Game of Shame: Emerson

When I was in graduate school, studying American and English literature and dreaming of being a "professor," my best friends' father was one of my professors (there's a tangled sentence), and he told us about a game that he and his friends used to play in the good old days at Johns Hopkins, where he was a graduate student -- the Game of Shame.

The rule for the game is simple: confess the "great" literature that you're supposed to have read that you haven't.

I can't remember what this professor said he'd never read (he did confess it to us, again), but I can confess that I've never read the entire Inferno (sorry, Dante) but only the parts that Eliot referenced in The Waste Land, and everything that Tomas Mann ever wrote made my brain freeze.

And now one of you (who shall remain nameless in this open space -- but you know who you are) has assigned us "The Conservative," by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  And I will confess that I've read about zero of the man ... and, it turns out, with good reason: he also makes my brain freeze, and my eyes roll back into my head, and my senses dig into the darkness.

I just can't really make sense of the guy. I find myself wondering who he's addressing -- this is a speech, after all -- and on what occasion.  And, finally, what's the slippery point that he's trying to make (or, as the case may be, avoiding to make)?

Here's a random passage from the essay in question:

In nature, each of these elements being always present, each theory has a natural support. As we take our stand on Necessity, or on Ethics, shall we go for the conservative, or for the reformer. If we read the world historically, we shall say, Of all the ages, the present hour and circumstance is the cumulative result; this is the best throw of the dice of nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible. If we see it from the side of Will, or the Moral Sentiment, we shall accuse the Past and the Present, and require the impossible of the Future.

Okay. So let's close read this fucker.  "Each of these elements" no doubt refers to the central ideas of the essay -- conservatism and idealism/reform.  So, Emerson seems to be saying something like: In nature, the impulse to stay the same (conservatism) and the impulse to change (reform, or evolution) is always present at the same time.  If we want to take a stand in this natural debate, we either side with the conservative (leave things alone)  or the reformer (change things).

Then Emerson loses me. "If we read the world historically," he says, and I wonder what he means by that?  Does he mean: if we look at things the way an historian would, we say "this present moment is the cumulative result of the past"?  And what does it mean to see the world "from the side of Will" -- is that the same as saying "if we see the world from the side of the innovator or the dreamer"?

Sigh. This is one reason why I've never really read Emerson (I win the Game of Shame here).  My husband, when he wasn't my husband, came home from some seminar in American Lit (taught by the Great Professor Father of my Friends) talking about Emerson's transparent eyeball, which he proceeded to explain to me (at length).  Yes, dear readers, I still married him ... but what I gleaned from that second hand lecture and exposure to the Big E was that I was in no way shape or form a Transcendentalist (except in the fact that I love Whitman).  I think my vision of "reality" or "what matters" is perhaps the modernist's or the existentialist's -- which can perhaps be boiled down to "isn't it pretty to think so?" or "so you think you're all that?  well, shithead, you'll die too one day."

I should thank the young man who assigned this essay to me for the humbling posture it's put me in. Once again, I'm reminded of all that I don't know, and how insignificant I am in the so-called design of this random universe. There's something to be said for this RESET button; for the down-low feeling of the student, reminding me to keep learning and reading. And maybe there's a fire and energy to the abstract language of the Romantics that I could benefit from ... with the right training, and translation.