut through while racing down the mountain. I felt that one could be closer to God if they were outside enjoying the beauties he created on this earth rather that sitting in a condensed church listening to impressive literature from the Bible. Another part of this reading I found interesting was when she exclaimed, "How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it? I remembered all the times and ways in which the same thought had returned." (160) This quote was amazing to me because I can not tell you how many times I have thought to myself, wow I am Erin Mortenson, I am a living being, this is my train of thought that is different from anyone else, and how am I going to make the most out of my time on earth and be extraordinary? Time, Space and Human Nature are the only limitations we must live under.Sept. 30, 2009
Orestes Brownson, from "The Laboring Classes" (193-200)
"The actual condition of the working-man to-day, viewed in all its bearings, is not so good as it was fifty years ago. If we have no been altogether misinformed, fifty years ago, health and industrious habit, constituted no mean stock in trade, and with them almost and man might aspire to competence and independence. But it is so no longer. The wilderness has receded, and already the lands beyond the reach of the mere laborer, and the employer has him at his mercy." (196) This quote is very important to think about because just a hundred years ago, the amount of wilderness in our country was millions of acres larger. Is the wilderness receding or is our industrial growth just getting larger? Someone in class had exclaimed that very acre in our country is only 20 miles away from a paved road, and this does not even count the unpaved roads. This idea makes me sad because escaping civilization is so difficult these days, and if we continue to grow and grow, the wilderness will only get smaller, hence shrinking to nothing in the future to come.
George Ripley et al, "Brook Farm's (First Published) Constitution" (235-243)
While the idea of creating a profitable farm is smart, I don't think its the greatest idea. I think it is a stronger idea for men to have their own farms, pull their own labor and have their own food. a person would succeed much better a purist without the impressions of other people.
Oct. 2, 2009
Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (208-231)
I have read this essay before in previous classes and have always enjoyed it. I like the idea that the individual should avoid conformity and follow their own path in search for their own individual identity. "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that ency is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till." This quote is very important because it is saying that if you do not go out and do things for yourself, you will never accomplish anything. As the Priestly writer in the Bible writes, one will not do good for themselves unless they actually do something. If a person does not trust their own self or their own instincts, then they will not be able to obtain that single kernel of nourishing corn and must join the rat-race so others may deliver that corn to them instead. The next quote that I found to be important is such: " For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure." (215) This is so true even in today's society. If one is to step away from the norm and do their own thing, people see it as weird or not right, however, this person is not letting someone else get the corn for them, they are doing all the work themselves, hence, making them more of an individual than anyone else. The next quote is such: " The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men." (230) This quote is important because it does make you think about art, inventions and different forms of clothing in a different manner. Are these forms of arts just masks that we hide behind? Even though it is all evolving, in reality we are still just creating art, and wearing clothes, and inventing machinery.Oct. 5, 2009
Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" (257-277)
Also known as "Civil Disobedience." "That government is best when it governs the least." (258)
This was a very interesting essay to me because it is saying how people in government positions are always saying what their way is, and they only judge people by the "effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions." (259) Thoreau is not saying that he wants there to be no government at all, he is just asking that we get a better government. For example: Governments that are based off of the idea of majority rule are not and cannot be based on justice. If a person is living under a government that rules unjustly, then they are living in a prison that they are not able to escape. The walls on confinement under an unjust government just get smaller and smaller making man more willing to try and disobey the laws. If everyone was happy with how the country was being ruled, then more people would be more willing to obey by the laws placed upon them.
Final Reflection:
After reading all of the different authors from the Transcendentalist period, I have began to realize that people do need to become more aware of their surroundings and nature because without nature, and what is left of our wilderness, people would not be able to survive. Everything in this world works together, from the air, water, sun, people, farmers, equipment and the government. Everything has its place in the world and everything and everyone must work together to keep the balance of it all, for if one component becomes out of whack or misplaced, then the entire world as we know it will shatter. I find myself appreciating the colors of the trees changing, and the different reflections of light off the Galatin river in a much different manner than I had prior to reading all these essays, speeches etc... We live in a beautiful place that is completely surrounded by wilderness, one must just walk for 20 minutes to escape everything and be in a world that only exists between your spirit and the Nature within it.
