Post by mikef7 on May 18, 2008 19:49:19 GMT -5
Transcendentalism is the concept of changing and challenging current society and thereby enabling individuality. To best do this, one must find themselves and learn by themselves by forming an original relationship with nature. The first transcendentalists, specifically Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, demonstrated this ideology through their words and actions. Emerson was the first to challenge his current society and its caging of one’s individual spirit. He believed in his essay Self-Reliance that “society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members (21).” He also goes on to say that “society never advances (36).” He talked of how society demands conformity and how this conformity creates a civilized man who “has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet (36).” According to Emerson, society cripples the creativity of mankind and his wild and natural spirit. Therefore, the only way to retain this righteous and natural spirit is to connect with that which is righteous and natural; nature itself. Both of these men put a huge reliance on connecting with the true world. Thoreau went as far as to live in the woods in order to get in touch with his natural soul, in order to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” According to him, society is “powerless while it conforms to the majority (94)” in his essay Civil Disobedience. Thoreau then decided to become part of the minority, and he then felt that he truly connected with nature and learned how to live. Thoreau actually found a society that was worthy of his approval in his essay Solitude, an “encouraging society [that] may be found in any natural object (202).” Both men disapproved of the society which they believed confined their natural souls. They saw nature “stretcheth out her arms to embrace man (2)”, as Emerson noted in nature. Both men wished to defy society and become their own creation, and their ideas are the basis of transcendentalism.
Thomas Doughty’s In Nature’s Wonderland is a fine example of these two men’s beliefs that society is confining and ridding oneself from it means absolute spiritual freedom. In the painting, there is a man who is at the edge of a large pond, and he is very small compared to the pond and the mountains that surround him. A tree and a cliff shoot up towards the heavens around him, as if to tell him how much they mean to the world. He is looking into the brightest point on the pond, as if he is having a revelation and the light bulb in his head has just turned on. Emerson noted that “when good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man (29)” in his essay Self-Reliance. Here this man is completely alone. It is also interesting that this man is carrying a rifle, but is holding it awkwardly without any intent on using it. As Thoreau says in his essay Where I Lived and What I Lived For, a man can become “tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense (173).” The only way to cure this is to live with more “simplicity of life and elevation of purpose (173).” This man is realizing this in all of nature’s beauty, and the rifle, or luxury and heedless expense he owns, seems less useful now. He has realized the negative influence of society and its ways of confining the soul, and now he is choosing to step into the light and accept nature to better himself.
Thomas Doughty’s In Nature’s Wonderland is a fine example of these two men’s beliefs that society is confining and ridding oneself from it means absolute spiritual freedom. In the painting, there is a man who is at the edge of a large pond, and he is very small compared to the pond and the mountains that surround him. A tree and a cliff shoot up towards the heavens around him, as if to tell him how much they mean to the world. He is looking into the brightest point on the pond, as if he is having a revelation and the light bulb in his head has just turned on. Emerson noted that “when good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man (29)” in his essay Self-Reliance. Here this man is completely alone. It is also interesting that this man is carrying a rifle, but is holding it awkwardly without any intent on using it. As Thoreau says in his essay Where I Lived and What I Lived For, a man can become “tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense (173).” The only way to cure this is to live with more “simplicity of life and elevation of purpose (173).” This man is realizing this in all of nature’s beauty, and the rifle, or luxury and heedless expense he owns, seems less useful now. He has realized the negative influence of society and its ways of confining the soul, and now he is choosing to step into the light and accept nature to better himself.