British Literature(大四期中).docVIP

Emerson’s Nature and my Nature Nature is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published anonymously in 1836. It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Transcendentalism suggests that divinity diffuses all nature, and speaks to the notion that we can only understand reality through studying nature. Emerson lays out a problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay: that man does not fully accept nature’s beauty and all that it has offered. According to Emerson, people are distracted by the world around them; nature gives back to man, but man doesn’t reciprocate the favor. Emerson breaks his essay down into eight sections: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit, and Prospects, all of which shed a different perspective on nature and mans relationship. Nature is perfectly suitable for man, but according to Emerson, man must take himself away from society’s flaws and distractions, and create “wholeness” with nature. Emerson believes that solitude is the only way man can fully adhere to what nature has to offer. Reflecting upon this idea of solitude, and mans search for it, Emerson states, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars”. Clearly, man must allow nature to “take him away”, society can destroy man’s wholeness. Nature and man must create a reciprocal relationship, “Nature, in its ministry to man, is only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endl