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

CHAPTER THREE
“MY BOY, MY BOY IS GONE…[AND] I CAN SAY NOTHING TO YOU”:
“EXPERIENCE” AND THE LIMITS OF SELF-RELIANT READING
45
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes—
I wonder if It weighs like Mine—
Or has an Easier size.
—Emily Dickinson, “561”
In “Experience”, the process of reading still ostensibly delivers the same benefits
as Emerson reports in “History” and “The Poet”, but Emerson has now adopted a new
and more pessimistic point of view concerning the inherent multiplicity of the linguistic
symbol which he expounded in “The Poet.” Emerson finds that there are some aspects of
reality that he would like to exhume the monolithic, ideal image from beneath the infinite
layers of fallen yet beautiful signification, and “Experience” is largely about his being
disappointed at this impossibility. Every symbol can be refracted through any natural
phenomenon—pending that the user of the symbol makes the new connection using the
depths of personal experience—and Emerson laments that, “I take this evanescence and
lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch
hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition” (Emerson EXP 200). As a
result, there are some ideas that deserve the most eloquent and comprehensive expression
and explication, but our deficient language occludes the ability to truly report the
magnitude of the concept.
As it turns out, Emerson has good reason to lament the inability to reach a
univocal reality through the confines of language, as the time period in which