Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no clever titles, today.

First off I'd like to say that most of what I'm going to say in this blog is based on memory from my last reading of Emerson, which was probably.... four or five years ago. I've made it through "American Scholar" and parts of "Nature" (not gonna lie, it was mostly during class. for some reason Emerson keeps putting me to sleep), but I don't know that I'm quite comfortable enough with his ideology to be able to write about it with any confidence.

That said, I have a mixed sort of appreciation for Emerson. Having spent a great deal of my life outdoors and in the backwoods of Montana I can honestly understand a great deal of his attraction to nature (because while Emerson defines "nature" as being that outside of man -- the "not me" -- he does seem to make the point that nature is also that outside what is made by man) as a place for reflection and self-understanding. I don't necessarily ascribe to the same connection between man and nature, as Biblically speaking the oneness (or something to that effect) that Emerson describes doesn't seem to jive too well, but a great deal of what he claims seems to descend from a logical progression.

If we are able to separate ourselves from what distracts us (which seems to be in general that which is made by humankind, the works of our hands, etc.) into some place foreign and completely outside of ourselves, it might serve to allow us to better understand who we are, at the core of ourselves.

There is of course the possibility that I'm reading Emerson completely wrong (or not reading him much at all), and he's a bit more of a crackpot than my initial analysis perceives, but I do think I get for the most part where he's coming from and am glad to have gotten to spend more time with his writing.