Emerson Whitman Emerson and Whitman

Emerson Whitman

Emerson and Whitman on Experience in Literature

The 'experience' which is used to inform the composition of literature in general is vulnerable to critical scrutiny primarily because it aspires to state or observe something about the human experience which is universal. This aspiration makes any attempt at offering one's personal experience subject to critical hostility. It is this phenomenon that inclines the essay by Theo Davis, who remarks on the particularly challenging ambition of the transcendental movement to relate something universal about human experience in its writing output while simultaneously arguing that most men are fundamentally disaffected from these real experiences. Davis notes that critics have simultaneously been moved to harshly criticize as indulgent and unrealistic the universal imposition of the transcendental writer's experience or to place these same ambitions on a pedestal for blind admiration. However, Davis argues, it is more accurate to view such work as that by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman as an urging to all men. That is, Davis does not view the transcendental movement as a reflection on universal experiences so much as a literary call to pursue these experiences in whatever individual capacities are possible. I am inclined to agree with Davis that works such as Emerson's Nature and Whitman's Song of Myself romanticize the modes of self-awareness and individuality suitable to the writers themselves, but that the universality extends simply from the idea that each individual must engage life's experiences in such a way as to gain these same insights.

Discussion

Davis points out that Emerson is verily savaged by many critics who perceive his attempts at individualism as being philosophically misguided. Emerson's emphasis on experiences within the untainted majesty of nature separates his literature from many more accessible examinations of humanity. Davis reiterates before refuting the views of many thinkers who see Emerson's ideologies as distant, academic and irrelevant to the way that the world must be experienced. Much of this hostility is entwined with Emerson's ambition to experience solitude. Accordingly, Emerson would remark, "to go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime." (p. 8)

Where some have referred to this approach at 'experience' as a kind of anonymity rather than individuality, Davis suggests that the literary presentation of experience is of a more symbolic nature. Emerson does not suggest -- as though this would be possible -- that all men should disavow society and seek solitude. But this experience does allow him to make the case that all men should at least seek themselves, however the shape of their respective lives allow this. This is the universality that permeates the transcendental movement and touches on the romanticism of poet Walt Whitman. Like Emerson, his work would reflect a distinctly American mode of individualism. It would be from this spirit that he would draw on his own experiences as having some meaning beyond his own identity. We find immediately that Whitman's work as deeply progressive for its time. From a literary and philosophical perspective, its willingness to reflect on the soul with abstraction and metaphor would show Whitman's work to be bold in its expressive liberties. A 'problem' to be construed by the individual reader emerges from this liberty with respect to traditional definitions of the 'soul' in western literature and Whitman's more elaborate understanding of the concept. In 'Song of Myself' it may not be that Whitman regards his soul as his own, but rather as something in a shared American experience. Where Whitman indicates, "I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself / and what I assume you shall assume / for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," it is made almost immediately apparent what he intends as he proceeds with the piece, urging that he has intended to celebrate what he considers to be his consonance with all men. There is a real sense that Whitman intends to extend a warmth to his fellow man with a pointed reference to what might be seen as nationalist pride. So are we led to believe when he remarks "My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air / Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same / I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death." (Whitman, 1) This strikes us as a wish that begins within him and extends outward to his countrymen, urging peace and brotherhood in the face of mounting industrialization and cultural discord.