Transcendentalism. A definition from Oxford Literary Terms.
Transcendentalism is an idealist philosophical tendency among writers in and around Boston in the mid-19th century. It grew out of Christian Unitarianism （上帝一位论，a religious denomination/value stressing individual freedom or belief）in the 1830s under the influence of German and British Romanticism. Transcendentalism affirmed Kant’s principle of intuitive knowledge not derived from the senses, while rejecting organized religion for an extremely individualistic celebration of the divinity in each human being. The leading Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson issued what was virtually the movement’s manifesto in his essay Nature (1836), which presents natural phenomena as symbols of higher spiritual truths. The nonconformist individualism of the Transcendentalists is expressed in Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” (1841) and in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) ----a kind of autobiographical sermon against modern materialism … The transcendentalists’ manner of interpreting nature in symbolic terms had a profound influence on American literature of this period, notably in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Transcendentalism as a philosophy from Toming
As an intensified expression of Romanticism, Transcendentalism shares the romantic characteristics: the importance of intuition, the exaltation of the individual over society, the new and thrilling delight in nature, fascination with the Gothic and the “Oriental,” and the desire to build a national literature and
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culture and culture.
Transcendentalism, as a way of knowing (or epistemology), believes that individuals can intuitively receive higher truths otherwise unavailable through common methods of knowing, thus transcending the limits of rationalism. More specifically, the visible world, if intuited with imagination, offers endless clues about the invisible world whose truths stand eternally behind the factual world perceived by the senses.
Translated into literature, this belief became an emphasis on symbolic
representation. In its moral tone, it reminds us of the Puritan belief in the “divine and supernatural light” or the Quaker “inner Light.” As formulated by Emerson,
this became a call for action encouraging the young not to be enslaved by customs but to follow the God within, and to live every moment with a strenuousness such as found in the Puritan fathers. However, insofar as nature is believed to be the morally good, proving God’s presence everywhere in his creation and that human nature is accordingly all good, Transcendentalism was the
reversed form of Calvinism.
Life and major works
Emerson was born in Boston, a descendant from a line of preacher ancestors. When he was eight, his father, Reverend William Emerson died, t family suddenly found themselves in difficult economic conditions. Yet, Waldo, like his three brothers, still sent school, Emerson read broadly and his reading list included Plato,
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Plotinus, Shakespeare, the Metaphysical Poets, Montaigne (who remained his favorite throughout his life), and Asian Scriptures. Graduating from Harvard in 1821, he set out to become a Unitarian parson only to quit “the cold and cheerless” denomination before he turned 30 years old. After traveling in Europe and England where he met Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle, he came back and settled in Concord, Massachusetts where he took up the life of an essayist, poet and public speaker. What he preached was optimism, self-reliance and the infinite potentials of an individual.
His major works:
1. His early essays lectures, which include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838).
2. His essay collections----Essays, First Series (1841) and Essays, Second Series (1844). Of these, the most famous ones are “History,” “Self-Reliance,” “The Over-Soul,” “The Poet,” “Experience.” Then there is the longer essay titled
Representative Men (1850).
3. His later essays, lectures including “Woman” (1855), “Thoreau” (1862), and his poems.
“The Over-Soul” presents the more mystical side of Emerson and the basis of Transcendentalism. The “Over-soul” refers to the profound and all-encompassing spiritual nature to which each individual soul should lie open.
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The concept of an all-pervading spiritual power suggests a Neo-Platonist view, namely, the material world is merely the crude and visible manifestations of pure ideas or essences. In the essence that the Over-soul is the source of man’s divine inner being, “Man is a stream whose source is hidden.” If an individual follows the promptings of his life and the hidden source---- the inexhaustible powers of the Over-soul.
Emerson’s form:
The power of Emerson comes not only from his ideas but also from the eloquence with which he could express his ideas. He is certainly the most quotable American writer. Here are some fragments:
1. The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are shot.
2. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist….Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind….It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own, but the great man is he who in the midst of crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
3. Believe in magnetism, not in needles.
4. To be great is to be misunderstood.
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5. Meek young men grew up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were young men in libraries when hey rote those books.
In the technically more exact sense, Emerson’s form is lecture. Or rather, Everson’s inspiring lecture is prose poetry. His eloquence testifies to his concept of the organic art, namely, inspired poet spoke with a force that outwells from his own deepest being that is connected, mystically, to the universal mind. When Emerson spoke as the inspired, he sometimes forgot to bring the audience with him to the height he reached. So some of his lectures were like grand houses in which the architect had forgotten to build stairs. This is understandable in that he is both a port and an orator; poetry emerges while the poet is in struggle with himself whereas an orator addresses while struggling with others. Emerson was more often than not a poet. Whitman, the great poet who was to come later, has an Emersonian quality. Passion alone, of course, does not sufficiently account for Emerson’s style. The organic form with which Emerson was so obsessed was the result of vision. It has to do with how the poet’s sight, corresponding with his insight, is properly imaged so that the idea is fleshed out and “seen.”
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