He argues that voluntaristic Calvinism diminished New England writers' attachment to, and capacity for reason, and validated impulse--which we may conclude results in the devaluation of diligent art.
See In Defense of Reason, pp. 381-382: "Edwardian theology abandoned the early New England modifications of Calvinism; it taught an undisguised determinism and a purely mystical doctrine of Grace. New England mystical tendencies had by no means been suppressed by the earlier doctrine: there had been doctrinal heretics, and even among the orthodox, such as Increase and Cotton Mather, there had been mystical trances, ecstasies, and visions, Cotton Mather, in fact, having been visited by an angel during one of the sunlit mornings of his youth. But Edwards revived and encouraged this tendency by explicit doctrine; and the New Englander's capacity for mystical belief and feeling was thus carried over to the period when Emerson should redescribe the mystical experience, employing the ideas of Romantic pantheism recently imported from the literary movements of Europe, and as far as might be the language of Edwardian Calvinism, so that Romantic doctrine was offered in a language carrying most of the emotional implications of the New England religious tradition in its most intense aspects. Mind and matter, God and Creation were one; the inundation of the mind by instinct and emotion was Divine Grace; and surrender to whim was surrender to the Spirit."
p. 584: "The natural conclusion from these [Emerson's] speculations would be that the most effective writing is automatic writing."
p. 267: "Emerson's personal acts, like those of Very, were qualified by tradition, for he was the descendent of a line of clergymen, and his character had been formed by the society which they and their kind had formed, so that his impulses were no doubt virtuous; but his doctrine abandoned the last connection with Christianity and the last support for personal dignity, and the difference, though it does not appear in his life as a man, is already apparent in the whimsical facility of feeling to be discerned equally in his prose and in his verse..."
Or perhaps, once one has dissolved all dualities into a unity, one needs to "Turn thy back on Heaven", lest one be enmeshed in them once again, and perhaps forevermore.
I just finished re-reading _Siddhartha_ recently, and I certainly hear the philosophy that Hesse offers there in these verses. So interesting.
I'm not a great reader of the Transcendentalists, but I confess to preferring Emerson's taut verse to his (it seems to me) somewhat gassy prose.
"Turn thy back on heaven" is rather tendentious.
Yvor Winters has an answer to the question why the Transcendentalists, and especially Emerson, produced minor poetry: the inheritance of Calvinism.
Where does Winters say this?
He argues that voluntaristic Calvinism diminished New England writers' attachment to, and capacity for reason, and validated impulse--which we may conclude results in the devaluation of diligent art.
See In Defense of Reason, pp. 381-382: "Edwardian theology abandoned the early New England modifications of Calvinism; it taught an undisguised determinism and a purely mystical doctrine of Grace. New England mystical tendencies had by no means been suppressed by the earlier doctrine: there had been doctrinal heretics, and even among the orthodox, such as Increase and Cotton Mather, there had been mystical trances, ecstasies, and visions, Cotton Mather, in fact, having been visited by an angel during one of the sunlit mornings of his youth. But Edwards revived and encouraged this tendency by explicit doctrine; and the New Englander's capacity for mystical belief and feeling was thus carried over to the period when Emerson should redescribe the mystical experience, employing the ideas of Romantic pantheism recently imported from the literary movements of Europe, and as far as might be the language of Edwardian Calvinism, so that Romantic doctrine was offered in a language carrying most of the emotional implications of the New England religious tradition in its most intense aspects. Mind and matter, God and Creation were one; the inundation of the mind by instinct and emotion was Divine Grace; and surrender to whim was surrender to the Spirit."
p. 584: "The natural conclusion from these [Emerson's] speculations would be that the most effective writing is automatic writing."
p. 267: "Emerson's personal acts, like those of Very, were qualified by tradition, for he was the descendent of a line of clergymen, and his character had been formed by the society which they and their kind had formed, so that his impulses were no doubt virtuous; but his doctrine abandoned the last connection with Christianity and the last support for personal dignity, and the difference, though it does not appear in his life as a man, is already apparent in the whimsical facility of feeling to be discerned equally in his prose and in his verse..."
Or perhaps, once one has dissolved all dualities into a unity, one needs to "Turn thy back on Heaven", lest one be enmeshed in them once again, and perhaps forevermore.
A Transcendentalist could just as easily have said, "Find me, and know a vaster heaven."
"Find me, and know a vaster heaven." Is the Transcendentalist playing hide and seek, that one needs to find him first?
“to give some apparent specification to the sense of something profound. To make a poem, in other words”
Nifty definition!
Yeah, that is good.