The portrait that emerges is of Emerson the paradox: a pedigreed man who articulated the democratic impulse; an urbanite who channeled nature; a nonconformist champion of individualism and self-reliance, celebrating the “infinitude of the private man,” yet also highly gregarious and social, fostering constructive relationships with numerous literary luminaries including Henry David Thoreau, James Elliot Cabot, Frederic Henry Hedge, Margaret Fuller, and, across the pond, as it were, Thomas Carlyle.
Despite his reputation for elation and joy, he endured profound grief, having suffered the loss of many loved ones. “He was,” says Marcus, “the oldest of five Emerson brothers, the others being William, Edward, Charles, and Bulkeley. (Another brother, John Clarke, had died in 1807 at the age of eight, while Emerson’s two sisters, Phebe and Mary Caroline, both perished as toddlers.” Besides these, his father passed away when he was seven. His brothers Edward and Charles died in their thirties. His first wife, Ellen, succumbed to tuberculosis at age 20, and his first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever. The list goes on.
Pioneering a novel approach to literature, one that set Americans apart from European convention, Emerson drew inspiration from the giants of the past, “aligning himself with a long philosophical tradition, going back as far as the fifth-century thinker Dionysius (or, confusingly, Pseudo-Dionysius), who declared that beauty and goodness were basically the same thing.” His essayist antecedent was Michel de Montaigne.
While William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (both of whom Emerson met) may have anticipated Emerson, his writing was distinct, capturing the electrifying originality of the American project. He reflected the dynamic ethos of a country expanding westward, embracing new technologies, and exploring innovative forms of commerce.
Marcus calls the essay Nature “the beginning of American literature,” a designation sometimes reserved for Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This claim is bolstered by the specific demand of Emerson’s era for the type of entertainment he provided, namely sermon-like speeches or professional oration. Marcus dubs Emerson “the itinerant lecturer.”
Emerson’s promising early career in ministry shifted to active participation in the burgeoning transcendentalist movement after he rejected the validity of the Lord’s Supper, making it impossible for him to lead a church. Transcendentalism didn’t oppose divinity but found it in intuitive communion with material nature rather than institutional religion. It has many definitions, but its “core,” according to Marcus, is “to be ourselves—and to be truthful at any cost.” This characterization is adequate so far as it goes but fails to encompass the emotional and mystical elements that distinguish this synthesizing philosophy.