American Prose Masters (Hardcover, Printing. Reprint 2013 ed.)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1909. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... his essays would have been constructed by toil however "degrading," some at least of his poetry, had he been a great poet, would have had a monumental character--whereas his whole work, his cmvre, is rather a cairn than a structure, with of course dire loss from a monumental point of view. Of all the shortcomings of his poetry, indeed, the greatest, I think, is this lack of any architectonic quality commensurate with his vision and vitality. A great poet who never wrote a great poem is an anomaly. One who never tried to is not fundamentally a poet, however poetic the angle from which he viewed the universe and whatever the radiance that plays about it in the interpretation he essayed. Emerson's real greatness appears in the Essays in which, of course, as I have said, imaginative art is less essential and which his poetic fancy lifts as much above "Proverbs" as his formal poetry falls below "Job." VIII The Essays are the scriptures of thought, the Virgilian Lots of modern literature. To open anywhere any of the volumes (including "Representative Men," which very strictly belongs with the Essays) is to be at once in the world of thought in a very particular sense. The abruptness of the transition is a part of the sensation--like that of landing from a steamer, or leaving a city train at a country station with the landscape stretching out green and smiling in the morning sunshine. The completeness of the contrast deepens as you go forward with Emerson into the day, and surrender yourself to his influence in the spirit of his surrender to his inspiration. This is the mood in which to read him--the one, that is, in which he wrote. Soon you are thinking almost in his diction. Any approach to the contentious spirit you feel would affront opportunity and denounce ...