Introduction
Background to the Essay “The Poet”
Emerson’s essay “The Poet” originally published in the 1844 edition of Essays, discusses what makes a poet and what that person’s position in society should be. He contends that the poet is a seer who uncovers the mysteries of the universe and articulates the universal truths that unite humanity.
Emerson expressed his views regarding the nature, purpose, and function of the poet in a lecture titled “The Poet” which he gave as part of a series in 1841-42. Around the same time, he wrote a poem titled “The Poet” from which he borrowed some lines for his essay, which was later published in his collection Essays: Second Series in 1844. The epigraph summarises Emerson’s basic idea that the poet’s role is twofold: first, to notice “Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times/……musical order, and pairing rhymes,” and second, to communicate this realisation to other men, as had done the “Olympic bands who sung/Divine ideas below/which always finds us young,/And always keeps us so,” as had done the “Olympic bands who sung/Divine ideas below
Introduction to Emerson’s Essay “The Poet”
Emerson brings out his main points in the first paragraph of his essay. He claims that both modern art criticism and literary appreciations suffer from a spiritual deficit. There are four types of men: those who are respected, those who are respected, and those who are respected “”Umbrella umpires,” “intellectual men,” “theologians” of the day, and even the common “poet” appear to have “lost the knowledge of the instant dependence of form upon spirit.” Those who rely solely on the “material world” according to Emerson, miss out on the myriad underlying meanings that are “sensuous fact” beneath every “intrinsically ideal and beautiful” All mankind are “children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted.” as Emerson puts it.
The finest poets and intellectuals (Orpheus, for example, is named by Emerson)
Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, and the Swedish visionary Swedenlong) and even ” the fountains hence all this river of Time and its creatures floweth are intrinsically ideal and beautiful.” (Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, and the Swedish visionary Swedenlong).
Emerson’s Views on the Nature and Functions of the Poet
After defining man in the spirit of a Promethean “child of fire” in the first portion of his essay, Emerson moves on to the nature and functions of the poet. Emerson believes that the poet is truly representative since he is a “complete man” among “partial men” and he “appraises us not of his wealth, but of the common wealth.” This indicates that among ordinary men, the poet is the only one who can not only receive and live by truth, but also articulate it for the benefit of ordinary men. Again, because the poet possesses a unique character or skill, he is one of the three children of the Universe, who Emerson describes as “cause, operation, and effect ” or ” Jove, Pluto, Neptune,” or “the Father, the spirit, and the Sun ” or “the knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.” The poet is the sayer, the truth-lover, the namer who represents beauty, among them.
Poets are those who “can penetrate into that region where the air is music,” and those who write down what they have heard, according to Emerson. These poems, which are sometimes faulty transcriptions of the writers’ “primal warblings” become ” the songs of the nations.” The actual poet can also be distinguished from the individual with only poetical aptitude, industry, and competence in producing verse on this basis. The true poet “announces that which no man foretold….He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and casual.” in contrast to the guy with poetical aptitude. Emerson goes on to say that a true poem can be detected by the presence of an argument—”a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own.”
Materials and Techniques Used by “The Poet”
Emerson speaks of the poet’s use of objects as symbols and of the poet’s use of language when it comes to all the materials he uses. “things admit of being used as symbols because nature is a symbol, in the whole and in every part.” he argues. Emerson argues, ” The Universe is the externalisation of the soul.” borrowing from the Neoplatonic theory of Plotimus that the soul is an ever-flowing spring from which both nature and the individual’s soul are emanations. Ordinary man, in his love for nature, worships “the symbol nature.” Symbols or emblems are prized by political parties and even governments. Even if “people fancy they hate poetry….they are all poets and mystics,” according to Emerson, men utilise emblems everywhere.
True poets, on the other hand, use symbols for a different reason. The first poets were the Namers, or language-makers, in the sense that they “symbolised the world to the first speaker and to the hearer.” by coining words. Alternatively, as Emerson goes on to say, “The deadest word, according to the etymologist, was once a dazzling image. Language is a kind of prehistoric poetry.” The poet’s powers, on the other hand, are not dead but alive and organic, and the poet’s expression grows “as a leaf out of a tree” The poet makes his poem in the same way that the Universal Soul or Spirit creates the world.
Emerson then moves on to the poet’s tactics or approaches. The poet’s imagination or insight, which is “Like the metamorphosis of things into higher organic forms,” is one specific skill that allows him to communicate his views “a very high sort of seeing.” Imaginative insight, on the other hand, does not come through study or the activity of the “conscious intellect,” but rather from the imagination “The intellect was freed from all obligations and was forced to follow the instructions of its divine life. ” “This is why the bands liked stimulants,” adds Emerson, including “alcohol, bread, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium.” “and so on. Yet, according to Emerson, a great poet does not require such aids: ” The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body.” The poet should be able to find inspiration in the ordinary sights and sounds of nature, and because “the imagination intoxicates the poet, its effect on the poet’s audience is liberating too.” Poets, according to Emerson, are “liberating gods” because they “unlock our chains and admit us to a new scene.”
Emerson even goes so far as to say that “religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men” Emerson, on the other hand, is wary of mystics who establish symbols as having a single, unchangeable meaning. According to Emerson, “all symbols are flexional, ” and poetry is really religious “because it encourages and makes possible the passage of the soul into higher forms.”
The Condition of “The Poet” in General is the conclusion of the essay
Emerson searches for the ideal poet in America in the latter section of his essay. In a nutshell, his idea is that, just as other nations and civilisations have poets, America must have one as well, despite the fact that none appears to exist. According to Emerson, America is a poem in and of itself because “its ample geography dazzles the imagination,” and thus “it will not wait long for metres.” And it is on the basis of this faith that Emerson paints a prescient picture of the poet’s role. As a man seeking beauty, as an artist attempting to comprehend and express the ideal and eternal, the poet is urged not to doubt, but to persevere, even in the face of opposition and criticism, until rage draws out of him that “dream-power” by the “virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.”