Nature in Literature Essay

Nature is one of the most powerful forces that has ran through literature throughout human history. Ever since the first recorded dramas and philosophical works, man could not avoid being in contact with the world around him, and so his connection to the earth must inevitably be part of his story. In literature, when nature is addressed, it is often in praise or awe, of its terror or of its beauty. Nature can represent the real and visceral as well as the sublime and the mystic. If one examines the work of the Transcendentalists, the Romantic Poets, and certain novelists, it is evident that the underlying feeling is that Nature provides inspiration and bliss, as well as a much-needed refuge from society. One of the best known schools of thought which dealt with Nature in literature is Transcendentalism. The Transcendentalist movement began in America in the 1800s. Transcendentalists believed that the divine could be reached through nature, by any man. The hallmark work of the movement was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature. The most famous section of the work is when Emerson recalls an experience he had in the woods, and says â€Å"I become a transparent eye-ball. . . . I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. † (Cromphout 210) Emerson tapped into an experience of non-being, connecting on a purely spiritual level through nature, without need of church or religion. Equally famed is Henry David Thoreau’s work Walden. In this classic, Thoreau captures the spirit of nature, solitude, and finding joy in both. As an experiment, Thoreau left society and went to live in a cabin on Walden Pond. In this famous statement, Thoreau sums up the mission of his experiment: â€Å"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. .. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. † (Thoreau 5)He was making a stand against the materialism and convoluted nature of society- â€Å"Our life is frittered away by detail, simplify, simplify,† he says. For him nature represented the bare essentials- trees, rock, hunger, thirst; the things that lay behind the trappings of society. He took immense joy in the solitude and beauty of his life at Walden Pond. He farmed, observed, and lived in harmony with nature. Walden opened people’s eyes and inspired them, and might be the most classic example of nature in literature. Another Transcendentalist, the most radical and wonderfully incendiary, was Walt Whitman. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was written in free verse and was seen as controversial and even obscene by the uptight intellectuals of the day. The essence of his work is a deep oneness with nature, having no shame in being, and joy in what can be seen and felt. In Song of Myself, he says, â€Å"I am satisfied†¦ I see, dance, laugh, sing. † â€Å"The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag†¦ The feeling of health†¦ the full-noon trill†¦ the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. † (Whitman 12) For Whitman, nature is all he needs, he takes endless joy in being, tempering the intellect with natural physical pleasures. An equally important school of thought was the Romantic movement in Europe. Romanticism grew out of a rebellion against the Enlightenment and its stark intellectualism. Instead, romanticism revolves around passion, emotion, nature, mystery, turmoil, and all the qualities of life that were not constrained by reason. â€Å"Nature mysticism† was one of the most important aspects of the movement. (Micale 140) The romantics preferred the country and the wilderness to the city, and loved both gentle, pastoral landscapes as well as the turbulent, sublime, dramatic, and exotic. (Micale 150) Of course, literature was at the core of the Romantic movement, and the love of nature is reflected in its works. An excellent example of the â€Å"sublime† side of nature is found in the work of the mysterious literary figure Ossian, who influenced so many of the romantic writers. Ossian was actually the Scottish poet James Macpherson(1736-1796) who wrote a collection of ancient Scottish poems, claiming to be word-of-mouth folk tales, but it is supposed that he wrote them himself. (Simonsuuri 192) The poems involved misty, windblown, rocky landscapes and moonlight, and the romantic images and ideas he brought about captured the imagination of society and of individuals such as Goethe, Napoleon, and Jefferson. (Simonsuuri 287) People were drawn to this exotic, wild side of nature and the worlds that it conjured. An example of the green, pastoral side of nature in romantic literature is found in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In the poem Laughing Song, he says:â€Å"When the green woods laugh with the voice of joyAnd the dimpling stream runs laughing by,When the air does laugh with our merry wit,And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. † (Blake 28) In Songs of Innocence, Blake connects the lovely landscape with youth, joy, and happiness. In his poetry, the countryside represents â€Å"innocence† and all things good, while the city represents â€Å"experience† and disillusionment. In conclusion, nature is one of the strongest forces found in literature. Men have written about the natural world and how it affects them for centuries, and will continue to do so. In Europe, Nature was at the core of the Romantic movement. Their works reflect both the stormy and sublime side of nature as well as the peaceful and pastoral. Either way, the romantics were moved to bliss and rapture by the beauties they saw around them. In America, a similar movement took place with the Transcendentalists, who believed that the unifying spirit in all things could be reached directly through nature. In literature, nature is often perceived with some amount of mysticism. To man, nature represents all that is not machine and society, it represents a state of freedom, passion, and beauty. If one examines the work of the Transcendentalists, the Romantic Poets, and certain novelists, it is evident that the underlying feeling is that Nature provides inspiration and bliss, as well as a much-needed refuge from society. Word count: 1100.