`To Dare and Violate and Make Escapades'

By most accounts, Emerson was no spellbinder in person, though, as a lecturer he drew large, enthusiastic audiences after his status as a bona fide sage was established. Presumably, his crowds included those attracted to his celebrity – call them Transcendentalist groupies. His obdurate, Unitarian blandness must have disappointed some – even those accustomed to hours of sermons on Sundays -- and blunted the pyrotechnics of his sentences. More than most, Emerson is a writer at his best on the silent page, where he can be savored at leisure. His best prose is so electric, sparking across paragraphs, it requires the grounding of print; aloud, it fizzles. At age 37, on June 11, 1840, Emerson wrote in his journal:

“I, cold because I am hot – cold at the surface only as a sort of guard and compensation for the fluid tenderness of the core – have much more experience than I have written there, more than I will, more than I can write. In silence we must wrap much of our life, because it is too fine for speech, because also we cannot explain it to others, and because somewhat we cannot yet understand.”

This is a powerfully moving insight, especially for so young a man, and reminds me of Emily Dickinson:

“Silence is all we dread.
There's Ransom in a Voice –
But Silence is Infinity.”

We distrust bombast, histrionics, special effects. Dickinson, too, wrapped much of her life in silence, and for this we trust her. Outwardly, these American writers led lives of non-adventure; inwardly, each was a Shackleton, exploring the polar regions. On May 24, 1847, Emerson wrote in his journal, “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.” Henry Miller, that inveterate con man, starts a chapter in Tropic of Cancer with Emerson’s sentence and follows it with:

“If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night.”

As an act of provocation, Miller is picking on American literature’s father figure, his own unacknowledged father, whom he fancied a Puritan without a body. His anatomy, however, is confused. The intestine is filled not with food but shit. In his preceding paragraph, Miller cites the writer who links him to Emerson, without recognizing the kinship: “When I think of this city where I was born and raised, this Manhattan that Whitman sang of, a blind white rage licks my guts.” Whitman, too, conceals much, masking reticence with the persona of a blowhard. I wish we could reclaim his vision and read Emerson with Whitman’s eyes. He told Horace Traubel:

“[Emerson’s] quality, his meaning has the quality of the light of day, which startles nobody. You cannot put your finger upon it yet there is nothing more palpable, nothing more wonderful, nothing more vital and refreshing…The most exquisite taste and caution are in him, always saving his feet from passing beyond the limits, for he is transcendental of limits, and you see underneath the rest a secret proclivity, American maybe, to dare and violate and make escapades.”