I have enjoyed reading Emerson over the past few days, and he definitely has a lot of ideas that I agree with. I love his emphasis on the importance of nature as well as truth. His tendency to associate ideas about beauty with truth reminds me of the final lines in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The poem mentions various natural settings as well, which Emerson undoubtedly would have appreciated.
Perhaps the main difference between Keats' final lines and Emerson's works is the simplistic language in the poem verses Emerson's lengthy essays. I found that Emerson likes to repeat his ideas from one essay to the next, and even reiterate the same statements over and over again within one text. While I find many of his statements to be very profound, the excessive way he delivers them takes away from their impact on the reader. As we discussed in class on Thursday, many of his sentences seem to "say it all," and yet he continues for paragraphs on a topic he's already stated matter-of-factly.
I wonder where his motivation to write this way came from. Perhaps he was attempting to sound more intelligent, which would coincide with his apparent doubts with his ability to write poetry, since he put so much more energy toward writing essays about the importance of poetry than of composing poetry himself. Another reason for his wordiness could simply be the time period he was working in. Whatever his motivation, I find his work interesting regardless and look forward to discussing it more in class.
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