The Transcendentalist Manifesto:

Nature
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
and its influence on
Walt Whitman’s
Poetry
By Gabriel Molina

R. W. Emerson
W. Whitman

Intellectual and spiritual influences are, without a doubt, a main drive for change in
paradigms and mindsets. Be it in the realm of politics, religion, education or poetry, a solid
influence that offers, at times, reactionary answers is a welcome guest in times of discomfort.
Such is the case of the North-Eastern American philosophical movement called
Transcendentalism that came to be in the late 1820s.
The movement was influenced from overseas, mainly, by German Romanticism and Hindu
scriptures such as the Upanishads. Tenets such as the importance of the self, nature and a
higher (institution-wise) all-connecting spirituality are pervasive in these influences.

In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a prominent philosopher, poet and essayist published Nature,
a work which would be later known as the Transcendentalist manifesto. And with good
reason: Emerson managed to prepare the patches of soil where future poets such as Walt
Whitman would plant their seeds for this movement.
It is, then, through poetry, that this paper will elucidate these Transcendentalist ideas
portrayed in Nature. More specifically, we will shall see Concepts such as Freedom &
Ownership and Correspondence which are central driving forces for Transcendentalist works
through the scope of Whitman’s Song of Myself, published in 1855 as Leaves of Grass.

For starters, Freedom is not a simple idea to define by any means. We have access,
nowadays, to large database repositories where we can compare how Freedom was seen
through the ages and how perceive and practice it today by the influence of Human Rights. In
Whitman’s times, slavery was rampant, women were deemed as lesser social actors and
public expression would be maimed if not abiding by general standards. In fact, in 1882,
several years after having finished many (but not all) of its editions, Song of Myself was met
with relentless criticism for its supposed obscene content.
It is humanity’s institutions and power structures that curtail individual’s freedoms overall and
it’s through Nature itself that we find a pure, unshackled freedom. Emerson promotes this
idea throughout in Nature.

“All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do ... [Emerson mentions their
great realms] … Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs,
though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.” (Emerson, 1844)

Emerson goes as far as acknowledging the power every individual has, no matter their
background and directly stating one should lead oneself to their achievements. In the sphere
of education, for instance, this would be a celebration of self-discovery and self-teaching.
Whitman wholly agrees with this, as can be read in Song of Myself in 46

I tramp a perpetual journey

(…)
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
(…)
Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
(…) (Whitman, 1892)

It is clear Whitman reflects Emerson’s faith in a unique, fundamental truth that is particular to
every individual. Hence, freedom for such a train of thought is attained only when individual
wishes have been taken into consideration. Done, at first, by the individuals themselves and
not by external wills.
Freedom, lest it leans on the chaotic, also needs its rules, which was one of the main
intellectual criticisms made against Emerson’s Nature when it was published. Rights and
Duties have a clear-cut resonance nowadays. This happened in a different vein (slavery,
women’s rights, child labor etc.) in the past. The reason for this is the indisputable connection
with the concept of Ownership.
One of the main catalysts for the reactionary aspects of German Romanticism was the
excessive scientific thinking of the time (Ownership of ideas) coupled with the advent of
machinery and Capitalist ideals (Ownership of the Means of Production) and the way
Catholicism had swept most religious and cultural manifestations both in Europe and America
(Ownership of Spirituality).
The Transcendentalist answer posed by Emerson is taking into consideration what has been
neglected in the minds of every individual: Nature itself. We will never own nature, despite our
efforts to capitalize it through fervent exploitation.

“The (..) landscape (...) is indubitably made up of

(…) farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the
woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the
horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the
poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give
no title.” (Emerson, Op.cit.)

Whitman agrees with these thoughts through and through, as is expressed in 32:

(...)
[When living among animals, in virgin nature]
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
(…) (Whitman, Op. Cit.)

Humans can own structures that blend with nature, but they can not own nature itself because
the landscape, primeval nature, is above interests. It’s in this sense that nature is free
because nature is, in its spiritual splendor, only attainable by individuals who escape the
institutionalized indoctrination and any other authority-based system.
 To move on, it is of interest to note a third main pillar of this movement.
Roughly speaking, for Transcendentalism, Everything is connected. There’s a
Correspondence between the inner and the outer realms. Humanity and nature’s existence
are interrelated. If our interests modify a part of society we will be modified in return. It can be
affirmed their philosophy is causative and all-encompassing. In other words, human beings
are pure matter that is interrelated to other beings and their surroundings.
Emerson called this The Over-Soul on his eponymous essay in 1841 where he goes deeper
and enumerates the many different of connections among beings and their universe. In
Nature, however, Emerson says:

"Beauty [The way human intellect studies the world] in its largest and profoundest sense, is
one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but
different faces of the same All." (Emerson, op. cit.)

All the elements mentioned by Emerson which correspond to human values and judgments
that are ultimately original and found in the same spirit while being correspondent to each
other

Whitman’s interpretation of these ideas is of utmost importance to understand the motivations

for the movement. In 21, he says:

I am the poet of the body,

And I am the poet of the Soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me (Whitman, op. cit)

As is known of Whitman’s democratic hints on his poetry, we can see how Correspondence
takes place in two spheres: human composition (body and soul) and good and evil (heaven
and hell). For him, there’s no discrimination or dogmatic finger-pointing, he relishes the the
Transcendentalist idea of taking every single aspect of humanity in consideration and
accepting them for what they, becoming exempt of moralistic judgments borne from
institutional thinking.
 Indeed, Both Emerson and Whitman, among many other authors, risked sharing their
philosophies and standing points openly in times where doing so might have been
troublesome. This particular movement we were able to cast light on, without a doubt,
celebrated some very important values that we hold dear nowadays. Some even have made
their sound place in the Human Rights Declaration and subsequent documents.

Education, to give an example, has seen the impact of these movements as individualities
and the beautify of nature and arts have become of utmost importance overall. Also, the
constant doubting of a sterile and extremist rationalism has led to yet another shape of dogma
being undermined, which is always welcome for a society that values change and diversity.

For the sake of brevity, we shall not enumerate any more of the positive ideas
Transcendentalism (without becoming too optimistic) has endowed the contemporary world
with, but we should acknowledge, at the very least, that the the values that they promoted
were not a far cry from what any democratic citizen from our age would have wanted in their
more (perhaps less complex) difficult times.

→ sources: (needs APA formatting...Sorry!)

• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/transcendentalism

• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version

• https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/738965-song-of-myself

• https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3460613-nature

• https://emersoncentral.com/texts/the-conduct-of-life/beauty/

• http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/ideas/definitionbickman.html

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads#Philosophy