American Literature

An American Element: Emerson's Art of Re-form

In this short essay I would like to deal with Emerson's notion of re-form, especially with regard to his theory of language discussed and also applied in his “Nature”. The idea of perpetual re-forming seems to be central to all Emerson’s philosophical work: by the word 'reform', he means mainly the movement ahead, the movement of poetic creation and novelty. Anyway, in order to attain the power of creation and thus become a poet, man must be able to find a specific point of view.

Firstly, he must trust himself and conform to nobody. Secondly, he must live an authentic life, not for a spectacle, but for itself. Thirdly, he must be brave enough to "throw away the past as old rubbish", which means not to be dependent on any authorities or traditions.

For "the good shall be wholly strange and new", it is merely the self-reliant spirit who is able to perceive everything outside him (i.e. nature) in a new or, more exactly, in a different way. Due to the change of his point of view (the re-form of his standpoint) he is able to find unity in variety and to realise his being a part of the Reason in the sense of the transcendental law immanent in the cosmos (Emerson's concept of Reason would correspondent for example to Heraclitus' concept of logos).

From such awareness of one’s role in the whole of the universe, there is just a small step towards understanding all nature as emblematic. This particular approach would, according to Emerson, lead us directly to the transcendental, the all-encompassing Spirit.

In this brief introduction, I attempted to explain the primary role of the ‘reform’ concept in the Emersonian philosophical conception. Now, I would like to devote to an issue rooted deeply in his nonconformist attitudes, and it is the establishment of the specifically American philosophical language, based on the fusion of different genre levels.

The art of re-form seems to be implied in Emerson’s work in terms of the contents as well as in terms of the form or style. Moreover, the style illustrates the contents, and elaborately mirrors the ideas presented in his writings. The main characteristics of the formal aspect of Emerson’s work would be 1. inconsistency, 2. the fusion of different levels of discourse, 3. eclecticism, and the use of the collage method. Thus, Emerson’s deliberately disjointed style obviously bears typical post-modern features. We could re-form Reynolds’ comment asserting that Emerson’s “final success lay in his ability to suggest inspirational meaning even in the midst of his disjointedness”[1] by stating that it is precisely his disjointedness, which enables Emerson to be highly inspirational and innovative. In short, all these Emersonian powers arise from the spirit of re-form.

Summarising, Emerson’s philosophical method, or rather a strategy, is totally different from the standard conventional methods of the contemporary European writers, for example Comte, the founder of positivism, or German idealists (Hegel, Fichte, Schelling), whose treatises influenced Emerson only as far as their conclusions were concerned. But their complex and strictly logical systems were the exact opposite of Emerson’s fluidity. He used mainly the idea of a dialectic triad: thesis (Me) versus antithesis (Not-me) merged in synthesis (the Transcendental).

In any case, the main focus remains on the question how Emerson’s strategy (based on the re-form principle) works. From the fourth chapter of Nature, it is possible to infer that his theory of language is in accordance with his general theory of nature, while nature is conceived as the symbol of spirit. Words are originally signs of natural (i.e. material or temporary) and only secondly of spiritual facts. This material origin of words reveals “immediate dependence of language upon nature”[2]

In his effort to create some new philosophical style, which would be typical of American writing, Emerson decided to use something from a sphere of American reality, which was radically different from (at that time still almost non-existent) sphere of intellectual discourse. And that was the crude humour of the American frontier.

David S. Reynolds traces this rather bizarre source of Emersonian imagery and claims that this import of "humorous style into sophisticated philosophical writing"[3] was highly original, and in this respect, Emerson differed from his transcendentalist contemporaries (for example Alcott or Fuller), with their strictly serious styles. However, Reynolds also claims that in the 1830s it was quite common to connect different genres: he says that "several seemingly contradictory genres began to merge: the illustrative sermon...with the burlesque sermon, the moral-reform tract with the immoral reform exposé, the crime narrative with the sensational novel or newspaper." He adds that this "period of extreme genre fluidity had its philosophical culmination in Emerson's polyvocal essays and addresses"[4].

Furthermore, also the use of "backwood idioms" was quite a widespread practice, but Emerson more than others "recognized the significance"[5] of this linguistic phenomenon and he "distinguished himself from his liberal colleagues by identifying frontier idioms as a primary model for American writers"[6]. It was chiefly “their fertility and naturalness of metaphor”[7] that Emerson appreciated. And this is exactly the connection between Emerson’s thought and a tough humour from the frontier: the discourse “of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman”[8] is very closely related to nature. The character of such a speech is incorrupt, therefore it is something “which all people relish”[9].

When Emerson speaks about “good writing and brilliant discourse”, which are “perpetual allegories”, and in fact the only “proper creation”[10] what he has in mind is actually his own work. In revealing the metaphorical/emblematic meaning of the humorous idioms, he managed to interconnect two different levels: the level of material meanings of words representing nature, and the symbolic level of spiritual meanings. Reynolds very aptly describes this style as “a dazzling imagistic pastiche whose linguistic fertility enforced the philosophical freedoms it heralded”[11].

The title of this essay “the art of re-form” suggests that re-form means primarily re-creation. My aim was to show that creation is possible merely when man has changed his perspective and has come to the understanding of natural objects and words as metaphors. What Emerson teaches us is not to be afraid to re-form radically our standpoint, to cast aside all our past, and, as a result, not to be afraid of “becoming” oneself. Isn’t this a conspicuously American experience? Isn’t this more or less the idea that established the self-made man society? Emerson was probably the first, who critically reflected the American reality from the viewpoint of a philosopher. In conclusion, the concept of re-form in Emerson’s thought seems to be, in its essence, an American element par excellence.