Fair Witness—Emerson, Nature I.2
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. …Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun…The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.
So far E has been arguing for an original relation to the universe, unmediated by inherited thought. Nature provides that unmediated experience, and dissolves the open-hearted observer, too. You become a part of something bigger rather than a separate self. You’re part of the poetic whole.
I am always interested in what a writer glosses over or cherry-picks. What is gained or lost by ignoring or setting aside the fact of Miller, Locke, and Manning? What is gained or lost to them? Do they have the same privilege to set aside E? Who chooses what counts as part of the whole?
Particulars do have an irritating habit of intruding on our unmediated experiences. And yet, there they are, Ralph Waldo.
E may sometimes find nature melancholy, but so far it never seems to be dangerous or destructive. It’s “Sunday-morning walk” nature that stays in an aesthetic (poetic) realm of the sublime or the beautiful rather than sometimes being a massive, unstoppable, impersonal force. The sublime is awe, not terror—not wildfires, hurricanes, or storms at sea.
I get why E leaves all that stuff out—he writes with vigor, in sweeping statements meant to brush off old cobwebs. He is a waker-up, a kindler of enthusiasm. Hedging everything in qualifiers would douse the fire and leave the cobwebs in place. But I value fair witness. I struggle to find E’s ideas credible, because he glosses over so much truth.
Still, what do I value here? The call to wake up to the physical world, to unite mind and heart, and to be courageously open. The last 20 years or so have seen the rise of a vulnerability culture, and I think that’s lovely. But E reminds me that openness is also alive—not an adrenaline rush per se, but exciting. Invigorating. Something you can embrace, secure in your capacity to grow from it. In an odd way it reminds me of Stephen Colbert’s “Learn to love the bomb” (except that it’s not about failure or comedy and has more trees)—the brightening of the eye in the face of something beyond your control.