Emerson and the work of Melancholia

I found it very interesting how Edmundson brings up the fact of why Ralph Waldo Emerson began to write his Romanticism writings. He talks about how he refused to mourn when his wife died in 1831 and then shortly after that Edmundson says that Emerson lost his best friend and brother, Charles. Then he tells us of James Cox telling Emerson it is okay to be sad in his The Circles of the Eye, "Getting over the deaths of loved ones is no tired or traditional 'spiritual' vision for Emerson precisely because it is a literal breathing in, or inspiration, of the death in life" ("Emerson and the Work of Melancholia."). I think when Emerson read that line he probably got the most inspiration he had ever gotten because he probably actually did begin to mourn the death of the two closest to him. Then from that mourning Emerson probably got this huge wave of new emotions coming at him and a bunch of them so he expressed this in his writing. Later in the Criticism we read an excerpt found in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Compensation, "Every soul is by … intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant…. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day…. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks" ("Emerson and the Work of Melancholia."). That is a really deep statement almost about how he handled his whole situation with the deaths. He tells of how he put it off and put it off then he got used to having that "shell" on his back and by not facing this problem it would not allow him to grow.

I think the reason Emerson rejected Romanticism in the later years of his life was because he had finally moved on from the deaths that had happened earlier. When you think about it, and read everything I had written above it all makes sense. The whole reason he had started to write in the romanticist style was basically because he started to mourn the deaths of two loved ones earlier in his life. This was his whole reason seemingly that he started to write in the deeper style of Romanticism was because of these new emotions he was feeling. So as he grew older and he got more time to think to himself of these deaths he finally accepted them and embraced them. Then he looked at his writings from previous years and realized he did not have the same kind of compassion about that style of writing that he had had before. Then he just did not want to write in that style any more because he was past that stage in his life.

"Emerson and the Work of Melancholia." Raritan (Spring 1987). Quoted as "Emerson and the Work of Melancholia" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Updated Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. (accessed November 7, 2010).