EMERSON QUOTES

Art thus in our fine art not imitation but creation is the aim From this succession of excellent objects we learnat last the immensity of the world, the opulence of humannature, which can run out to infinitude in any direction. common to all works of thehighest art,that they are universally intelligible; thatthey restore to us the simplest states of mind, and arereligious. that. Art should exhilarate, and throw downthe walls of circumstance on every side, awakening inthe beholder the same sense of universal relation andpower which the work evinced in the artist, and its highesteffect is to make new artists. form. But true art is neverfixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is not inthe oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks fromits instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage antique, and furnishes thesole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous figuresinto nature,namely, that they were inevitable; that theartist was drunk with a passion for form which he couldnot resist, and which vented itself in these fine extravagances, inspire.The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Artmust not be a superficial talent, but must begin fartherback in man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful,and they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhormen as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and consolethemselves with color-bags and blocks of marble. unannounced, and springup between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is invain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles inthe old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holinessin new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, inthe shop and mill

THE POET

For poetry was all written before time was, and wheneverwe are so finely organized that we can penetrateinto that region where the air is music, we hear thoseprimal warblings and attempt to write them down, butwe lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitutesomething of our own, and thus miswrite the poem

primary.For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument thatmakes a poem,a thought so passionate and alive thatlike the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architectureof its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form.The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experienceto unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, andall men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experienceof each new age requires a new confession, and theworld seems always waiting for its poet.

joy I begin to read a poem which Iconfide in as an inspiration! And now my chains are to bebroken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaqueairs in which I live,opaque, though they seem transparent,and from the heaven of truth I shall see andcomprehend my relations

water; but the all-piercing,all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven that man shall neverinhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old nooks,and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and havelost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can leadme thither where I would be.

For thoughlife is great, and fascinates, and absorbs; and though allmen are intelligent of the symbols through which it isnamed; yet they cannot originally use them. We

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things,whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind.

them. Andherein is the legitimation of criticism, in the minds faiththat the poems are a corrupt version of some text innature with which they ought to be made to tally.

draw,by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and sufferingthe ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; thenhe is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speechis thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universallyintelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knowsthat he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhatwildly, or, with the flower of the mind;

themselves, not with intellect alone but withthe intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller whohas lost his way throws his reins on his horses neck andtrusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, somust we do with the divine animal who carries us throughthis world. For if in any manner we can stimulate thisinstinct, new passages are opened for us into nature; themind flows into and through things hardest and highest,and the metamorphosis is possible.This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics,coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal -wood andtobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration

mechanicalsubstitutes for the true nectar, which is the ravishmentof the intellect by coming nearer to the fact

his passage out into free space, and they help him toescape the custody of that body in which he is pent up,and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which he isenclosed.

deterioration. But never can any advantagebe taken of nature by a trick. The spirit of the world,the great calm presence of the Creator, comes not forthto the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime visioncomes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chastebody. That is not an inspiration, which we owe to narcotics,but some counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton saysthat the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously,but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods and theirdescent unto men, must drink water out of a woodenbowl.

If thou fill thybrain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness,and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wineand French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdomin the lonely waste of the pinewoods.

nature; howgreat the perspective! nations, times, systems, enter anddisappear like threads in tapestry of large figure and manycolors; dream delivers us to dream, and while the drunkennesslasts we will sell our bed, our philosophy, ourreligion, in our opulence.children. We are like personswho come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This isthe effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poeticforms. Poets are thus liberating gods.

men.But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not tofreeze. The poet did not stop at the color or the form, butread their meaning; neither may he rest in this meaning,but he makes the same objects exponents of his newthought. Here is the difference betwixt the poet and themystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, whichwas a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes oldand false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language isvehicular and transitive, and

use. And the mystic mustbe steadily told,All that you say is just as true withoutthe tedious use of that symbol as with it

experiences. We have all seen changesas considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the poetand shall draw us with love and terror, who sees throughthe flowing vest the firm nature, and can declare it.I look in vain for the poet whom I describe.

Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries,our Negroes and Indians, our boats and our repudiations,the wrath of rogues and the pusillanimity of honestmen, the northern trade, the southern planting, thewestern clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung. YetAmerica is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzlesthe imagination, and it will not wait long for metres

him. Thepoet pours out verses in every solitude. Most of the thingshe says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by hesays something which is original and beautiful. Thatcharms him. He would say nothing else but such things.

The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave theworld, and know the muse only

Others shall be thy gentlemen and shall represent all courtesyand worldly life for thee; others shall do the greatand resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid withnature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or theExchange. The

And this is the reward; thatthe ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of theactual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but nottroublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou