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.

Puritans in American Literature

Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, “Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin.” He exemplified this most clearly in his crisis-of-faith story “Young Goodman Brown,” which was set in late 17^th Century Salem, MA. Salem, at that time, was the site of the infamous witchcraft trials and executions of 1692. This horrific and appalling scar on American history was also the inspiration for Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible.” Both Hawthorne and Miller utilize the power of literary art to illustrate the light and dark sides of human nature as the epic battle of good vs. evil is played out in a community of faith. These literary classics are momentous parables that verify George Santayana’s adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Hawthorne and Miller documented, for all time, the historic irony of a group of people seeking religious tolerance and freedom from persecution; these individuals then established a church with a rigid moral code that punished all who diversified and sinned against this code. True tales for today?

The setting for both tales was Salem, Massachusetts, established by Puritan colonists. Puritanism was a religious movement opposed to the perceived corruption and impurity of the Church of England. The Church was beginning to accept diverse views and high church practices that Puritans aimed to reform (MA Puritans) or separate from (Plymouth Colonists). Puritans believed in predestination and practiced covenants with God and their community. A Covenant of Grace deemed some chosen as God’s people who have a contract with God. Sins of disobedience against this contract were punishable. However, because Jesus Christ died for our sins, God was contracted to save sinners who confessed. ““The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,” declares the Lord. “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the Lord” (Isaiah 59:20-21). The final covenant, the Covenant of Good Works, promised eternal life in heaven for a pure and righteous life on earth. For New England Puritans, these covenants offered a means of organization and governance both in the church and new Colonial society. God’s law was the only law and there was no separation of church and state. The strict laws of church and state left no room for error, despite the Covenant of Redemption; one could be punished for the mere appearance of impropriety. It is this public righteousness as well as the Puritan belief that the Devil had as much capacity to incorporate as did God which led to the hysterical witch hunts.

In the story of “Young Goodman Brown” a naive young man enters a dark forest where he meets a fellow traveler with a “staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake,” the devil, no doubt. This is the turning point for Goodman Brown - at this crossroads he is challenged to either keep Puritan covenant as he believes to be his righteous nature and heritage, or think for himself as an individual: “Let us walk on; nevertheless, reasoning as we go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back” (621). The devilish traveler challenges the  good man’s Christian heritage saying he was with his grandfather when he whipped a Quaker and set fire to an Indian village. The elder tries to reveal to the younger that all humans have within them the capacity for both good and evil. “Wickedness or not…I have a very general acquaintance here in New England” (621). This is the beginning of Brown’s loss of innocence and faith. He goes deeper into the forest and meets many of his other Christian neighbors, his congregation heading to the devil worshipping witch’s coven. Eventually, he also sees his wife, metaphorically named Faith, and her innocent pink ribbons dancing on the winds of sin. He is devastated that all he has known and seen in the light of day is not what it appears to be in the frightening dark of night. “Welcome, my children…to the communion of your race! Ye have found, thus young, your nature and your destiny.” Was this a dream? Hawthorne never fully reveals that fact to the reader. Toward the end of the story, however, the devil dashes all hope, “Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind” (627). Goodman Brown never recovered from his loss of faith in the good side of human nature. Too true today, this November 2016 day?

Arthur Miller’s play of the Salem witchcraft trials was an allegory for all time that also revealed the light and dark sides of human nature. He wrote “The Crucible” in response to McCarthyism and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller was suspected of anti-communist, un-American (and therefore un-Christian) activities. Just like in the Salem trials, he was asked to name names of others suspected of immoral acts. In his play, a group of young Puritan girls, rather than get in trouble for playing in the woods with the black slave Tituba, point their finger at the equally powerless slave, accusing her of being a witch. The town becomes hysterical as more and more men, women, and even dogs are named as witches. Through the process of naming, the previously powerless children rise in stature and status and persecution masquerades as virtue in this true-to-life witch-hunt. In the final scene, when John Proctor was asked why he refused to sign his name said, “with a cry of his whole soul: Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!...How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name” (Crucible 4.293). Proctor considers his name the key to his individual identity and independence separate from the Puritan church/state in which he lived. At this time in Salem, MA "Every authority not only confirmed the existence of witches but never questioned the necessity of executing them"(Miller 5). To call or name a person a witch was a death sentence. The only way one accused of being a witch could escape the hanging rope in 1692 was to name the other witches. Tituba saved her neck by naming others. John Proctor refused, shouting, "You will not use me! I am no Sarah Good or Tituba, I am John Proctor! You will not use me!" (Crucible 4.281). Again, he differentiates himself from the collective mass hysteria with his name. Miller’s play reflects on the power of naming to divide and destroy. True today?

There are numerous incidents of this evil tendency of human nature to scapegoat and blame others for unfounded fears, guilt, or inexplicable trials and tribulations. Allow me to name just a few prime examples before and after McCarthyism: the Holocaust, naming of Muslim Americans after 9/11 as evil terrorists; all undocumented Mexican immigrants called aliens, drug dealers or thugs; the name calling on the political stage; or the calling out of LGBT people at the start of the AIDS crisis. As an act of bullying, name calling can destroy individual lives and communities. Throughout American history, nay human history, how often have we witnessed the religious right, the fundamental righteous, justify evil acts against fellow humans in the name of God and in their fear of those who think differently? Nathaniel Hawthorne and Arthur Miller understood that literary art (all art actually) can serve as artifacts to mirror our humanity and inhumanity. We would be wise, today, to revisit the literature of Puritan America and reflect upon both the good and evil truths of our human nature. This Thanksgiving in 2016, I reflect on how a righteous denial of our human nature can have devastatingly deathly consequences to the individual freedoms and diverse beliefs the Puritans sought and celebrated on that first Thanksgiving.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Nina Baym. 8^th ed.  New York: Norton. 2013. 209-220. Print.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Print.

Miller, Arthur. "Are You Now Or Were You Ever?" The Guardian/The Observer. 17 June 2000. Web.

3 September 2016.