Emerson's Journal

Nature Writing: The Tradition in English
Robert Finch and John Elder

In Nature Writing: The Tradition in English by Robert Finch and John Elder there includes among the long list of authors includes selections by Ralph Waldo Emerson. An important, yet often unnoticed part of Emerson’s many recorded writings is his journal entries. Finch and Elder carefully selected about twenty of those entries which give the reader a glimpse of Emerson’s writing process and reoccurring ideas.

One of those themes is related to Emerson’s readings of Eastern texts and appreciation for Eastern philosophy. In an entry from September 1848, he writes: “I go twice a week over to Concord with Ellery, and as we sit…we still have the same regret as oft before. Is all this beauty to perish? …where is he who is to save the present moment, and cause that this beauty be not lost? Shakespeare saw no better heaven or earth…and seized the dull, ugly England.” (150-151) For Emerson and Ellery Channing this spot in nature is so alive and refreshing to them that they wish more people would have access to this way of seeing and be able to record and share it. For them, like the Buddhists, the present moment, the here and now, is so rich with beauty and sensory appeals. Therefore, Emerson toils the question of how to “save” or savor that moment. He thinks of Shakespeare who “seized” the moment and articulately wrote about the landscapes of England. The end of his entry reads as an almost “call to arms” where Emerson asks who next will have that same “chanting constitution” that Shakespeare did and write eloquently about the landscapes of New England.