Emerson, Thoreau and Poe Sublime

Thoreau allows his imagination to wonder in his writing and it is apparent he hasn’t held back on the rhythm and soul of his words. He writes openly and freely about the things he can see which others cannot. He writes of his experiences of being alone in the woods with nature as his only friend; about the seasons, birds and the rain. Thoreau’s external environment truly entertained him and allowed him to write from a different state of mind. He never measured life by material things; instead he measured it by experiences. If it proved to be mean, Thoreau would extract the essence of malice out of it and publish it to the world. However if a particular incident of his were sublime, he would identify with it through his own personal experience.

Thoreau wanted to reach his readers on both emotional and intellectual levels. As his audience, he tells us that wealth traps a person into a sort of contrary ownership, and then tells us to seek a shelter, but one that requires the least amount of work and time, so that we are left with enough spare time for reading, thinking or doing whatever it is that will make us happy.

Emerson’s work on the other hand speaks of how people use their minds to visually create what they see around them. He speaks of how he wants us to separate ourselves from all that we were attached to. He opens up on a personal level in one particular piece, the sublime moment when he lost his father, wife and two brothers; saying “It is my own humour to despise pedigree. I was educated to prize it”.

After reading some of the work of Emerson and Thoreau, I came to a conclusion that they both have written similar opinions on the aspects of simplicity and imagination. They also both pursued transcendentalist philosophy, and used it to a great extent in their writing. Both writers have a similar passion for nature and believed in living in harmony with it. They briefly state that individuals need to live their own experiences instead of living through old traditions and that the deeper meaning of life can be found through simplicity and nature. In addition to living simply, both men believe in the value of the soul.

Poe coming next