Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

192The Poetry of Robert Lowellof performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of geniusand religion” (CW, 2:190). The strength of ideas could propel even thehealthiest mind, however, toward delusions of transcendence, and forthis reason Kant stipulates: “If enthusiasm is comparable to delirium,fanaticism may be compared to mania. Of these the latter is least of allcompatible with the sublime, for it is profoundly ridiculous. In enthusiasm,as an affection, the imagination is unbridled”; in fanaticism,however, the mind is afflicted by “an undermining disease.” 8In Emerson, Lowell found a Kantian enthusiast disguised as arationalist, a homespun philosopher who because of his cool, wellmanneredtemperament could endorse sublimity and even flirt withfanaticism while still remaining sober and sane. But to Lowell’soverheated psyche, Emerson’s sublimity and enthusiasm, as Wintersinsisted, was always potentially pathological. Reading in “The Over-Soul” that “[t]he simplest person, who in his integrity worships God,becomes God,” yet that “forever and ever the influx of this better anduniversal self is new and unsearchable” (CW, 2:173), Lowell could havediscovered a description of the “fanatical idealist” whose “simplicityof mind” mirrored his own. Indeed, his diagnosis of the Americanpsyche to which he felt so attached may have derived from Emerson’sdiscussion of enthusiasm and sublimity in “The Over-Soul.” Out ofthe heart of nature, Emerson avers, God’s spirit descends to inspireand unify all in democratic harmony:We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestationsof its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are alwaysattended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communicationis an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. . . . By thenecessity of our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends theindividual’s consciousness of that divine presence. The characterand duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state of theindividual, from an extasy and trance and prophetic inspiration. . . to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion. . . . A certaintendency to insanity has always attended the opening of thereligious sense in men, as if they had been “blasted with excessof light.” (CW, 2:166–67)Lowell knew all too well what it was like to be “blasted with excessof light” and to have the light of Lucifer and his various historical