The Concord Elite

I always enjoyed reading Thoreau, mainly for two reasons. One, I feel the romantic relationship between man and nature described by the author is so beautiful, so ideal. To “live deliberately” with only the essentials necessary to life seems like such a simple, yet wonderful concept, that it makes me want to unplug and go for a hike. And two, I actually went to high school about ten minutes away from Walden Pond, so it was always fun to drive past the woods and be reminded of the rich history surrounding me. But let’s check back into reality. I should be ashamed to admit this (though I’m clearly not) – I am NOT a big fan of nature. I hate camping. I hate bugs. I loathe any environment without a proper heating or running water system. What I do enjoy are the aspects of nature artificially developed by man to make me feel like I’m one with Mother Earth, but I can still use my GPS and take a shower with vanilla coconut body wash, ironically not made from nature. Also, I never went to Walden Pond. Did you catch what I said earlier? I drove past it. Always.

So yes, reading Thoreau is an escape into the ideal relationship I should have with nature, which is what the author wants his readers to experience in Walden. He argues for simplicity, and that we should “keep our accounts on our thumbnail” and eliminate the superfluous items overcomplicating our lives. The only cure for our cluttered surroundings is simplicity, which Thoreau argues is the elevation of purpose. Nature, therefore, becomes the place where one should go to experience the sublime feeling of God’s existence. Subsequently, one will also recognize what is not divine by comparing the experiences of the social world to those of the woods. Of course, these ideas are great and wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to check out for a few days without worrying about emails and deadlines? However, Thoreau’s ideas are not only idyllic, but elitist, and in today’s society, this would be a difficult argument to debate against those who don’t have the luxury to escape.

In Thoreau’s “Reading” section, he also appears elitist in his ideas on the comprehension of the written word as the “perfect knowledge.” He argues that reading is a noble intellectual exercise that should not be done to merely pass the time. “The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind,” he says, “for only great poets can read them.” Therefore, Thoreau argues that we should become literate in these great texts in order to build wiser, more cultivated villages of noble men. “It is time that villages were universities,” he says, and that the inhabitants of these universities can pursue, with leisure, liberal studies for the rest of their lives. It seems too obvious to point out Thoreau’s idealistic thinking, but it is important to note that sense of elitist ideology. To whom is Thoreau writing? Men, of course. But his argument is meant to be understood universally. If that is the case, his ideas fail to connect with certain socioeconomic groups, and the unfortunate implication is that these individuals are inferior, for they are not wise, worldly, and they have yet to experience God. 

Romantic Paintings, Sublime Landscape

Cogrove’s article, “Sublime Nature: Landscape and Capitalism,” outlines the 18^th century British Romantic movement as a response to the expanding industrial capitalism of the British state. As land and natural resources like wind, water, and fossil fuels were now being utilized for commercial production, Romantics regarded this as a degradation of the natural environment. Cities grew, and the liberal laissez-faire philosophy of Adam Smith failed as a concept in the midst of capitalist drive. In pushing for the most efficient means of production, which included the use of natural resources, business owners essentially alienated the masses from nature. According to Dr. Jan Oosthoek, “people and nature were objectified and reduced to commodity status.”

In response, the Romantics opted to view nature as an essential source of spirituality and renewal. Cosgrove argues, “In seeking to escape the alienation implied by the isolation of the individual, Romantics failed to locate its origins in the new social relations of production…because they could not accept society as ‘organic.’ Therefore, no resolution was open to in the social order; it had to be found in the natural, moral order which harmonized the individual soul with unspoiled external nature.” In the Romantic sense, land became synonymous with self-preservation and survival instinct, two abstracts that Burke stressed as being individual as opposed to social.

The most accessible means through which Romantics could view sublime nature was the sense of sight. “If the sublime could be apprehended through the senses,” says Cosgrove, “then it could be seen, not directly, but through the sight of those objects which excite the passions of self-preservation.” Romantic painters, therefore, communicated “exalted” ideas of the human experience through the humanized representation of landscape.

I came across this painting in my research, and I find that it embodies a majority of Romantic elements explained in Cosgrove’s article.

It's titled "The Wanderer Above the Sea and Fog," painted by Casper David Friedrich in 1818. It not only illustrates the grandeur and terror so closely associated with the sublime, but it also represents the alienation of man from the natural experience. The subject of the painting stands high above on the rocks overlooking the dark, foggy sea, emphasizing man’s foreign subjectivity in nature. The dark colors enhance feelings of awe and fear associated with the inconceivable greatness of nature, and the fog symbolizes the mystery of the landscape’s sublimity. However, the location and vantage point of the man also suggests human superiority over nature, and thus, the painting as a whole depicts the Romantic conflict between society and the natural world.

Ideas of Escapism

Being a product of an urban environment myself, I’m constantly fascinated by the idea of escape, particularly from the noisy, crowded streets of the metropolis to greener pastures. And I mean this quite literally. Nothing is better than hopping the Jitney bus on a sweltering Friday afternoon, knowing that in two short hours, visions of trash strewn streets, thick hazy air, and loud whizzing cabs will soon be replaced by the peaceful parks and relaxing beaches of Amagansett or Southampton Long Island. It’s almost expected that come Memorial Day, the weekly exodus from New York City to the Hamptons, the Connecticut countryside, or the New Jersey seaside hideaways will filter city streets, separating the few who have remained and those who have escaped. Certainly I understand the need to escape from the chaos and the grime, and therefore, the weekend getaways prove so appealing to city dwellers. However, for the tried and true New Yorkers who sweat out the summer months within 212-718-646 area codes, the city plays host to substitute forms of nature and rural landscapes in order to create a balance within the frenzied metropolis.

Because of my fascination with the city and one’s escape from it, I focused most of my attention on the parallels between the quintessential Georgian city of Bath, as Cosgrove describes, and the city of New York, which within recent years has adopted a “green” campaign to include natural parks and public spaces within its concrete confines. In “England: Prospects, Palladianism and Paternal Landscapes” Cosgrove not only touches on the importance of city “naturalizing” and the incorporation of gardens as “pleasing prospects” in urban development, but he also points to the political implications of such distinctions between country and urban influences. Wealthy landowners of country farms and estates would lease their property for capitalist gain, “creating a market for capitalist accumulation.” Thus, others were pushed out of the city to work these lands, and the wealthy remained in the newly redesigned civic spaces of London, Bath, and the like. Cosgrove states, “The city [became] viewed as a product of the country, or at least of a set of attitudes and values still powerfully rooted in the idea of land as the foundation of wealth and status.”

This idea seems all too familiar. No, every Friday afternoon I was not on that Jitney bus to the Hamptons. Why? Because I had to work. Also, I didn’t have access to five thousand dollars (split amongst four friends) to rent a house for the summer in Montauk. I was forced to sweat it out in the city with the rest of the “poors,” taking solace in an air conditioned office on the twenty seventh floor of the Empire State Building. My idea of an escape was a picnic in Central Park, a visit to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, or a trip to the farmer’s market in Union Square. I’m thankful for the “natural” spaces within the city, despite their artificiality in creation, because I now have the opportunity to escape, even if I'm forced to stay.

Burke vs. Kant in the Battle of the Sublime

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime,” writes Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Contrasting Kant’s idea of the sublime, which Hartman echoes in his article “A Poet’s Progress,” Burke theorizes sublimity as being the most connected to a gothic sense of fear. He argues that the sublime is what moves our soul into a state of astonishment, a condition in which all motions of one’s existence are suspended due to some degree of horror. “In this case,” says Burke, “the mind is so entirely filled with its object [of fear or astonishment] that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it.” Therefore, one’s inability to communicate or express this fear points directly to the power of the sublime. Fear, astonishment, and pain, according to Burke, exist as the strongest examples of passions connected directly to the sensation of the sublime. As opposed to Kant’s description of the mind’s continuous alternating movements between repulsion from and attraction to an object, resulting in a feeling of transcendence, Burke describes the sublime as a downward plunging motion into the depths of horror. Instead of feeling a “restful contemplation,” as Kant describes, Burke argues that sublime fear unleashes one’s subconscious anxieties otherwise inexplicable in conscious existence.

Kant’s theory of the sublime seems to touch on Freudian aspects of “unheimlich,” a feeling of anxiety produced by the inability to recognize a thing so seemingly familiar. It’s this feeling of uncertainty that Kant describes in the sublime thought process; it initially creates a feeling of displeasure, which then transitions to a pleasurable admiration as the imagination supersedes logic and reason. Therefore, Kant’s theory of the sublime focuses on the power of the imagination and its ability to produce feelings of gratitude and pleasure. In contrast, Burke theorizes that the sublime is rooted in fear alone. In fact, he argues that psychological pain is far stronger than the feeling of pleasure since the cathartic expressions of fear and danger affect the body and mind more so than “any pleasure could suggest.” Essentially, the only commonality between these two philosophers is the fact that the sublime initiates a psychological sensation.

Still, even though these two theories of the sublime identify distinct psychological responses, they both touch upon this idea of the unknown. In terms of Burke’s sublime, we feel terror because we don’t have an understanding of the thing we’re experiencing. Meanwhile, according to Kant, the sublime unlocks a playfulness of the imagination, evidencing a “faculty of the mind that can transcend every standard of sense.” I don’t necessarily subscribe to one theory or the other, as I believe each concept has an inherent truth. Still, I find it interesting that a concept so incommunicable can be expressed in so many ways. 

Hartman's Problematics in "A Poet's Progress"

Hartman’s essay arguing the “via naturaliter negativa” of Wordsworth’s poetry seemed to me a difficult read, since I’m only familiar with “the way of negation” in terms of God and spirituality. Therefore, using this paradigm to show how imagination exists as Wordsworth’s true muse, as opposed to nature, which is the commonly accepted theory, Hartman confused me as a reader. I understood his overall argument, that nature guides Wordsworth only so much until the power of imagination supersedes and leads him to a moment of sublime ecstasy communicable solely via poetry. However, I understand via negativa as a spiritual philosophy preaching the negation of all things beyond God himself/herself/itself. So, for Hartman to use this concept as the base of his argument, he introduced some clarity issues for me. Of course, I could be reading this completely incorrectly, but I will point out why I found such difficulty with Hartman’s idea of “via naturaliter negativa” as a means to argue the superiority of imagination over nature in Wordsworth’s poetry.

Spiritually, the “via negativa” is an extreme philosophy, and one’s adherence to it proves frustrating in today’s modern culture. It holds that in order to truly understand and recognize the presence and power of God, one must reject everything that is not God. So there’s no music, no television, no technology. Nothing secular in any fashion should be prioritized before one’s faith in the divine. Even the concept of a temporal, material experience should not exist in one’s mind, as it does not point to an idea of God. As a result, the abstract idea of experience must be eliminated as well. Essentially, the “via negativa” promotes the disposal of all secular thought, culture, and experience in order to understand that life’s true meaning lies in its emptiness. God is the end all, be all.

So, my problem with Hartman’s use of the “via negativa” to describe nature’s demotion from subject of worship to pedagogical guardian in Wordsworth’s poetry is that it conflicts with the essential philosophy of negation. In Hartman’s argument, everything still exists in and around nature, and it is Wordsworth’s imagination that allows him to communicate emotions and thoughts, not the presence of nature itself. He says, “When the external stimulus (that being nature) is too clearly present, the poet falls mute and corroborates Blake’s strongest objection: ‘Natural Objects always did and now do weaken, deaden, and obliterate Imagination in me.’” Hence, Wordsworth is not experiencing emptiness at all. It’s quite the opposite. The poet’s imagination and internal experiences are all provoked by the presence of nature, and therefore nature is not a divine presence. Rather, the Wordsworth’s autonomous mind is the celebrated subject. In my opinion, nothing really is being negated or eliminated in Hartman’s argument. Everything coexists, and consequently, the possibility for emptiness is made null and void. Perhaps Hartman could have used another paradigm of thought to describe the reclassification of nature for Wordsworth only because I find the aspect of via negativa to be a weak metaphor.  

After reading Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey," I couldn’t help but see the poet as a modern "Bodhisattva," the Romantic interpretation of an enlightened being striving for wisdom in the likes of Buddha himself. In this particularly piece, the poet focuses on the issues of time and memory, and how the effects of each have ultimately changed his perspective on the essence of nature. He sits silently under a sycamore tree, viewing the landscape he once experienced in his younger days (an allusion to the Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree) and he notes: "For nature then, the coarser pleasures of my boyish days, and their glad animal movements gone by, to me was all in all. I cannot paint what I was then." He points to the faults of his "thoughtless youth," taking nature and its beauty for granted. Consequently, he laments over his current inability to recapture the same sense of joy and "dizzy rapture." After meditating on these thoughts, Wordsworth concludes that nature should not be regarded so cavalierly; it should not be objectified as a transient charm. Instead, the poet argues that the power of nature lies in its ability to "chasten and subdue" the soul over time, and its function is to provoke the "still, sad music of humanity" through its sheer magnificent presence. Nature, over time, moves from object to revered subject.

Immediately I drew parallels between the revelations of "Tintern Abbey" and the philosophical mission of Buddhist enlightenment. Nature exists as an important lens through which one can draw larger conclusions about existence, and Wordsworth's "meditation," sitting silently, overlooking the changed landscape of the Wye Banks, results in a philosophical stance on the issue of transience. According to Buddhist philosophy, one's path to enlightenment begins when he or she has accepted the suffering consequences of attachment, letting go of the sadness associated with loss or nostalgia. In "Tintern," Wordsworth does just that. He realizes that the land itself, as opposed to the changes made to it, represent "something far more deeply interfused" beyond passing joy. He pronounces a "far deeper zeal" for nature than he has ever felt before. In the end, the Romantic Boddhisattva echoes the tenets of Buddha himself: the world is nothing beyond essential existence.

Read, Sweat, Repeat

Last week’s discussion of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman helped clarify thoughts and possible interpretations I had of the text stewing in my mind. In fact, Professor Garrett explained quite well the author’s ideas and how they reflect issues of eighteenth century British social politics. Still, despite the rough understanding, I wasn’t wholly convinced of its significance in a course deemed “Romantic Natures.” Yes, we certainly discussed the variety of ways in which the term “nature” can be interpreted, and therefore, the obvious answer to my question would be that the text points directly to the nature of man. However, I found that Wollstonecraft’s argument focused much of its weight on the power of reason and logic. They are human cognitive abilities, yes. But would those abilities be lumped into the larger classification of human nature?

So as I began the readings this week, I kept certain thoughts distant from the texts. I read, interpreted, and conceptualized, but I was hesitant to try and figure the schematics of these particular pieces’ associations with the class’s overall mission statement. I figured I would wait until Thursday to solve the puzzle. 

It was Monday when I finally got around to pulling Hutchings’s “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies” out of my binder, setting on the nearest treadmill (I’ve found that multitasking works best), and getting to work, hoping to finish the article within the sixty minute time limit enforced on cardio equipment during peak use hours. I was relieved to find that it was more of an introduction to the genre of ecocriticism, and more important, it focused specifically on the application of ecocriticism in British Romantic texts. I walked and walked, read and read, and to my relief, I breezed through the article, developing a sense of clarity on the connections between the assigned texts and the class objective. Also, I got a good work out.

What I found most noteworthy of Hutchings’s piece was his explanation of ecofeminism in Romantic literature, focusing on Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a critical response to the deep ecology philosophy “in which the ecospheric whole is understood as a contextual extension of the human self,” resulting in a consequential surrender of “critical self-reflexivity leading to political implications.” More specifically though, feminists like Wollstonecraft criticize the androcentric philosophical implications, linking the domination of nature and the subjugation of women in patriarchal society and arguing for these two processes as being “complexly linked and mutually enabling.” Therefore, what Wollstonecraft argues in her piece is not so much the rationale of logical cognitive thinking; instead, she shows the faults of irrational social conditioning established by patriarchal education. The ideas of femininity and feminine nature, she says, are merely ideological constructs and not true examples of human nature or biology.

Now having read and digested Hutchings’s article, I have a better understanding of the class’s direction this quarter. Might I suggest, should this class be offered at some other point in time, that this reading be a required assignment for the first week as opposed to a later date? In my humble opinion, I think it would help entirely with the understanding of the material and class objectives.