Transcendentalism and the American Voice

The father of American Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the leading architect of American poetry, Walt Whitman, had a complicated relationship. Emerson, a fountainhead of American individuality, praised the as yet unknown poet Whitman for his first edition of Leaves of Grass: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Whitman, having been much inspired by Emerson and his philosophy of Transcendentalism, was honored by this high praise. Nevertheless, he unscrupulously realized a tremendous promotional plan and included an unauthorized publication of Emerson’s letter in a later edition of Leaves of Grass. For this brazen act Whitman received much criticism. Emerson had generously, albeit privately, acknowledged this budding poet as the poetic voice for Transcendentalism: “I give you joy of your free and brave thought.” Whitman shamelessly exploited this unsolicited praise without any recognition of Emerson’s bearing on his poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American scholar who joined other New England intellectuals to form the Transcendental Club. Transcendentalism emerged from Boston Unitarianism and the German Idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The core belief was that humans were at their best in nature and uncorrupted by institutions and society. Adherents believed in the inherent goodness of people and nature, self-reliance, and non-conformity. Emerson’s first book, Nature, which he published anonymously at his own expense, is the quintessential treatise on Transcendental thought:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God (Emerson 511).

 Nature established Emerson as an intellectual force to be reckoned with, however, “because he so valued individual self-culture, Emerson was skeptical of the social reforms” that swept the country in the mid 19^th Century (Baym et al. 507). Despite his skepticism, he did support the emancipation of women and slaves and praised a homosexual poet.

Walt Whitman illustrated Emerson’s veneration of nature and self in his heroic poem “Song of Myself.” He opens with “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” and continues with:

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy (Whitman 1025).

Whitman’s “transparent eyeball” is focused on “leaves of grass,” a metaphor for all the unique individuals, more alike than different, creating the national character of America. In what may be considered an apologetic letter to Emerson, Whitman wrote in 1856:

Of course, we shall have a national character, an identity. As it ought to be, and as soon as it ought to be, it will be. That, with much else, takes care of itself, is a result, and the cause of greater results. With Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Oregon—with the states around the Mexican sea—with cheerfully welcomed immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa—with Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island—with all varied interests, facts, beliefs, parties, genesis—there is being fused a determined character, fit for the broadest use for the freewomen and freemen of The States, accomplished and to be accomplished, without any exception whatever—each indeed free, each idiomatic, as becomes live states and men, but each adhering to one enclosing general form of politics, manners, talk, personal style, as the plenteous varieties of the race adhere to one physical form. Such character is the brain and spine to all, including literature, including poems. Such character, strong, limber, just, open-mouthed, American-blooded, full of pride, full of ease, of passionate friendliness, is to stand compact upon that vast basis of the supremacy of Individuality—that new moral American continent without which, I see, the physical continent remained incomplete, may-be a carcass, a bloat—that newer America, answering face to face with The States, with ever-satisfying and ever-unsurveyable seas and shores (Whitman 1094-1095).

Whitman went on to acknowledge that Emerson “led The States” to those shores and “have led Me there. I say that none has ever done, or ever can do, a greater deed for The States, than your deed” (1095).

In Walt Whitman’s America, author David Reynolds referred to Emerson’s letter to Whitman as the “Gettysburg Address of American literary commentary.” Reynolds explains how Whitman should have realized his debt to Emerson:

If Lincoln's Gettysburg Address remade America, as Garry Wills says, Emerson's letter came close to making Whitman. It was constantly reprinted, quoted, and cited by Whitman's defenders, often with Whitman's encouragement. Just as the Gettysburg Address soared above details of battles or political squabbles and made an eloquent generalization about the goals of the nation, so Emerson's letter made a holistic, transcendental statement about Whitman's poetry.  (qtd. in http://www. classroomelectric.org/volume1/belasco/whitman-emerson.htm)

Critics scolded Whitman for not asking Emerson’s permission to publish his private letter of praise, which would have been a proper and traditional gesture. Yet, Whitman’s impropriety was a demonstration of his utter incorporation of non-conformity, one of the tenants of Emersonian philosophy. It is this philosophy that established the American voice as independent of Mother England. It is Whitman’s “Song of Myself” that welcomed all these individual identities to unite in non-conformity:

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same (Whitman 1028).

In section 15 of  “Song of Myself” Whitman lists over 50 diverse Americans who “one and all I weave the song of myself.” From the “half-breed” who “straps on his light boots to compete in the race” and “groups of newly-come immigrants” to the floor-men, tinners, masons, flatboatmen, patriarchs, prostitutes, and “President holding a cabinet council,” all are Americans with a unique resonance that rings true to the song that is these United States (1033-1035).

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed.                                      
      New York: Norton, 2012. Print.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym.

      8^th ed.  New York: Norton. 2013. 508-536. Print.

Whitman, Walt. “Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature.          

          Ed. Nina Baym. 8^th ed.  New York: Norton. 2013. 1088-1095. Print.

---. “Song of Myself.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym.

      8^th ed.  New York: Norton. 2013. 1024-1067. Print.