Nature always wears the colors of the spirit essay

Analyze Essay

Inductive Analysis Essay -- Emerson (50 pts.) Length: 4-5 pgs. Due Date: Check Canvas Task: Analyze the text of the excerpt from Emerson’s Nature and discuss how the writer explains (a) his experience with nature while in solitude and (b) the spiritual connection that he has with God through nature. • To successfully accomplish this task, you will need to analyze Emerson’s actual language. This is essential. I am

not asking you what your thoughts are about Emerson’s views. I am asking you to analyze what he wrote. • You need to make sure that you analyze the following key elements in Emerson’s essay: a) What Emerson feels is required to achieve the kind of solitude he is discussing. How one can achieve it. b) How our awe for the stars help us to understand what true solitude means. c) How all “natural objects” can fill us with the same sense of awe if we are open to their influence. d) How seeing this way is the way the poet sees. e) How seeing with this sense of wonder is the way many people experience nature when they are children. f) How the “transparent eyeball” passage represents the awe, the willingness to be open to the influence of all “natural objects,” the way the poet sees, the child-like wonder that we can have for nature, and his connection with God through nature.  be very thorough about this (do not skip it). Please note I am not asking you to discuss your views about his thoughts. Your task is to analyze the text (so you will need to summarize, paraphrase and directly quote from Emerson and use your analysis of the text to shape your understanding of how he experiences solitude and nature). And your essay is not only a summary … it is an analysis. Do not write from the perspective of what you think Emerson is trying to say; instead, write from the perspective of what he actually writes and how his observations are interconnected-- and what they, ultimately, lead to.  Audience: Your audience will be familiar with this excerpt, so you should not retell everything that happens in them. Instead, focus on those passages that you choose to analyze. You should summarize, paraphrase and quote those passages that will help you to demonstrate how Emerson describes his experiences with nature in solitude. Do not use “I” or “You.”  Essay Structure: This is an inductive analysis essay, which means you do not begin your essay with the traditional introduction that includes a thesis statement. Instead, you should, after stating the title and the author’s full name, jump right in and start analyzing what Emerson does and how he does it. Your goal is to connect the various elements of his essay and show how he ultimately connects with God through his deep connection with nature. Thus, it makes the most sense to discuss his essay by analyzing these elements in the order he writes them in—your job also including the need to make connections between these elements. Your conclusion must, ultimately and conclusively, state how Emerson’s essay explores his connection with God through solitude and nature. And, very importantly, state your thesis in your conclusion. Think of it this way: this essay form requires you to argue towards your thesis (instead of stating it at the beginning of your essay).  MLA Formatting: (1) When writing about the essay, use the present tense (Example: Emerson explains a certain quality of solitude). (2) In your introductory paragraph, refer to the title of the full essay (Nature) and the author’s full name (Ralph

Waldo Emerson). (3) For the rest of the essay, use the author’s last name (Emerson). Do not repeat his full name again. (4) Once you have mentioned the title, do not mention it again. Do not write “in the essay.” We will know that you

are discussing the essay. (5) For in-text citations / quotations, use the page number in the course reader. You do not need to mention the

author’s last name in the citation because once you have introduced us to the title and the author’s name, we will know that you are only quoting that source because your task is to analyze that essay and that essay only.

(6) Provide a Works Cited page. Here is the correctly formatted bibliographical citation. Pay attention to the italicized titles and the indented second line.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. English 1A Course Reader. Edited by Nathan Wirth, Nathan’s Mind Inc., 2019.  Final Draft: Upload your final draft to Canvas. Check the course schedule for due dates and the upload link.  Process Letter: You must also include a process letter, in which you write about your writing process for the essay. Please make this the first page of your document (and it does not count as one of the required pages). You can find a sample process letter in this course reader.  Formatting: Check the formatting requirements in this course reader before you upload your essay.

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Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836 To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I

read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.1 Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing2 smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort3 her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape, which I saw this morning, is indubitably4 made up of some twenty or thirty 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. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre5 all his impertinent6 griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial7 of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial8 festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate9 than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right. Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

1 sublime = of such grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe (so much awe that it comes with fear / respect & thus reverence) 2 admonish = to urge to a duty; remind 3 extort = obtain (something) by force, threats, or other unfair means 4 indubitably = too evident to be doubted 5 maugre = in spite of 6 impertinent = not pertinent to a particular matter; irrelevant. 7 cordial = a comforting or pleasant-tasting medicine 8 perennial = lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring. 9 connate = (especially of ideas or principles) existing in a person or thing from birth; innate.

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Sample of Essay One – Emerson William Fitzgerald English 1A Mr. Nathan

The Transparent I Ralph Waldo Emerson begins his essay Nature by offering his readers the conditions necessary to

find a certain quality of solitude, one that he later experiences when he finds a very deep and personal connection with nature and, ultimately, God: “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society” (10). One should note that Emerson specifically indicates the necessity to leave both his connections with home and the society that his home is located in; in fact, he indicates the need to sever his ties from others even further by realizing that being physically alone, being at home without anyone else around, is not necessarily enough, for even when he reads and writes in solitude he is still connected with those whose thoughts he might read and for those whom he might write. To best find the truest sense of the solitary, he explains one should look to the brilliance of the heavens and its many stars, for this is how one can feel truly disconnected from the rest of the world. The stars, Emerson writes, “will separate” man “between him and what he touches” (10). In other words, those who look to the brilliance of the stars will see something filled with such immensity they will feel a sense of awe that separates them from all that is material, all that is touchable, and, as a result, leave them to feel alone and solitary in the face of such grandeur. But the stars are not just beautiful. They also fill one with the sense of the sublime, a word which not only describes the sheer beauty and grandeur of the lights that fill the night but also indicates the power of the stars, a power and intensity that elicits veneration and respect and awe and, thus, a touch of uneasiness. That fear, that respect, that reverence, is essential to understanding what Emerson wishes to communicate because the heavens in all their vastness and mystery are, in his words, “the city of God” (10). So, ultimately, Emerson equates the intensity of this quality of solitude he seeks with the intensity of connecting with God, but, at this point, God is high in the heavens and out of his reach.

Next, he shifts from the reverence and awe one might feel for the stars to reverence for the many facets of nature down here on earth, writing that that the stars are “inaccessible,” that we can never touch them and that, in the end, this is an essential part of the reason why they “awaken a certain reverence” (10)— “awaken” implying our senses and spirit have been asleep or dulled and that through this experience those inactive senses are stirred up, excited, and aroused. And this is precisely where Emerson associates that same awakening, that same awe, that same reverence for the majesty of the nighttime sky with all and any “natural objects” (10), the phrase “kindred impression” (10) connecting the stars to all “natural objects” (all of which we can touch, unlike the stars, if we choose). “Kindred” denotes there is a definite similarity between the stars and the natural objects of the earth, but even though they are not the same, they do, in a sense, come from the same natural origin (later in the essay, the “Universal Being”). “Impression” indicates the effect something has on the mind, the conscience, and one’s feelings. So, when combined in this context, these two words indicate, once again, that Emerson is drawing a connection between the intensity and awe we hold for the stars and the awe and reverence that we might have for any natural object, but, for this to happen, the mind must be “open to their influence” (10). “Influence” is the key word here, for it indicates that experiencing these natural objects and surroundings can affect one’s moods and feelings, that one can experience the same awe for the stars in the entirety of nature if one is open to seeing that influence, that, ultimately, nature is as grand and awe-inspiring as those stars (and, by connection, one can also experience God in and through nature).

Emerson then shifts to explaining how the wise person— i.e., the person whose mind is open to the influence of nature— recognizes that nature does not act meanly, that nature is not a trivial toy to be played with, that nature never ceases to amaze and intrigue the person who experiences it, and, perhaps most importantly, the truly wise person realizes the best moments experiencing nature as an adult return one to the wonder which childhood was often filled with, to a time before the experiences of being an adult deadened and dulled the innocence and curiosity of childhood experiences in nature. In other words, one of the deepest consequences of opening one’s mind to the influence of nature is that it awakens, in part, some of that lost wonder of our childhood. Emerson then connects this reawakened mind to a “most poetical sense” of how we see things. To see things poetically is to see them as they are and not in an analytical or purely functional way; the poet sees nature in its entirety and not by its material divisions. He offers the example of the woodcutter— who sees a tree only for its potential

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materials— and the poet, who sees the tree for what it is: as a whole tree with all the beauty one might associate with a tree— as well as a “natural object” that shares a “kindred impression” with the stars that invokes a sense of awe, reverence and wonder. He further explains this poetical perception by describing a walk through a variety of farms and woods, in which he sees all these parcels of individually owned land as one landscape and not a landscape divided by ownership. The poetically-awakened mind realizes one can possess a deed to some land, but one can never own the landscape, the view, the experience (and the awe and the wonder it can invoke if one’s mind is open to the influence) .

And it is this poetical sense of mind that Emerson sees through when he later goes for a walk in the woods at twilight. The poetically-minded individual is the one whose mind, heart, spirit and eyes, “whose inward and outward senses,” are “still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood” (10). Indeed, the “lover of nature,” as Emerson refers to it, sees nature not only with the eyes but with a curiosity and exhilaration that has not been deadened, one that can continually be reawakened. As he takes his walk, he feels a perfect exhilaration and his senses are filled with delight, recognizing that every season brings its own delights and reactions and that, very importantly, one can feel a sense of excitement even when one feels sad. For Emerson, experiencing nature is like a ritual, one that offers him an opportunity to communicate with both the heavens and the earth, for God can be found— if one’s mind is open to such influence, to such awe and reverence— in both those celestial stars he discusses at the beginning of the essay and the natural world that he is now taking a walk in. He recognizes that a man (woman) can “cast off his years” and “what period soever of life” be always a child (10). So, before he describes the very intense connection with the natural world that he is about to have, Emerson once again connects the feeling of childhood wonder and the awe of nature that can be found if one’s mind is open to their influence. In fact, this connection is so intense he likens it to a “perennial festival,” which implies that a walk of this kind is very similar to a ritual one might experience in a church, but, in this case, no building is necessary, for nature, itself, is the place of worship, the place of ritual. He also takes the reader back to the beginning of the essay by saying that a person would never tire of this ritual in even a thousand years, which brings us back to how even more intense the stars in the night sky would be if they only appeared every thousand years. But, in this case, he states that one would never tire of what is clearly there, what can be clearly touched.

And it is in this state of “perfect exhilaration” that one returns to reason and faith, these words being essential because, for Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists, the spiritual and the scientific were never in competition with one another. They generally believed that the world could be understood through spiritual intuition, but they also accepted scientific doctrine. For some, this might be difficult to understand— especially since he is about to speak about his very deep, mystical connection with nature in exceptionally poetic terms— but that poetic outlook is exactly what fuels his direct experience. It may be poetic, but it is also reasoned through a connection to what is there, to what he sees in terms of what these natural objects actually are. And with this focused attention on his surroundings, he then writes about the intensity of his connection to both the natural landscape and God:

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God (10).

At first glance, Emerson’s words seem to suggest an almost hallucinatory experience, but when one considers the reverence, the childhood wonder, and the most poetical sense of mind that he has already introduced us to, one can see the absolute delight and awe he has for such an intense experience, a moment of experience in which he fully absorbs his surroundings, the intensity of the connection itself being what instructs and connects him. Indeed, he speaks in mystical terms, in a connection through which he purely experiences the moment itself as if he is there, but not there, and, in that state, connects with God. In this perennially festive moment, he lets the self, the “mean egotism” go, and it is as if he joins, in that moment, the same “infinite space” where one would find the stars and the “city of God,” as if he has bridged the “intercourse with heaven and earth” (10). To be transparent is to be opaque, as if you are there but cannot be seen. One might also think of a substance like water which is sheer and allows light to shine through, as if in those moments the light of everything in the universe, viz., the “Universal Being,” radiate through him thus allowing him to absorb everything in his surroundings. The “eye,” the organ through which we see, can also be seen as a pun on the personal pronoun “I,” which

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connects this experience to the self, and, as a result, the self, the “I,” is also made transparent and one then becomes nothing, as if one is no longer there, and then becomes a “part” of God or a minute particle of God, both indicating that he has connected and become part of nature and part of God. At the very least, one sees the absolute intensity by which he finds this connection, one that is bound to reverence, to wonder, and to a most distinctly poetical sense of mind.

Emerson clarifies one last time the wonder he has for nature by explaining that every time he sees the “waving of the boughs in the storm,” it “is new to” him “and old,” for it takes him “by surprise, and yet is not unknown” (10). At first this might seem paradoxical, for how can something one sees often be both known and surprising? The answer lies in the wonder of the poetical mind open to the influence of nature. Regardless of the amount of times, he has seen such things and experienced such moments, he always feels wonder for them (as if each experience is “new”). Finally, he ends by pointing out that nature itself does not provide the emotional connection. It is the individual who connects in this way—and he calls this connection a “higher thought” or “better emotion,” both suggesting that one must, again, be open to such influences. For, after all, one could go for a walk in the woods and feel nothing but boredom, for it is the mood of the individual that sets the experience. Earlier, he said that nature “never wears a mean appearance” (10) and then ends with the observation that nature “always wears the color of the spirit” (10), a claim that clearly states that nature itself does not control our mood—though it can certainly affect our mood.

Ultimately, Emerson has written about experiencing an intense, mystical-like connection with the natural world, one that is, in fact, so intense that he has, at times, connected to the “Universal Being.” In order to explain the depth of this experience, he writes about the reverence and awe one can have for nature if one’s mind is open to the influence of such things— so much so that he connects the awe one might have for the brilliant, shining stars in the nighttime sky to the awe one can have for all natural things in this world down below those stars. To open one’s mind to nature in this way is to see nature poetically, to see it with a wonder that links one back to a similar wonder and curiosity one had for nature as a child. He represents the intensity of this awe and wonder by using a metaphor of “becoming a transparent eyeball” (10), a comparison which offers the perspective that when he experiences this intense connection, it is so intense he becomes one with both nature and God. Early in the essay, he refers to the unreachable stars as the “City of God” (10), and later in the essay he refers to nature as the“plantations of God” (10). By doing so, Emerson expresses his belief that the unreachable God he reveres so much in those unreachable stars can be experienced in and through the beauty and awe of nature experienced down here on earth. But, again, one must be open to such possibilities, such influences.

I underlined the entire conclusion because all of it can be seen as a thesis for what Emerson ultimately “does” in his essay—as well as “how” he “does” it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------