RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND THE EVER-EVOLVING ART OF ...

power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of
the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM” (Coleridge Literaria 144), and it
represents a seamless blend of subjectivity and objective, external phenomena. The
primary Imagination also synthetizes ostensibly disparate objects by identifying a
universal cause at their foundation. Emerson’s poet has an active synthetic sensibility of
this sort, capable of illuminating any phenomenon that was previously “brute and dark.”
Further, it is not enough to just illuminate the unknown chasms of natural phenomena,
but the poet should also offer an explanation for what she sees. Not offering this
justification would be similar to observing only the primary qualities—aspects like shape,
texture, and weight— of an object without identifying what that object is. Emerson goes
even a step further, saying, ”The poet did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their
meaning; neither did he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of
his new thought” (Emerson TP 194; emphasis mine). Once the poet has discovered the
“meaning” of a natural phenomenon, her work still is not finished, for she will naturally
apply her Imagination to examine the impact of that meaning on already existing
interpretations of different phenomena.
Emerson’s use of the word “read”, however, makes it explicitly clear that the
functions of the Imagination—and of the poet in general—are more similar to reading
than they are to writing. But what exactly is Emerson’s ideal poet reading? Emerson’s
theory of ideal reading is no longer a strictly textual relationship, and the connections the
reader discovers and fosters through her imagination are found in nature. This
progression stems partly from the realization that language is multifarious and
exponential, where a single symbol can emblematize multitudinous sets of observation.
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