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

The inaccessibleness of every thought but what we are in, is wonderful. What if
you come near to it, —you are as remote, when you are nearest, as when you are
farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore
we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode, or in an
action, or in looks and behavior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our
chains, and admits us to a new scene. (Emerson TP 194)
The facts that “all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is
good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for
homestead” (Emerson TP 195), suggests that the subject can never truly arrive at the
thing-in-itself, which is here represented as the ideal “thought.” The poet is most
sensitive to these fluctuations, and, by introducing another node in the web of relations
between subject and object, “admits us to a new scene” but not the “ultimate scene”.
Discovering a whole new way in which to think about a symbol demonstrates the implicit
infinitude at an idea’s core, keeping whatever ideal nature the symbol is supposed to have
“as remote, when you are nearest, as when you farthest.”
Emerson calls this idea—the demonstration of a symbol’s infinite relations—the
poet’s expression, which increases beauty by establishing the inaccessibility of the
“primal warblings” of ideal poetry while implicitly showing how the inadequacies of our
secondary language can be used for this purpose. Emerson asks that we “with new hope,
observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has ensured the poet’s fidelity to his office of
announcement and affirming, namely, by the beauty of things, which becomes a new, and
higher beauty, when expressed” (Emerson TP 187). Indeed, it is the poet’s expression
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