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

natural, and most literate people are cognizant of the symbols that inform its makeup.
However, the poet is also made responsible with the understanding that humans are
symbols, too, and this might attempt to circumscribe human experience within textual
confines. Our lives are allegorical; everything that we experience has an analogue on
more than level of reality, but the success with which we see these possibilities is limited
by our experiences and the language we use. As such, Emerson’s poet realizes that, by
virtue of being emblematic and symbolic of something larger, humans are “written” and
open to variable interpretation just like every sensuous fact. Proposing an “original use”
for a symbol, which is a gift that too few people seek, forges a new relation between the
subject and an object and exhibits the inherent multiplicity at the core of every symbol.
However, what the poet realizes that too few others do is that people are bogged down by
these limiting textual conditions also.
At the same time, however, the poet—who is herself “written”, emblematic, and
symbolic—is able to pierce through this limiting textual layer fraught with emblems and
symbols using her expression. For just
As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the
world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and possession. For,
through that better perception, he stands one steps nearer to things, and sees the
flowing metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that within the form
of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form; and,
following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that life, and so his
speech flows with that flowing of nature. (Emerson TP 190)
35