Emerson, Thoreau, Georgian Bay

Northern Rim of Lake Huron, Blind River, Ontario

 

Ten days ago I returned from a four-day, thousand-mile drive along the east side of Georgian Bay in Ontario, then back down I-75 from Sault Ste Marie to Detroit. If you can’t picture Georgian Bay, it’s fair to think of it as a sixth Great Lake, attached to the east side of Lake Huron. 

In the car I listened off and on to Professor Arnold Weinstein lecturing on the transcendalists, Emerson and Thoreau, whose love of nature suited the drive through rural Ontario. I’ve been trying to find a way to write about that landscape and those writers for more than a week, with no luck, so I’m turning it over to reader input: what is your most or least favorite idea or quotation from Emerson or Thoreau?  

Transcendentalists

The one I remembered from college was Thoreau's line, “I’d rather sit alone on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” I guess my aversion to cities and conspicuous consumption had already kicked in at age 20. 

On the other hand, I've learned to take some advantage of what cities can offer, and I consume more than is necessary:  life without central air and a reliable TV clicker is not worth living. 

From Emerson’s “Circles” here’s a short passage I find fascinating from a thinker who usually seems determined to get beyond surfaces into transcendence and essences:  “Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. . . . We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them."  The "true art of life" is not to penetrate into areas more lofty or more mystical than surfaces, but only to skate well on those surfaces. I wonder what Wordsworth would have said.

I’m also struck by those lines' play against our expectations. If life is not “intellectual or critical,” then what is it? Air-headed? Moronic? Stolid? Superficial? Obnoxious? Republican?  

No . . . .  It’s . . . “Sturdy?” 

Sturdy! How the hell is sturdiness the counterpart or antithesis to the intellectual or the critical?  Sturdy like a boulder? Sturdy like a cow? Sturdy like a linebacker? Maybe it begins to make sense after all. Then I begin to imagine cow, rock, and linebacker ice skating . . . . 

For cooler, sturdy skaters

I've imagined a conversation at Jeremy's Country Restaurant and Convenience Store. Someone has just referred to himself as an intellectual, to which I’ve applied an Emersonian response:  “Intellectual? You, Sir, are no intellectual!  You, Sir, are . . . sturdy!  I knew an intellectual once. An intellectual was a friend of mine, and you, Sir, are no intellectual. You, Sir, are _________ !"

Sturdy?

Or is this the sturdy, skillful skater?

Well, I’m charmed and fascinated by all that, but for me, here is the primo study question for me:  Do I, and should I, live in a way that would pass muster with Emerson or Thoreau? How? Why? And so what? 

Also remember the original question:  what is your most or least favorite idea or line from either of those two 19^th century American icons, who hoped for an American literature free from European shackles? Was it just a teen rebellion against authority, or was it meaningful, or was it both? 

If you’ve left your copies of Emerson and Thoreau at Danny’s Donuts—again!—or at Jeremy's Country Restaurant, you can look for quotable quotes here, but I hope you're ashamed:

Emerson:   http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ralph_waldo_emerson.html

Thoreau: 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_david_thoreau.html

It’s wrong to reduce important and thorough--if troublesome and sometimes snotty--thinkers to a few of their aphorisms, but there’s only so much time and space here. Also, these two writers are so fond of the aphorism, the quick-hitter, the bumper sticker, the cookie’s fortune, that I feel permitted to begin there, but it’s only for starters.   

Margaret Atwood's "Rat Song." Jacques Brel and The New Criticism.

Indian Falls, Owen Sound, Ontario



Let's stay Canadian a bit longer. And in case anyone has fallen into the shakes from an absence of poetry, here is "Rat Song" by Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood. I didn't know she also wrote poetry, and I kind of like her curious venture here. What do you think?

Rat Song by Margaret Atwood : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.



I'm not sure I'm finished with Jacques Brel, but I know I was long-winded in my Sunday review, so the above is my effort to be brief once again.

Let me add one more note on Brel in case I don't get back to it (your wishes will help me decide). At the risk of becoming obnoxious about The New Criticism, I must toss out something I came across while meandering through Jacques Brel commentary. In the Stratford Program Notes, Lois Kivesto, PhD, writes: “In 1969, Brel himself attended and exclaimed to Blau [who was responsible for the English version]: ‘You have really done it. You have separated me from the work. The songs have a life of their own. I really enjoyed them.’”

Maybe that's all my version of the New Criticism amounts to: both reader and writer recognize that the artist has birthed his baby--his work--into the world. Now he and we must see what and how it goes about being that which it is.

Studies of the author's life, region, period in history, culture, ethnicity, and so forth might be interesting or helpful, but they must not supplant the-baby-the-work as the primary subject. We can have a meaningful experience with a Brel song without knowing anything about Brel the man, or his love life, or Belgium, or the particulars of two World Wars. Conversely, we can know a lot about that background material, but without the song itself, it means little.

For those who have been on this ride with me before, I'll stop and thank you for your patience. But the quotation about Brel is, from my perspetive, just too good to pass up.



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