My Amber Yen
In high school, one of the first research papers I did was on Transcendentalism (the other was on Ezra Pound's treason case and subsequent insanity plea). I resolved not to see these thinkers from another time period as antiquated but as real, everyday people who managed to wrestle productively with the social circumstances their time gave them. These were folks I could learn from.
I remember I immediately identified with the ideas of Thoreau and Emerson. Even in the 1980's -- having grown up with a Christian idealist family on a 70-acre farm -- the appeals to observation of nature and the hard-nosed idealism seemed more familiar than foreign or thin.
I am tied, imaginatively, to that period. In college, a class of mine on utopian literature took a field trip to Rugby, TN, site of a 19th century utopian community. I thought I was going to pleasurably hemmorhage. The raw wood buildings, the quirky turns of hall, the crowded furniture, the prevalence of libraries, the practical and minimalist inventions, the wood-jagged fencerows, the scruffy gardens, and the humble and austere church. And the smell ... renifleur that I am! :) Just being in that physical space, I was almost sure I could smell the wet wool, the broken leather shoes, the tobaccoed fingers, the black of ink, the wide beards, the warping wood, the watch chain metal, the fingered pages, the sweat of work and cramped clothing, the leavings of tool and plant and animal in the windowed breeze. What I was smelling, what I was seeing, I believed, was honest ideals and purpose fitted simply in their natural bodies.
Much later, I found the book Hard to Imagine, an incredible book that offers a history of homoerotic imagery in photography. There were a few pictures from the American 19th century. Yes, I jacked off.
Now, the model of Emerson and Thoreau is equally compelling. I am fascinated by the very idea of poets who are essayists, essayists who are poets. Thinkers not alienated from nature. Philosophers who narrow the breach between intellectual and physical labor. Americans who believe in critique and disobedience. Citizens who saw alternatives for community. Artists who stress their vision as much as their material. Simplicity. Sincerity. In fullness. In joy.
Today, I found a few quotes from Emerson I liked:
I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings.
Nature; Addresses, and Lectures, The Conservative
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
Essays: First Series, Self-Reliance
The disease with which the human mind now labors, is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.' I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, 'If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.' I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: 'This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.' We do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a secret melancholy, which breaks through all its smiles, and all its gayety and games?
Essays: Second Series, New England Reformers
Shall we judge the country by the majority or by the minority? Certainly, by the minority. The mass are animal, in state of pupilage, and nearer the chimpanzee.
Journal, -/4? 1854
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Essays: First Series, Self-Reliance
I remember I immediately identified with the ideas of Thoreau and Emerson. Even in the 1980's -- having grown up with a Christian idealist family on a 70-acre farm -- the appeals to observation of nature and the hard-nosed idealism seemed more familiar than foreign or thin.
I am tied, imaginatively, to that period. In college, a class of mine on utopian literature took a field trip to Rugby, TN, site of a 19th century utopian community. I thought I was going to pleasurably hemmorhage. The raw wood buildings, the quirky turns of hall, the crowded furniture, the prevalence of libraries, the practical and minimalist inventions, the wood-jagged fencerows, the scruffy gardens, and the humble and austere church. And the smell ... renifleur that I am! :) Just being in that physical space, I was almost sure I could smell the wet wool, the broken leather shoes, the tobaccoed fingers, the black of ink, the wide beards, the warping wood, the watch chain metal, the fingered pages, the sweat of work and cramped clothing, the leavings of tool and plant and animal in the windowed breeze. What I was smelling, what I was seeing, I believed, was honest ideals and purpose fitted simply in their natural bodies.
Much later, I found the book Hard to Imagine, an incredible book that offers a history of homoerotic imagery in photography. There were a few pictures from the American 19th century. Yes, I jacked off.
Now, the model of Emerson and Thoreau is equally compelling. I am fascinated by the very idea of poets who are essayists, essayists who are poets. Thinkers not alienated from nature. Philosophers who narrow the breach between intellectual and physical labor. Americans who believe in critique and disobedience. Citizens who saw alternatives for community. Artists who stress their vision as much as their material. Simplicity. Sincerity. In fullness. In joy.
Today, I found a few quotes from Emerson I liked:
I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings.
Nature; Addresses, and Lectures, The Conservative
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
Essays: First Series, Self-Reliance
The disease with which the human mind now labors, is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.' I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, 'If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.' I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: 'This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.' We do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a secret melancholy, which breaks through all its smiles, and all its gayety and games?
Essays: Second Series, New England Reformers
Shall we judge the country by the majority or by the minority? Certainly, by the minority. The mass are animal, in state of pupilage, and nearer the chimpanzee.
Journal, -/4? 1854
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Essays: First Series, Self-Reliance