Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson in The American Scholar makes a statement about writing, the process of writing, and the value of writing to subsequent generations. He states:

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came to him shortlived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now it is quick thought. It can stand and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing (Emerson 56).

Emerson here expresses the process by which the writer observes the world, which for Emerson was preeminently the world of nature, and transforms this observation into art which expresses something the writer has learned about life. This process is evident in the work of all great writers, for they turn to the world in which they live for inspiration. It is this process that gives literature its truth, and it is that truth which speaks to us through the ages and which makes it possible for literature to soar and sing, no matter what its form otherwise.

The artist transforms the truth of his or her observations into something that itself has a shape, that express truth, and that engages others in the way it communicates so that the truth reaches out from the work to the reader, listener, or observer. This search for truth and a sway to express truth is the key element whether the work contemplated is serious or comic, prose or poetry, dramatic work or novel. MoliFre writes about characters who seem larger than life, as indeed they are, but this only emphasizes the truth that the writer finds in characters like Tartuffe and Orgon.

One might assume that the ...

Page 1 of 7 Next >

More on Ralph Waldo Emerson...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:59, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708190.html