"SCHOLAR" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that they find themselves
not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret the coming
state as untried; as a boy dreads the water before he has learned
that he can swim. If there is any period one would desire to be born
in, -- is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new
stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of
all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories
of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new
era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know
what to do with it.

I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming
days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through
philosophy and science, through church and state.

One of these signs is the fact, that the same movement which
effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the
state, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect.
Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common,
was explored and poetized. That, which had been negligently trodden
under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves
for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer
than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of
the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household
life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a
sign, -- is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made
active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.
I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in
Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I
embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar,
the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique
and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The
meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street;
the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of
the body; -- show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me
the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as
always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let
me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it
instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the leger,
referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing;
-- and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room,
but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but
one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest
trench.

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper,
and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea
they have differently followed and with various success. In contrast
with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks
cold and pedantic. This writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to