Post 1 - Emerson

This week was not the week to go on a walk.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy walking, especially because doing so helps to alleviate the depressive moods that I'm prone to. Growing up in Southern California, however, I'm really rather averse to rain and cloud cover (then why am I going to school in Maine? Well that's another story altogether).

But a-walking I did go, and it was so uncomfortable. I've never experienced that before, considering that when I ruminate on and experience nature on my walks, my feeling is much akin to that of Emerson in the first section of Nature: "In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever in his life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth" (6). I find that when I go for walks in natural settings I'm able to see things more clearly, have a boost in energy and all in all feel exhilarated and alive. Having grown up in a suburban area, not used to the woods being at my doorstep, my only experience prior to my attending here was camping in the remote wilderness hours from my home. And there is one very important rule when camping in the wilderness: never go anywhere alone.

So now suddenly I was supposed to walk out on my own in silence, without communication?? I have a very overactive imagination and during this particular walk in the local woods I was consumed with worries--so much so that it barred me from truly enjoying the experience. I hope this sensation fades over time and the more I go out there as the semester marches on.

But that's enough about me.

The thing I wanted to address about Emerson's Nature is his penchant to idealize and perpetually highlight the beauty of it. While this is all well and good in small doses, this idea infuses Emerson's work to the point that I felt the picture he was attempting to paint of the natural world and the inherent goodness and spirituality that may be found there ultimately rings hollow and false. The moment the facade first started breaking was in the third section, "Beauty" where he writes: "There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty" (9, emphasis mine).

I'm sorry, but that's just stretching it. It reminded me of Petrarchan love sonnets in which the poet so idealized the object of his love and affection that the poem ultimately served as a hollow tribute to the subject's true beauty and became more about the poet's words and fame through the writing of it. Here Emerson, while full of good intent and a longing to share with the world his philosophies and new ways of interacting with and experiencing nature, in my opinion cheapens the true beauties and wonders of nature through his representation and idealization of it. And, while I did enjoy reading this (once I figured out what he was talking about, anyway), this aspect of the work didn't exactly sit right with me.