Essay/Term paper: Transcendentalism

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Social Issues

Transcendentalism


Back in the 1800's, people trusted in their innersoul. it was
called transcendentalism. People like Emerson and Thoreau were transcendentalism.
They didn't think with their heads. They do things like in their first
impression. If they sees that a tree is violet, they will paint it violet.
During that era, Romanticism was party of it too. Ideas of Romanticism with
transcendentalism.

In our everyday life, we use transcendentalism. We use our head to
think and our hart to feel love and hate, but sometimes you say something
without thinking about it. It came from your inner soul. I paint, and when I
paint, I don't draw something realistic. When I am in front of my paper, I just
draw and paint with any color, I don't think. Then when I feel it is finished,
I look and it can be a yellow sky and a violet ocean. I love it! What Thoreau
did, of isolating himself, I couldn't do it because it is not my character.
Sure I could live without television nor exaggerated furniture, but I need to
speak, I need to be with someone, to listen music. I am afraid to be alone. I
have a part of transcendentalism, I think we all do, even if we don't agree with
it.
Talking about Emerson, he had puritan influence. He struggle in
his life, and this help him with his writing. Emerson was transcendentalist.
Emerson did lot of writing. One of them was " Nature ". One of his
transcendentalist sentence was, " I become a transparent eyeball. " With his
inner soul, he really become it, it was real, what he feels. He wouldn't be
able to smell or to talk to anybody, and he didn't needed to listen. With his
eyeball, he was able to see everything, very far. The word he use, "
transparent,'' I think is that because he was so lonely, he felt transparent.

Another writer of that time, was Thoreau. He studied in Harvard.
He was going to be a lawyer. Then he read " Nature, " from Emerson, and after
that wanted to live school. he wanted to live his life like in " Nature." He
graduate, but then Thoreau went in the forest without anything, and isolate
himself in a little house in the woods. He wanted a simple life. Thoreau
wanted to find out by himself what transcendentalism. He wanted to simplify
life and instead of eating three meals per day, just one. He too wrote. In his
writing, sentences reflected transcendentalism. One of it was, ´´ It looks
poorest when you are richest. ´´ His ideas were to live your life with
necessary things. Don't be materialistic. The main idea was simplicity. His
quotation means for me that you are rich, but poor in the inside. In your inner
soul you are poor in the inside. In your inner soul you are poor, because
materialistic person only thinks in money. The difference between Emerson and
Thoreau, is that Emerson was getting paid, but Thoreau not.

In conclusion, a transcendentalism person, lived his life without
thinking, and being alone. they trust their first impression. They go beyond,
go above the senses, to rise above. Transcendentalism contains Romanticism
ideas too. It had political, ethical, aesthetic and religious implications. I
Think that it is hard to be a transcendentalist person, just to live around it.