Emily Dickinson: Transcendentalist Experience Through Imagination

Emily Dickinson: Transcendentalist Experience Through Imagination


     The early 19th century ideas of transcendentalism, which were introduced

by Ralph Emerson and David Thoreau, where man as an individual becomes

spiritually consumed with nature and himself through experience are contrasted

by Emily Dickinson, who chose to branch off this path by showing that a

transcendentalist experience could be achieved through imagination alone.  These

three monumental writers set the boundaries for this new realm of thought.

Although these writers ideas were not similar, they all followed the simple idea

that “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul” .  The male perspective

seen through the works of Thoreau and Emerson, where nature “refers to essences

unchanged by man; the air, the river, the leaf” , is revised and satirized by

Dickinson's statement that “Of all the Souls that stand create-, I have elected-

One” .  Dickinson's works were meant to taunt society by showing how a woman,

ironically trapped in her “natural” surroundings of the home, could obtain as

much power, if not more than any male writer.  This ironic revisions of ideas is

directed at all male transcendentalists and figures in society.


     Both Ralph Emerson and David Thoreau used societies stereotype of the

true male environment, “nature”, to draw their power and write from their

experiences.  Experience was the most important factor to these writers.  The

ability “to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account in my next

excursion”  was the basis of all their writings.  “To get the whole and genuine

meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the whole world”  was their goal

behind all their writings.  They did not use their power of writing in order to

gain a transcendentalist experience, but rather to record them.  Both Emerson

and Thoreau chose to contact their true natural surroundings, and experience

time alone in the “woods”.  By being “in solitude”, it brought forth a

conciseness that “all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind

is open to their influence” .


     Mans views of nature being rightfully his, to do with what he wants, is

harshly contrasted by Emerson, who feels that “Nature sais,-He is my creature” .

Emerson felt that man, corrupted by society, can over power the fate of over

looking his true meaning. Escaping from the wheel of society into “the woods, is

perpetual youth”.  By living in the woods, he found that fusing nature with soul,

one can accomplish anything.


     Emerson felt that nature was an extension of five of his senses, where

he could feel the tree moving in the wind as if it was his own body.  He

stressed the theme of “having intercourse with heaven and earth”, or interlacing

your body and soul with nature.  But, of all five senses, he stressed vision the

most.  Beauty can only be accomplished through the gate way of the eye, which is

where most experiences are derived from.  “The eye is the best of artists” , and

has the power to display “the simple perception of natural forms” , which is

where true beauty comes form.  “Nature satisfies the soul purely by its

loveliness” .  By becoming “a transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing.  I see all” .


     Being self reliant on oneself, following the idea that “Man is his own

star” , Emerson displays his transcendentalist idea that applies to anyone who

would like to follow it.  The importance of flowing with nature, and excepting

what you are is stressed in Emerson's self-reliance.  By following the modo “Ne

te quæsiveris extra” , Emerson completely committed himself to “nature”.  By

letting it become part of his soul, he used its power to enable him to transcend

into the identity of anything or anyone he would like.  This idea is important

to Emerson because it transforms “the tradesman, the attorney comes out of the

din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again”

.  Looking at himself as an individual, not as a number lost in a sea 
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