Ralph Waldo Emmerson
Emmerson wrote essays that outlined the basic beliefs of Transcendentalism and coined the terms oversoul and transparanet eyeball. The oversoul he talks about is the connection of all people by a universal soul; he believed that each person had their own soul, but each soul of humanity is connected to this oversoul. The connection of humanity was a main belief of a Transcendentalist. Emmerson, in his work “Nature,” calls himself a transparent eyeball because he is able to removed judgement from himself and feel the connection to nature that is another pillar of Transcendentalism. Emmerson also stresses non-conformity and individualism in his essay “Self-Reliance,” saying that each person must believe and trust only themselves and not rely on others to say what they will do or believe.
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau, writer of the essay “Walden,” stresses in his essay a connection with nature and the simplification of life as a way to leave distractions and really live life. He lived in a cabin near Walden Pond for over two years and wrote his essay about finding himself and living “deliberately,” meaning he was thinking about how he lived life and didn’t take things for granted. His conclusion was simply “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” He thought that the more out of touch with what naturally was the less you really thought about how you were living life, which is part of Transcendentalism, focusing on nature and the natural instead of humanity as much. In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” he implies passive resistance, standing up for what you believe, but not violently forcing it upon others.
Walter Whitman
Whitman was very transcendental in his poems, where he compares things in nature to attributes of humanity and sometimes he also tells how be in nature affects him. His feeling of connection to nature, emphasized in certain parts of his “Song of Myself,” and his belief that all people are connected to the soil and air are truly Transcendental traits. Also in “Song of Myself” he refers very much to the “oversoul” idea of Emmerson because he says that the atoms making him up are the same as the ones that make up everyone else, a universal connection between all of humanity. The Transcendental elements in his poems stand out very much and help to show that he followed the movement very much in his writing.
Emily Dickenson
Dickenson’s poems are very challenging to read because of her deeper themes and complicated sentence structure and punctuation, but she maintains Transcendental themes that are able to be detected in reading her works. She focuses much on the human spirit and soul, using death as a symbol for many things in life, usually reflections on her own life which she applies universally. Doing this application of observations on a universal level is part of what makes her able to “qualify” as a Transcendental writer. Dickenson also compares nature to human society, drawing similarities and differences between each, another way in which she matches traits of a Transcendentalist.
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