Emerson- The Poet
In general writers are artistic individuals who inspire original thought through their work. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The Poet" is a prime example of an author trying to stimulate his audience's personal beliefs. In "The Poet", Emerson wants his audience to be able to create distinctly American intellectual cultural ideas instead of following past European models. From Emerson's perspective poets can see the true meaning of nature relating to life, but his message to the audience is that Americans can learn to see things through the eyes of a poet and become poets themselves. In the opening epigraph of "The Poet", Emerson outlines the qualities of a poet to be visionaries and interpreters of nature. Emerson also describes that poets have been gifted with s
Emerson uses a metaphor to compare the spiritual world to the material when he writes, "We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and organ," (Emerson 973). The second epigraph in this essay is a piece from another one of Emerson's works called "Ode to Beauty". Emerson compares how each individual; the "Intellectual", "Theologians", and the "Poet" connect the spiritual and material world. Emerson's hope is that society could stray from the intellectual and theologian thought, making poets out of all individuals. Emerson believes that Theologians enjoy talking about the spiritual meaning of things but would rather strictly rely on historical evidence, leaving little or no connection between the material and spiritual world. In this section Emerson is trying to explain that poetry has a lasting effect on every individual in society, "Which always find us young, And always keep us so. Emerson wants his American readers to establish their own individual literary talents rather than continuing past European trends. Emerson uses the word organ as a symbol of the material world creating a picture in the mind of the reader, which otherwise would be hard to imagine. Emerson wants people to recognize that the material world corresponds with the spiritual world. Emerson's writing inspires unscripted literary thought. I believe Emerson's message to his audience is to let loose and live a little, giving any individual the ability to become a poet. In the introductory paragraph, Emerson explains that people who are "umpires of taste"(Emerson 972) are only competent enough of judging literature and poetry because they have studied famous works of art, not because it is their occupational niche. pecial privileges giving poets the ability to see and decipher the hidden meaning of nature. A summarization of Emerson thoughts on the intellectual man would suggest that they are ignorant towards Poetic thought, believing there is no dependence between the material and spiritual world.
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