Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

The Poetry of Robert Lowell 193avatars illuminating his mind rather than the faint glow of a benigndivinity. He was regularly hospitalized when pathological enthusiasmsconvinced him that he was possessed by gods and devils.Strikingly, then, this passage from Emerson contains in germinalform an ambivalence like Lowell’s toward the American sublime andits often unsavory cousin, enthusiasm. Although Emerson seems tohave condoned or abetted enthusiastic responses to the sublime, hisattitude was divided. His debate with himself paralleled his debate withhis father’s sister, the eccentric, well-informed, and very devout AuntMary who influenced many of his ideas. “She was an enthusiast,” oneof Emerson’s biographers points out. 9 What Emerson’s Uncle Williamsaid about her would be said about Emerson by detractors years later:“She was full of vagaries and misshapen by religious enthusiasm,capable of producing ‘sublime epistles,’ but too ‘elevated’ above mortalconcerns to appreciate the just and simple truths of existence.” 10 Inhis mocking “Homage to Emerson, on Night Flight to New York,”Robert Penn Warren similarly criticizes Emerson for his blindness tothe worldly facts he has transcended. According to Warren, Emersonbelieved ‘There is / No sin. Not even error.” Therefore, only “At 38,000feet Emerson / Is dead right.” 11 At lower altitudes, Warren implies, hissublime perceptions are dead wrong.Lowell questions and counters this charge in an essay on Emerson:“Can we honestly accuse him of ignoring Original Sin? He was unableto do so.” 12 Emerson actually expressed some of the same reservationsabout sublime attitudes and altitudes as Warren. Although Emersonliked to quote his aunt’s aphorisms (“Sublimity of motive must precedesublimity of style” and “Sublimity of character must proceed fromsublimity of motive”), 13 in the end he could not agree wholeheartedlywith her high-flying sentiments. Commenting on a journal entry for1827, Evelyn Barish observes, “[A]lready . . . he had understood thatenthusiasm was not enough, that inner conviction of the light was notall-sufficient, that ‘the great multitude of the best men who have livedand left a name [were] what the enthusiast calls ‘cold and prudentChristians.’ ” 14 With this in mind Emerson’s Aunt Mary accused himof “Kantism.” Emerson was Kantian, but only in those moods when hebelieved the sublime originated in reason’s divine and moral powers. Inother moods, he at least pretended to be a guileless romantic, enthusiasticallyadvocating religious and political assaults on the establishmentand its sacred traditions. To say he was blind to American evils