Transparent eyeball

Last updated
"Transparent eyeball" as illustrated by Christopher Pearse Cranch, ca. 1836-1838 Houghton MS Am 1506 (4) - Cranch.jpg
"Transparent eyeball" as illustrated by Christopher Pearse Cranch, ca. 1836-1838

The transparent eyeball is a philosophical metaphor originated by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his essay Nature , the metaphor stands for a view of life that is absorbent rather than reflective, and therefore takes in all that nature has to offer without bias or contradiction. Emerson intends that the individual become one with nature, and the manner of the transparent eyeball is an approach to achieving it.

Contents

Overview

In Nature, alongside many viewpoints he considers, Emerson describes nature as the closest experience there is to experiencing the presence of God. To truly appreciate nature, one must not only look at it and admire it, but also be able to feel it taking over the senses without biases or contradictions. This process requires absolute solitude, as he notes that "a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society" [1] to uninhabited places like the woods where—

[...] we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. [1] [2]

According to Emerson, for most people, seeing is a superficial act. It is light illuminating the eye revealing what is physically evident, as opposed to how the Sun "shine[s] into the eye and heart of the child." [1] Emerson's argument is that outer and inner vision merge to reveal perceived symbolic connections, making the natural world into a personal landscape of freedom. Going further than this finite perception of freedom, the transparent eyeball merges with what it sees, thus making this unity immediate, especially between the self and God, losing grip of the biases and contradictions that the self previously made when within nature. [3] [4]

Origin

Emerson attended Harvard Divinity School in 1825—and by 1826, had applied for a license to preach at the Middlesex Association of Ministers. By 1832, Emerson left the Christian ministry but continued to believe in God. However, he held that God reveals his grandeur not only in scripture, but also through nature. "Emerson's reading in science soon after leaving the ministry was his effort to interpret God's natural book. As Emerson became increasingly interested in science, he eventually came to believe nature, not scripture, was the locus of revelation. His desire to become a naturalist was intimately connected to his yearning to write a new bible of God's revelation in nature." [5]

Some scholars[ who? ] believe that the "transparent eyeball" passage is an echo of the Bible. 'In Nature, Emerson fashions himself as a new prophet of nature, believing with Goethe that "prophetic vision" arises only in "slowpaced experiment." Vision arises from observing nature, where, as he writes in Nature, "All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature." The essay can be regarded as Emerson's attempt to make nature itself a bible. In this sense, one need not spend Sundays at church but can simply retreat to the 'woods' and let nature inhabit one's consciousness. "The reconstruction of religion in Emerson's nature works in a number of directions. First, there is an undeniable romantic-naturalism in his writings. One can and should go out into nature, into the fields and forests and be renewed. It follows, then, that Emerson's religiosity may be read as natural and not supernatural, which may account for his centrality in a tradition of arts and letters which dates to his decisive split with organized religion." The significance of this shift resulted in Emerson's paradigmatic role for transcendentalism. "Transcendentalists believe that finding God depended on neither orthodox (Christianity) nor the Unitarians' sensible exercise of virtue, but on one's inner striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit." [6]

Application

In photography

Walker Evans was a renowned American photographer, known for his visionary process of aligning "photography with Emerson's original desire to absorb and be absorbed into nature, to become a transparent rather than simply reflective eye." Walker spent his career during the Great Depression trying to capture images that would be a mirror representation of Americans surrounded by both nature and man-made objects existing in total harmony.

Emerson's description of the "transparent eyeball" functions as a metaphor for the artist's ability to discern the essential nature of objects and as a way to stress that the transcendental is not formless. The "transparent eyeball" reflects nature's particulars, much in the way that a camera lens exposes; and in the process illuminates… the "unrelieved, bare-faced, revelatory" facts. The transparent eyeball is about capturing and being a part of all of nature and its motion. The camera works in the same fashion. The camera exposes/illuminates all of nature in a single snapshot with more detail and visibility of nature that cannot be taken in by an unaided eye alone.

Just as nature has to be experienced visually for its true meaning to shine forth, the photographic eye has to be present to capture the image. Contrary to what one might think, the 'transparent eyeball' is not a free-floating entity, but a necessary link between the observer and the landscape surrounding him or her. [7]

To visually experience and appreciate nature, as Emerson desired, through a transparent state, an individual has to view it. This is similar to the camera. To photograph an image, the individual must first view the scene, then capture what they see. Thus, the "transparent eyeball" is not free from constraints, but is a tool that the individual needs to become one with nature. However, it is not to be understood that "Emerson did not believe in a fundamental god-driven unity underlying the worldly flux, but rather that art's role was to provide an insight into that unity."[ citation needed ]

In literature

According to Amy Hungerford, the influence and use of the transparent eyeball in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping is palpable. Hungerford argues that Robinson's protagonist Ruth narrates from the perspective of the transparent eyeball. [8]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 "Emerson, nature & circles" (PDF). Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays and Lectures. Q Writing. Feb 2011 [The Library of America 1983].
  2. 'Miscellanies: Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures. Nature' in The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Routledge and Sons, 1888 pp.547-564 p.548
  3. Kohler, Michelle (2004). "Dickinson's Embodied Eyeball: Transcendentalism and the Scope of Vision" (PDF). The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 25.
  4. Atchley, J. Heath (2006). "The Death of Emerson: Writing, Loss, and Divine Presence". The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. New Series. 20 (4). Penn State University Press: 251–265. doi:10.2307/25670628. JSTOR   25670628 . Retrieved 13 April 2011.
  5. Wilson, Eric (Spring 1997), ""Terrible Simplicity": Emerson's Metaleptic Style", Style (academic journal article), 31 (1).
  6. Wilson 1997.
  7. Blinder, Caroline (December 2004), "'The Transparent Eyeball': On Emerson and Walker Evans", Mosaic, 37 (4), Winnipeg.
  8. "Amy Hungerford", Speakers, Academic earth.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span> American philosopher (1803–1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called him his "master".

Transcendentalism is a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the New England region of the United States. A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-Reliance</span> 1841 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of his recurrent themes: the need for each person to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of his most famous quotations:

The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism.

<i>Nature</i> (essay) 1836 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is a book-length essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published by James Munroe and Company in 1836. In the essay Emerson put forth the foundation of transcendentalism, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Transcendentalism suggests that the divine, or God, suffuses nature, and suggests that reality can be understood by studying nature. Emerson's visit to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris inspired a set of lectures he later delivered in Boston which were then published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Pearse Cranch</span> American writer and artist

Christopher Pearse Cranch was an American writer and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The American Scholar</span> 1837 speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to regard the world. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country's history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping "from under its iron lids" and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederic Henry Hedge</span> American Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist (1805-1890)

Frederic Henry Hedge was a New England Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. He was a founder of the Transcendental Club, originally called Hedge's Club, and active in the development of Transcendentalism, although he distanced himself from the movement as it advanced.

The Transcendentalist is a lecture and essay by American writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is one of the essays he wrote while establishing the doctrine of American Transcendentalism. The lecture was read at the Masonic Temple in Boston, Massachusetts in January 1842.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Divinity School Address</span> 1838 speech by American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson

The "Divinity School Address" is the common name for the speech Ralph Waldo Emerson gave to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School on July 15, 1838. Its formal title is "Acquaint Thyself First Hand with Deity."

<i>The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail</i>

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a two-act American play by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence written in 1969. The play is based on the early life of the title character, Henry David Thoreau, leading up to his night spent in a jail in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay a poll tax on the grounds that the money might be used to pay for the Mexican–American War, which he opposed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uriel (poem)</span> Poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Uriel" is a poem by American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Lawrence Ingalls Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University, specialist on antebellum American literature and a pioneer of Ecocriticism. He is the 2007 recipient of the Jay Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary studies, the "highest professional award that the American Literature Section of the MLA can give." He won the 2003 Warren-Brooks Award for outstanding literary criticism for his 2003 book on Ralph Waldo Emerson. His Writing for an Endangered World won the 2001 John G. Cawelti Award for the best book in the field of American Culture Studies. He retired from Harvard in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jones Very</span> American poet and essayist

Jones Very was an American poet, essayist, clergyman, and mystic associated with the American Transcendentalism movement. He was known as a scholar of William Shakespeare, and many of his poems were Shakespearean sonnets. He was well-known and respected among the Transcendentalists.

"Brahma" is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, written in 1856. However, the poem was published in the November 1857 issue of The Atlantic. It is named for Brahman, the universal principle of the Vedas.

"Politics" is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is part of his Essays: Second Series, published in 1844. A premier philosopher, poet and leader of American transcendentalism, he used this essay to belie his feelings on government, specifically American government. His impact on New England thought and his views on pragmatism influenced the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, and Frederich Nietzsche, among others.

Laura Dassow Walls is an American professor emerita of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Mary Moody Emerson was an American letter writer and diarist. She was known not only as her nephew Ralph Waldo Emerson's "earliest and best teacher", but also as a "spirited and original genius in her own right". Ralph Waldo Emerson considered her presence in his life a “blessing which nothing else in education could supply”; and her vast body of writing—her thousands of letters and journal entries spanning more than fifty years—"became one of Emerson's most important books". Her surviving documents reveal the voice of a "woman who […] had something to say to her contemporaries and who can continue to speak to ours" about "the great truths that were the object of her life's pilgrimage".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Waldo Emerson</span> U.S. physician and author; in Concord, Massachusetts

Edward Waldo Emerson was an American physician, writer and lecturer.

Michael P. Branch is an ecocritic, writer, and humorist with over three hundred publications, including work in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. An important member of the environmental and writing community, Western American Literature has described him as part of the "enduring procession of outdoor journalists."

References

Further reading