Garai Merino Bilbao

Garai Merino Bilbao

Relationship between humans and nature

2- Emerson: Nature and Culture; avoiding “cultural” (book) filters; creating a new and more “natural” (American) culture.

While the American society was concerned about the history and culture of the past colonists (Our age is retrospective), and the influence of the “courtly muses of Europe”, the European ancestors, was of a great significance, Emerson advocated for creating a new and innovative American culture based on the nature and the experiences of the New World.

Emerson had a very clear idea in his mind. He thought that his contemporaneous were too much immersed in the ancient times, as they gave more value and importance to the past than to what their own time could have offered them (the foregoing generations beheld nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation?). In order to prevent his generation and the future ones of remaining stuck and not enjoying their present time, Emerson encouraged people to create new ideas. He animated his coetaneous people to be creative and to create a new American culture, leaving in the back the past (...to tear off the blindfold of the past and turn their eyes toward what lies all around them). Moreover, Emerson thought that nature was “the symbol of the spirit”, so he tried to stimulate the people to write about their own world inspired by the nature they could find around them.

All in all, Ralph W. Emerson had very fixed ideas about creating an American culture and he tried to promote it and to encourage his contemporaries to be creative and visionary rather than to remain stuck in the past inherited culture.

P.S.: I didn’t know how to refer to the quotations, so I decided to write them.