Paul Scott Derrick Grisanti - Lines of Thought

Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant become unpoetic. But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. (Porte 1983: 43)

Emerson never denied the importance of science, nor the astonishing efficacy of the scientific mentality. But he clearly recognized the need to be able to think about the world in both ways in order to keep it whole. In fact, it would probably be accurate to say that his whole philosophy was based on the one question of learning how to use the mind more flexibly, of developing what we might think of as different “registers” of thought. Maybe the real task that those forerunners of modernity we refer to as Romantics set for us is simply (simply—but with what profound repercussions!) to redress the balance between the objective, calculating empirical knowledge of “Understanding” and the subjective, intuitive knowledge of “Reason.”

We are not scientists. We aren’t here to dictate meanings, to manipulate power, or even to formulate ambitious systems of understanding. Our province, as critics and teachers of literature, is the same as the province of poetry. If it is true that art provides us with images that we need to survive, with clues to more viable forms of living, then maybe the best we can hope for is, on a few occasions, to make some kind of positive contribution to a constructive understanding of those images and clues.

What I am proposing here is that the proper apprehension of the messages contained in art comes not primarily through the intellect, but through the emotions, not through the head but through the heart. It may be necessary for us, both as teachers and students, to resist the temptation to use the tools of theory to impose our will on the artwork, and to learn, instead, to make ourselves its servants.

But here again, let me hasten to point out that I am not at all suggesting that we merely deliver ourselves to raw, undisciplined emotion—which has much too often been the simplistic response to the problems posed by the romantic revolution. No, I am talking about feeling informed by responsible intelligence, about the need to learn, or to remember, how most propitiously to join those two essential qualities of feeling and thought that constitute our human nature.

This is not an easy adjustment to make, and no one is going to produce an easy formula to guide us. Unfortunately, there are no objective standards or canons for evaluating wisdom, no time-saving devices or cost-effective techniques for attaining it. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to forget it, either.

Maybe the first step on the way is simply to admit that we aren’t important, that our discipline, like art itself, is materially useless. On the other hand, though, it just might also be that this very uselessness composes a line that connects wisdom and knowledge, while too many of our intellectual disciplines tend to draw a separating line between them.

As I said before, poetry, literature and art only finally serve to bring us back home to ourselves, and repeatedly remind us of what we are. But we deeply need those perplexing and often unsettling reminders. And we need to be able to assimilate them in all of their paradoxical ambiguity, with all of their internal contradictions. Because we’re constantly on the verge of forgetting what we are. And it’s then, when we permit ourselves to forget, that we begin to be dangerous.

WORKS CITED

Baker, Carlos. 1996. Emerson among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press.

Baym, Nina et al. (eds.). 1989. The Norton Anthology of American Literature , Third Edition, Vol. 2. London: W. W. Norton & Company.

Neruda, Pablo. 1957. El tercer libro de las odas . Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S. A.

Porte, Joel (ed.). 1983. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures. New York: The Library of America.

Rusk, Ralph L. (ed.). 1939. The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1848—1855. New York: Columbia University Press.

* Originally published in Francisco Fernández (ed.). Los estudios ingleses: situación actual y perspectivas de futuro . València: Universitat de València, 1999. 251-59.

Emerson? In the Classroom? A Few Considerations on an Emersonian Model of Learning *

Nietzsche learned from Emerson how to impart wisdom by provocation, not instruction. I am neither philosopher nor sage but a school-teacher and I keep trying to learn from Emerson how not to teach. Here in America we should be blessedly free of authority: There are no foundations for us to augment.

Harold Bloom ( The Daemon Knows )

Maybe the most important lesson that any individual can ever learn in life is how to become himself.

Of course, there’s nothing new or innovative in this idea. It’s always been true. But it may be even truer today, when the mass media, exponentially potentiated by the revolution in communication technologies, are invading more and more of our intimate mental and emotional spaces and, as a consequence, usurping so many of the prerogatives of the mind. On the one hand, we are charmed—almost hypnotized—by the marvels of technology. How easy, how comfortable, how entertaining they make our lives. On the other hand, nothing is free. All of those supposed improvements—the labor- and time-saving devices, the almost instantaneous access to an overload of futile information, the fully-integrated home entertainment systems—they all have a price. The incursion of technology into our lives makes it practically impossible for any of us in the developed world to escape from the tidal wave of pre-packaged voices, images and ideas, to resist the pressure to conform to externally-imposed standards and, even worse, to resist the allure of externally-imposed desires.

Plugging ourselves into the circuitry of an electronically-powered virtual reality—one more version of what Thomas Pynchon calls “Death the impersonator”—we are short-sightedly forfeiting what we are. We are losing touch with our innate ability to meditate and reflect, to commune in peaceful, selfsufficient solitude with the silent forces that animate the natural world and constitute the source of life. We are losing touch with the still, small voice that each of us harbors inside, which is the key to our individuality and therefore the key to our freedom, and therefore the key to our humanity.

Everything has its price. The power we need for our self-indulgent dream of control has to come from somewhere. And we take it, unreflectingly, from every “resource” we can. Is it any wonder that the world is dying all around us?

We are all here, as teachers of American literature, to exchange ideas about how our subject matter should be taught. But I would like to bend that objective just a little bit and think in deeper terms about our functions and our duties. Anyone who presumes to be a teacher presumes to participate—or to interfere—in the formation of other minds. And this, in spite of the evidence provided by our salary scales, is a deeply serious responsibility.

I have long believed that the underlying principle of all education should be to inculcate what Ralph Waldo Emerson called, in the 19 thcentury, self-reliance. Because Emerson was such a central figure in the course of American literature, my interest in his philosophy, my own consequent thoughts on education, on what we should be trying to do in the classroom, and my love for the subject matter that I attempt to teach, are all threads that form part of a single fabric.