Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

The Creative Use of Language bySome of America’s Great WritersbyChristy MacKaye BarnesThere is something in the language of the best American writers ofthe nineteenth century not to be found in the great English authors of thesame period: a tone, an undercurrent of power, motion, and of naïve, bolddirectness partly born out of the continent’s geography—its endless, surfwashedshorelines as in Whitman and Melville, its cheerful, rocky-brookfedvalleys as in Thoreau, or in the unfelled forests where the King Jamesversion of the Bible was stamped to more than the usual depths into thelonely hearts of pioneers as in Abraham Lincoln.Other influences came to them fresh across the Atlantic and werewelcomed with open arms: the voice of Goethe from Germany and Carlylefrom Scotland. It opened their impressionable minds and senses to newdepths of observation and understanding of spirit, introducing them to newliving communions and metamorphoses.Ralph Waldo EmersonWith what a firm, sure-footed pace Emerson sets down the heels ofhis words in such aphorisms as:Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.228