Posted by Andrea on December 11, 1999 at 13:30:13:
I wrote this for my English III class. Since everyone knows that most of the people in this dicussion are students trying to plaigarize others for THEIR assignments, I figured I'd just bypass the altruist facade. Here it is. I don't know what grade I got on it yet, but it's pretty darn good. It explores arguments from transcendentalists, existentialists, and their intermediaries Poe and Melville. Woo.
Incidentally, I think that if you feel the need to just copy and paste this and turn it in on your own, instead of garnering information from it, that demonstrates very little faith in your own intelligence. That doesn't stop me from contributing to the immorality, but it's just a thought.
Perhaps it is an aftereffect of consciousness that humans have always sought a pretext for their existence, a conjunction of essence and physics that will ring true with the remaining vestige of the memory of our origin and arrival to self awareness, encoded indelibly into our collective awareness of self. However, instead of a clear recollection of the derivation and way of our minds, we are left with the haunting feeling that the knowledge had been with us, and that the knowledge remains, just out of reach, hovering as an inchoate thought at the back of every mind on earth. Humankind has spent innumerable lifetimes devoted to regaining this, the true understanding. Even the most widespread religion is but a hypothesis, at best a theory, of that which we have lost.
One of these projections of organized postulation into the darkness was transcendentalism, a belief that the secret to existence was an “inner light”. In 1833, an American male, disenchanted with the grisly rites of another widely accepted hypothesis, Christianity (in which the patron savior is consumed as an affirmation of faith), decided to formulate his own system of self-searching based upon “transcending” external distractions like society and civic duty, and instead focusing on inner truths ripe for the reaping by patient introspection. This man, called Ralph Waldo Emerson, maintained that this inner light was in everyone and everything. This shared consciousness, in its entirety, formed a benign entity known as the Oversoul. Although this Oversoul was more than the sum of its parts, each rock, each grain of sand, had the same divinity as the human. Essence transcended both appearance and modality.
Even as Emerson’s words enraged some of his Christian peers, they piqued the interest in others. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a writer concerned with sacred love and the basic goodness of man, was fascinated with Emersonian doctrine. While not completely embracing his dogma of complementary transcendental forces, he adapted it to his own use, forming theses manifested in his opus The Scarlet Letter and his short stories, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, and “The Minister’s Black Veil” about the individual’s struggle and downfall before a society caught up in its own obsessions.
Another one of Emerson’s consorts was Henry David Thoreau, the champion of enlightenment through simple living. In his book Walden, Thoreau exemplifies the basic principles of transcendentalism, those of rejecting society and achieving communion with the divine Being through nature.
However, some of the writer-philosophes of transcendentalism’s era chose to reject it. Herman Melville, most well known for his cuspy tale of man’s battle with nature, Moby Dick, scrutinized transcendentalism and rejected its core: that of the integral nobility of every living thing. Edgar Allen Poe, a conjurer of man’s ever present struggle with the evil in his own heart, discarded the idealistic free verse of transcendental writ and instead embraced a more regimented form of dark and saturnine beauty.
If Poe and Melville were transitional in their doffing of transcendentalist conjoined divinity, the existential writers of the twentieth century assumed the duty of completing this antipodal transition. Scoffing at the simple idealist epigrams of Emersonian transcendentalism, the existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Frederich Nietzsche, and Albert Camus, stressed the “roughness and untidiness of actual life” (Eierman). The naive whimsy of transcendentalist thought was anathema maranatha to these hypercritical vivisectors of the man’s psyche. Instead, existential thought concentrated on the cascade of influence each decision had on other people. Capriciousness was clumsy and unsophisticated and, ultimately, of no use to anyone. They rejected the transcendentalist “soul” as a scanty façade projected to conceal the darkness that was inherent in every man, a darkness unavoidable and having as much influence on action as goodness. Each man, they maintained, was born into unawareness, unknowing of his freedom of will and, therefore, happy. His purpose in life was to discover this free will, at which point he would be tormented, “condemned to be free” until his death. Isolationist despair was seemingly inevitable, the transcendentalists maintained; for what is more wretched than the being which, deprived of the ability to create himself or know his origin, has free will to choose his future? Nothing, for, according to the existentialists, man, as the future of man, was forced to uncertainty and, during his moments of clearness, fits of despondency as he contemplated his desolation.
With the wide spectrum of these propositions, which one makes the most sense? This must be decided by you, the witness. In order to evaluate these, as indeed you must, it is necessary to see their application in terrestrial terms. It is only by inspecting the principles stated in a more mundane setting that a conclusion can be reached. Hence, these conditions are proffered for your scrutiny: positions on death, the individual, and nature. In contemplating these universal verities, a viable possibility will emerge.
Of all the subjects various schools of thought disagree on, death is perhaps the most controversial. Is there an afterlife? Will there be robes and harps? Do we, the most industrious species on earth, but sink down into nonexistence never to be summoned again? Only one shared precept is clear: dying will offer clues to the great question of our pith, and thusly, is paramount for existentialists and transcendentalists alike. Since all of existence was encompassed by the Oversoul, transcendentalists said, the death of the body need not herald the death of the soul.
Borrowing heavily from Vedic traditions of rebirth and reincarnation, the transcendentalist system asserted that death was no gloomy enigma, but
merely a chance to change one’s perception...the essence of a being would
surmount physical locale and manifest itself in [another being] as part of the Oversoul. (Koster 134)
For Poe and Melville, death was a macabre and mysterious reality. In Poe’s semi-autobiographical short story, “Ligeia”, death is a anthropormorphized, as “the Shadow” to be wrested with (Poe 228). He takes Poe’s deceased loved ones and teases him with their spectre, dangling the possibility before the narrator like a piece of meat. Evidently, Poe regarded death as the possession of souls by a divine entity, causing more grief to the deceased’s loved ones than to the person whose life has been lost. This is perhaps one of the reasons Poe took to isolationism--so that his own death might prove less painful in the absence of mourners. In Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”, an unfortunate reaches his death in the dank Tombs of New York, his presence inconclusive and his emotions impregnable. Thusly, Melville demonstrates that death is the resolve of an individual, again, causing pain to the dead’s family and friends, but offering no insight as to what remains beyond, although Hell is present. For the existentialists, death was acceptable if it was part of a well deliberated and voluntary choice--however, suicide, being a decision derived from thought and not by thought, was unacceptable because it was a decision that was not completely voluntary. Existentialists had a very dismal view of the post-death experience--or rather, the lack of it, very much unlike the Emersonian doctrine of perpetual rebirth:
Nothingness, in the form of death, hangs over like a sword of Damocles at each moment of life. Man is filled with anxiety at times when he permits himself to be aware of this. At those moments, the whole of being seems to drift away into nothing. The unaware person tries to live as if death is not actual, he tries to escape its reality. But death is the most authentic, significant moment, the only personal potentiality, a witness to absurdity of existence. (Eierman )
Since existence precedes essence, there is no surviving factor of the individual. There is no hell, nor any heaven, simply nonexistence, which, the existentialists believed, was menacing enough.
In the transcendental frame, the individual is perceived as a sublime dynamo. The potential for improvement was always there, and each man must go with his heart, regardless of external or societal attempts at repression. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in his essay, “Self Reliance”, “I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me,” (395). The transcendentalists stressed that an individual’s needs for identification must be met at all costs, even if that meant abandoning external influences entirely and contemplating one’s belly-button for the interim. In Melville’s Moby Dick, the revenge-obsessed gives up all attachment to the rest of his society, his family, to fulfill his craving for a rematch. Even as he pines for his family, the fixation of the whale eventually results in his undoing. From this, one gathers that the individual, when left to its devices, is just as corrupt as the society which spawns it. Poe, however, scorns the individual’s tranquil quest for identity: “I have no time for idle cares/Through gazing on the unquiet sky” (Poe 313). In his writing, the individual’s isolation leads to unseemly behavior, as the callous society either bears shocked witness or sees it not at all. Poe seems to stress that the individual needs societal interlude so that he does not lapse into the long harrowing darkness that is himself, as is also demonstrated in “The Fall of the House of Usher” The existentialists believed that any kind of structure beyond the individual was secondary and almost coincidental. Beyond all illusions of structure and government, each thinking man was really concerned with himself and the dire vacuum that was his existence. The transcendentalist idea of self-discovery was reckless and insensitive, for each individual was influenced by every other individual, and their decision. Drawing from this, they concluded that the decisions of the single man were as momentous as those of a country, since they would have an exponential effect on those around him. Interestingly, the existentialists also believed that a proletariat breed was necessary to carry out labor--not everyone could spend their time debating the French Revolution. Hence, it was all the more easy to classify the common working class, (which Emerson had so lauded) as no more than a lot of half-wits who happened to be in the majority.
Nature, with its consistency of beauty without artifice, was a very well suited element for the transcendentalists, as stated:
1.Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of the spirit. (Emerson 348)
The out-of-doors environment was where the Oversoul truly reigned, with the results of its beautiful garden of creation. Transcendentalists asserted that every abstract concept was a reinterpretation of a natural occurrence. Every word could be traced back to another word which signified something natural, whether it was the wind or an eyebrow. Here, undisturbed by wars, civil blood, tax collectors, and the narrow-minded, a true intercourse with the Oversoul was not only possible, but occurring during every moment of free thought. Henry David Thoreau’s two year jaunt at Walden Pond was part of a disgust with imposed societal ethic which allegedly demanded unfounded taxation from the his already spare lifestyle. Instead, he peacefully existed in solitude writing his journals and doing minimal farming work in order to sustain himself. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, reveals a world in which all pretense is dropped and nature dictates goodness and warmth. It is only in the forest, Hawthorne apparently implies, that one can truly become one’s self. Conversely, manifest in Melville’s Moby Dick is man’s battle with nature. The sea tosses and regurgitates the captain’s men with near impunity, and of course, the leviathan white whale is also representative of a natural force which is always at odds with mankind. In Poe’s stories, the environment provides an ambiance to relay the bedlam usually occurring within the story. If there is conflict, the weather will parallel this tension by being stormy and foreboding, as in “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Existentialists were entirely polarized from the transcendentalist reverence of nature. Thoreau’s profound fascination with nature was wholly foreign to the embittered activists of existentialism. They were vehemently against any kind of isolation, because that meant that no influence and therefore no power was generated. It was literally a waste of life. Since man could contemplate himself and express that contemplation, his elevation from nature seemed obvious, “Man is a plan that is aware of itself, unlike moss” (Eierman). This scorn is not surprising, considering the urban roots of many of the preeminent existentialists--sitting in a cafe and sipping espresso in an industrialized city like Paris and is certainly not conducive to very much experience with nature itself.
In studying the response of each of the belief systems to each of these basic concepts, a pattern should emerge for the reader. Transcendentalists, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, are optimistic about our minds and our spirituality, with an affinity for the environment. Poe and Melville demonstrate an equilibrium between the abstract self-love of the transcendentalists and the jaded existentialists, with their stories having elements of both the misanthropic and hopeful. The existentialists reject nearly all the principles of transcendentalism, choosing instead to believe in an existence rendered doubtful and precarious after severe scrutiny.
Which one holds the most truth? You know the answer.
Bibliography:
Emerson, Ralph W. “Self Reliance”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 393-408
Emerson, Ralph W. “Nature”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 344-370
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 642-659
Eierman, Katharena. “The Realm of Existentialism.” America Online 2 Dec. 1999. http://members.aol.com/KatharenaE/private/philo/philo.html
Kaufman, Walter. The Portable Nietzsche. Canada (city unknown): The Viking Press, Inc., 1969.
Koster, David N. Transcendentalism in America. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1975.
Melville, Herman. “Bartleby the Scrivener”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 672-694
Poe, Edgar Allen. “Ligeia.” The Best of Poe. Ed. Peter Alderman. 1st ed. New York: New York, 1999. 210-231.
Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Best of Poe. Ed. Peter Alderman. 1st ed. New York: New York, 1999. 300-313.
Thoreau, Henry D. “Walden”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 446-508
Thoreau, Henry D. “Civil Disobedience”. The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George and Barbara Perkins. 9th edition. Various countries: McGraw-Hill College, 1994. 508-522
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