When the Inmost Becomes the Outmost

Emerson’s Writing and the Poetic of Thought

Abstract

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s style of writing and thinking is as complex as allusive, and this is not simply the result of his eclectic romanticism but also derives from the fact that by nature he is inclined to theorise and poetise at the same time. Reasoning images and imaginative reasoning sketch vertiginous ellipses while thought programmatically tends to proceed in ever-widening circles. After all, according to Stanley Cavell, one of the recurring themes in his major essays is the philosophical focus on writing as an act that is both foundational and revelatory. The foundation of American philosophical identity goes hand in hand with, and is closely connected to, a demanding search for individual authenticity. His texts are not monologues but – ideally – dialogues, in the tension not to become extinct in poetry but to «remain in conversation with itself, answerable to itself». The result, according to Cavell, is a constant struggle with oneself and for oneself, of writing, thinking, and poetry, for the event of a truth, or reality, that can never be possessed but only received. Writing, as a creative act, is in fact «not the exercise of power but of reception» [Cavell, 2003], in acknowledgment of the penury that constitutes us as human beings.