Here is a requisite cat. It is big boned. It has a glandular problem. He may also be a hedonist.
(What's that? Need a more comprehensive background? You are the problem.)
The father of American Transcendentalism is Ralph Waldo Emerson, that's no secret. He composed several works of literature, such as the famed Nature, in which he espouses an abandon from established values in resorting to a non-traditional approach to appreciating nature. He, in fact, asserts that each person comes to an understanding of nature by various degrees, and that, by doing so, we return to a true understanding of reason and faith. There was a lot of Unitarianism going on in the north, a lot of very charismatic Protestantism going on in the south, and the dang ol' papists were hanging around there in pockets as well. (it's okay, I was "raised" Catholic) Anyway nobody liked it, and they all wanted people to get their ideas about faith, and reason, and religion, and intelligence right from the font of their willingly profuse mouths. Harvard wasn't a big fan of it, until after the fact when they were. It began as a reformation within the Unitarian Church, however it would not be contained within those bounds for very long. In high school, the teachers spoke to me of Emerson like he was the fourth horseman, come to whip the small babe Jesus with a hickory switch. This peaked my interest. The plot thickened.
Here is one of my favorite poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which I think exemplifies the kind of ideas which were starting to brew...I suppose it would have to elicit some kind of reaction. It is called Brahma, and it was published in 1857 in Atlantic Monthly.
Brahma
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or the slain think he is slain,
They know not well my subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
and one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
and pine in vain the Sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven
It is important to understand the nature of Brahma (the Hindu god of creation) in order to understand the parallels between how Emerson saw man and faith interacting, and how the Brahmin castes interacted with the essence of the universe (Brahman). Needless to say, there were little similarities shared with the monotheism of his American contemporaries, however, during the time when he wrote it, Emerson was claimed to have been a devout and well-studied Christian. This god is the embodiment, the incarnation, of the entire essence of Hindu creation. Brahma is omnipresent in the vein that he is in all things and that all things are in him. He is the embodiment of nature, and natural causation. The "Sacred Seven" is said to refer to the "Seven Lords of Amenti, regarded as The Lords Of Life" or the seven Rishis, Sons of Brahma. Brahma is an exhortation, or rings as one to me.
Snap back, lets deconstruct this mother.
The poem is broken up into four distinct stanzas, each assuming Brahma into a different allegorical manifestation. Each stanzas form is wrought with iambs (tada, I guess Shakespeare was on to something). Stanza by stanza progression seems to be getting at something, perhaps that Brahma is...like...important or something. THEN you get the punch line, you are supposed to pay attention to him because he is around you, and not worry about heaven (or whatever the Bhagavad Gita provides for). So what is "God" in this poem?
In the first stanza he is embodied by a moral authority, one that does not distinguish between the "slain" or the "slayers". Indeed he provides that the slain ARE NOT slain and that the slayer DOES NOT slay. The moral orientations and whims of those those who would portend to be the authorities...intellectuals....clergy....these guys have no clue what the hell they are even talking about, "...my subtle ways". nothing shockingly new here though, Thomas Jefferson had expressed just these ideas about American clergy almost an entire century before. MOVING ON.
The second stanza is one in which I find a great deal of Emerson's essay about nature, as well as Thoreau's little addendum in Walden. Namely, it means to say that of the two, God is...both: both far and near are the same to me, both shadow and sunlight are the same, both shame and fame are of equal worth to me. Hmm...it's like there are no classes when you are all outside eating questionably toxic berries in the woods, or going to jail for not paying taxes.
But not only is he all of these things, he is more. He is the idea about the things as well:
...when me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.
God is not only natural, but intuitive, and aspirant, and one who is carried on the ideas of the thinker, not in the pulpits of the chapels, or in the halls of the yogis and mystics. He is THE DOUBT...WHAAA!?? But not only that, he is the doubter himself. He is the one who is affixed apart from the security of congregational acceptance, he is the thinking man aloof of the established means of thought. Harvard Divinity School was not teaching you this kinda stuff in 1840-whatever, man...far out. Notice how I left out the first line of that stanza. You see what I did there?
"They reckon ill who leave me out"
This seems like an important preface to the last three lines of the stanza. Personally, to my taste, he could have just written this line, added a period, and moved on to the next stanza...wham, bam, thank you ma'am. It's funny in a poignant way, because it is impossible. He goes on to show you why...because he is in everything, because he is even in song. Who the hell are they anyway? He doesn't even say. Are "they" not important enough to get a mention? (apart from them being they) Irrelevant questions, because Brahma is living in all creation; he is the author of it, he is the inescapable element of "is". Sounds like, therefore, maybe it would be a good idea to try and get together with those things *Ding* hey...maybe I'll go camping this weekend.
The last stanza is the, if unconscious (although I suspect it was not), departure from which there is no return. These guys are trying to get after me, they are trying to emulate my nature, but they are no substitute for me. It is only you, you are the only one, come and look for me yourself...don't subscribe to the heaven that they are offering you...don't worry about what they are going to say about you in the process of that journey. It will only be you "...meek lover of the good" who will find me.
Fade in.
Have you ever felt such a strong intuition inside of you, like a coal that you are carrying unprotected in your scalded hand, only to be told by someone that it was a wrong turn? A gravely wrong turn? A turn from which you would suffer with severe social and perhaps...eternal implications? Have you ever felt tears welling up in you because you could not contain the love in your heart for those outlying creatures, foreign to the fold? Those that you pay calm cheerful grins to, only to be reigned back into a state of self doubt? Ever listened to a story that people gave so much credence to that any deviation from it could frame you in a film, to be jeered at like an exhibition, or pitied like you are not the same sort of human as they? Emerson and Thoreau are jiving with ya. Emerson and Thoreau PRICKED their green thumbs on the thorns of their contemporaries' society, and they BLED OUT a new generation of American intellectuals...scholarly and religious transcendentalists.
Close your hymnals and pass them to the middle of the aisle, this has been another edition of Poetry Snapback with Cullen Gandy.
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