Books are, to be sure, an important part of a scholar's training according to Emerson. But a "bookworm," as he puts it, is someone who places too much stock in the writings of the past, someone constrained to stay within the ideas and the literary conventions found within canonical books. This, according to Emerson, is an unfortunate and all-too-common phenomenon among the intellectuals of his day:
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by...
Books are, to be sure, an important part of a scholar's training according to Emerson. But a "bookworm," as he puts it, is someone who places too much stock in the writings of the past, someone constrained to stay within the ideas and the literary conventions found within canonical books. This, according to Emerson, is an unfortunate and all-too-common phenomenon among the intellectuals of his day:
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.
The point was not that nobody should read the classics, or that Shakespeare was not worthy of scholarly attention. Emerson was arguing that American intellectuals should forge their own way intellectually. The "American Scholar" had to be what Emerson called a "man thinking," which he saw as a creative act rather than one that should be overly emulative of European or past writers and intellectuals. Inspiration should be drawn from nature and within one's self rather than solely from the minds of dead authors. A true scholar would be creative, not simply reproducing work based on old ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment