Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature and Selected Essays

I almost didn't finish this book. In retrospect, to have given up after the first essay would have been a mistake and a tragedy. Never have I related so personally to an author's perspective, style, and taste as I now do to Emerson's. Often his thoughts and conclusions are identical to my own, although we arrived at them without each other's input. And on at least one occasion, I was startled to find that the passage I was reading reflected my own questions and corresponding answers from earlier that very day. What is most spooky to me, however, is not that the content of Emerson's essays reflects my own ideas. It is a source of fondness that his style, usage, and sentence strucure are similar to my own. I even noticed that he uses italics the way I do. It is a providence that I did not trust my first impression.

That impression comes from the fact that "Nature," the cornerstone essay of the collection and possibly his most heavily anthologized, turns out to be one of his worst. I thought so little of it after reading that I put the book down never to be finished. Out of fairness, however, I gave it a second chance and was impressed by what I read in the essay, "The American Scholar." I then decided to finish and became rapturously delighted with most of the remaining essays, including "Man the Reformer" and "Circles," to identify a few of my favorites. I notice that I most enjoy those essays that began life oratically, as opposed to those that were intended primarily for publication. It is no surprise to me that Emerson found success as an itenerant speaker; his thoughts progress in each case from sensibly engaged to passionately emphatic with a crescendo that seems well suited to public delivery.

And then there is the substance of his essays, the content. Suffice it to say that they served as a mordant to my own burgeoning theology, setting the dye indelibly in my person. It is pointless here to iterate each point on which I agree with him; they are so numerous as to be nearly unanimous. In the interest of objectivity, however, allow me just to offer the criticism that he could stand to be a little less poetic. I can't discount the impression I get that, although he frowns on courtesy of all sorts, he is trying to impress the reader with his floridity. It is this fault which nearly cost him my readership, as "Nature" is the most saturated offender. In fact, although I found nothing to disagree with in thst essay, I also found nothing to agree with. It was so nauseatingly sentimental as to be nearly devoid of content. Yes, Ralph, the sunsets are beautiful. We get that, but move on already! Sheesh.