Flower Power: A Student's Guide to Pre-Hippie Transcendentalism

Author(s): Paul H. Wild

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 62-68
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/812349
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Flower Power: A Student's Guide
to Pre-Hippie Transcendentalism
Paul H. Wild
Departmentof English
UniversitySchool
KentState University
Kent,Ohio
We buy ashes for bread;
We buy diluted wine;
Give me of the true,-
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven
Draw everlasting dew;
Wine of wine,
Blood of the world
Form of forms, and mould of statures,
That I intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasurethrough all natures;
The bird-languagerightly spell,
And that which roses say so well.
from "Bacchus"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
ENRY Thoreau, doing his thing at
H Walden Pond; Ralph Emerson, the
guru; and Walt Whitman, tripping out
on grass. Irreverent? Perhaps, but not
irrelevant. Thoreau's retreat to Walden
is not significantly different from the
hippie's dropping out; both are seeking
a reasonable alternative to the stultifying
demands of conventional life. Thoreau,
like the hippie, knew how to blow his
mind, only for Thoreau, pure air was
sufficient intoxicant. Emerson, the Sage
of Concord, built metaphysical struc-
62
tures that provide a rationale for the
mystical experiences of Thoreau and
Whitman. Emerson was spiritual father
for Thoreau, and more; it was Emer-
son's land upon which Thoreau built
his cabin. And although Whitman did
not share the companionship of Emer-
son and Thoreau, his spiritual brother-
hood is revealed in Emerson's famous
letter upon reading the first edition of
Leaves of Grass: "I greet you at the
beginning of a great career." While
Whitman's infatuation with Manahatta
places him in another world from Con-
cord, Leaves of Grass is the lifelong
record of the journey of a soul-a life-
time "trip."
For today's bright youth, more curi-
ous, more skeptical, the transcendental-
ists offer a vision of the examined life
purer and more solidly grounded than
that of the drug-glazed hippie. In fact,
reaction against hippie irresponsibility
by such influential men as Paul Wood-
ring, "Was Thoreau a Hippie?" (Sat-
urday Review, December 16, 1967), and
George F. Kennan (New York Times
Magazine, January 20, 1968) should
 PRE-HIPPIE TRANSCENDENTALISM
stimulate thought-provoking discussion
among high school students who know
only the romantic independence of the
hippie revolution.
In the following discussion I propose
a series of readings that start with
Thoreau's practical experiment in de-
liberate living at Walden Pond, trace
Emerson's metaphysical structure of a
unified universe into his manifesto for
self-reliance, and finally dramatize Whit-
man's transcendent love for all kinds
and conditions of men.
THE virtue of starting with Thoreau's
Walden is two-fold: first, it is an
account of experiences that really hap-
ened; second, Thoreau's symbols-the
train, the ponds, the ants, the loon-are
real but they imply a metaphysical
world view, leading the reader from the
visible real into the spiritual. My quite
arbitrary selection from Walden is
Chapter 1 "Economy," Chapter 2
"Where I Lived, and What I Lived
For," Chapter 4 "Sounds," Chapter 9
"The Ponds," Chapter 12 "Brute Neigh-
bors," and Chapter 11 "Higher Laws."
"Economy" acquaints students with
Thoreau's irreverent and chameleon per-
sonality. "I should not talk so much
about myself if there were any body
else I knew so well." Or: ". . . I am
accustomed to answer such, that I can
live on board nails. If they cannot under-
stand that, they cannot understand much
that I have to say." Students will readily
grasp Thoreau's doctrine of simplicity
and his aversion to the burdens of
property, but they will be puzzled by
his seeming preoccupation with his ac-
counts, down to the quarter cent, until
they recognize the satire, or "put-down,"
underneath.
More importantly, in "Economy"
students become aware of the practical
foundations of Thoreau's meditations.
When Thoreau identifies his four "nec-
essaries of life"-food, fuel, shelter, and
clothing-he puts philosophy in terms
63
of primitive survival. What, he asks, is
the least one must burden himself with?
Students are well aware of the vicious
cycle of getting and spending to which
their parents are committed. The build-
ing of a very real cabin with its ac-
counts of labor and expenses is the fo-
cus of "Economy."
"Where I Lived, and What I Lived
For" begins with the practical problem
of selecting a site for his cabin, but
soon Thoreau shows that the property is
his least concern. He abstracts the beauty
of the landscape and leaves the burden
of its maintenance to its owner. In a
similar manner, Thoreau employs the
railroad, the pride of man's industry, to
illustrate the failure of progress when
the lives of so many Irishmen are sacri-
ficed to it.
In the remaining chapters of my selec-
tion, natural objects become highly sym-
bolic as Thoreau suggests the transcen-
dental pathway to nature's secrets. He
makes a practical application of one of
Emerson's major premises in Nature;
writing about nature as language, Emer-
son declared, "Particular natural facts
are symbols of particular spiritual facts."
Thoreau's symbols fall into two cate-
gories: natural objects symbolizing the
heroic potential man has not yet found
the courage to practice; and natural ob-
jects symbolizing the pathway to spiri-
tual revelation.
In the first category, the railroad, in
a whimsical reversal of its earlier role,
becomes in "Sounds" the fire-breathing
iron horse of a new mythology; "This
travelling demi-god, this cloud com-
peller, would ere long take the sunset
sky for the livery of his train." Breath-
ing fire and smoke, making the ground
tremble, the engine is a race worthy
to inhabit the earth. How ironic it is
that man, who invented this tireless hero
that blows off superfluous energy in the
stable at dusk, has become its puny
servant. Another symbol of heroism is
Thoreau's brute neighbors, the ants.
64 ENGLISH
Their struggle is unrivaled for heroism
by that other famous battle at Concord,
fought only to avoid a three-penny tax
on tea. The ants equal the heroism of
the ancient Greeks before Troy, of
Achilles avenging Patroclus. And the
loon, a bird remarkable for its ability to
swim under water as easily as it can
fly, outwits Thoreau in a game of hide
and seek that shows just how little man's
powers are as he futilely paddles hither
and yon, confined to the two-dimensional
surface of the pond, unable to out-guess
the bird, who invariably surfaces with
his mocking, maniacal cry. The train,
the ants, the loon-these symbols nature
has provided to inspire man out of his
resignation.
And should man rise to such inspira-
tion, natural objects show him the way.
In "Sounds" the train, in yet another
context, symbolically reveals the es-
sential oneness of life. Observing the
limitless variety of the train's cargo,
Thoreau comments, "I feel more like a
citizen of the world at the sight of a
palm-leaf which will cover so many
flaxen New England heads next summer
...." On torn sails is written the history
of storms; great timbers shoot from the
mountains to the sea, destined to be the
mast of some great admiral; bales of
rags tell tales of real life; Spanish hides
with stiff tails still aloft had only recently
careened across the pampas of the
Spanish main. Walden Pond itself, in
"The Ponds," is Thoreau's most fully
developed symbol of the unity of life.
It is bottomless, being fed from under-
ground springs, and its source is un-
known. It is clear to the bottom, but
viewed from the proper angle, it re-
flects the blues and greens of the land-
scape and sky. Fishing at night, his
dreams interrupted by the jerk of a
fish on his line, Thoreau felt that he
could as well cast his line up into the
air as down into "this element which
was scarcely more dense." Said Thoreau,
"A field of water betrays the spirit that
JOURNAL
is in the air."And in anotherparagraph,
"It is earth's eye; looking into which
the beholder measuresthe depth of his
own nature."
Thoreau's purpose in establishingthe
absence of distinction between man's
world and rest of the universeis to per-
mit the final leap to insight. In "Brute
Neighbors" a partridge chick's eye re-
flects all intelligence, "not merely the
purity of infancy but a wisdom clarified
by experience. Such an eye was not
born when the bird was, but is coeval
with the sky it reflects." In "Higher
Laws" Thoreau is seized with the desire
to eat a woodchuck raw, "for the wild-
ness which he represented."He counsels
parentsto make huntersof their sons; it
is not a contradiction to his love of
natures'screatures,but a necessarysacri-
fice so that the boy can learn the ways
of nature and eventually go hunting
without a gun. Nature's laws are God's
laws, and when manreturnsto the simple
ways of the animalshe will know God's
laws. From simplicityto purity, the way
is clear. The sensuality of eating is a
block to purity, and, therefore, nature
herself must finally be overcome.
Thoreau feels that his own repugnance
to animal food is an instinct, and that
gradually the whole race of man will
cease, ". . .as the savage tribes have left
off eating each other when they came
in contact with the more civilized."
That instinct Thoreau calls a man's
genius, and, "No man ever followed his
geniustill it misledhim."
Thus, through close observation of
his surroundingsand a firm belief in the
beneficence of the universe, Thoreau
perceived an earthly pathway to para-
dise. The firmnessof his beliefs is evi-
dent in his life; he practiced what he
preached,and he serves as a compelling
reminderto modern man of a life that
yet might be. And so, for studentswhose
appetites have been whetted, and who
wish a more systematic description of
man's relation to nature and to God,
 PRE-HIPPIE TRANSCENDENTALISM
four essays by Emerson can objectify
the mystical insights of Thoreau.
MERSON'S Nature, "Circles,"
E "Over-Soul," and "Self-Reliance"
form a sequence of readings that begin
with the uses of nature to man, proceed
to show the position of man within the
natural framework, and finally propose
an attitude toward life that allows man
to fully realize his Godly status.
The opening paragraph of Nature
poses a problem that remains today and
which, in fact, can never be resolved.
Emerson writes, "Our age is retrospec-
tive." (Marshall McLuhan has similarly
observed that we go through life look-
ing in a rear-view mirror.) And Emer-
son asks, "Why should we not also en-
joy an original relation to the universe?"
Modern youth seeks to avoid the mis-
takes of its parents. Emerson answers,
"Every man's condition is a solution in
hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would
put. He acts it as life before he appre-
hends it as truth." What permits such
unqualified confidence is Emerson's be-
lief that nature is the visible language of
God. In Chapter 4 of Nature Emerson
outlines in an appealingly neo-scientific
fashion his three major premises:
1. "Words are signs of natural facts";
2. "Particular natural facts are symbols
of particular spiritual facts"; 3. "Na-
ture is the symbol of spirit." In Emer-
son's explanation of these beliefs, he
first shows that primitive man translated
natural phenomena into words for ab-
stract ideas: right means straight, wrong
means twisted. The second premise
means that natural events correspond
metaphorically to states of mind: "An
enraged man is a lion, a cunning man
is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned
man is a torch." The third premise is
that physical laws translate into ethical
laws: the whole is greater than its part;
reaction is equal to action. These ethical
laws are so pervasive that they are in-
corporated into our proverbs: a rolling
65
stone gathers no moss; a bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush. As a
scientific theory of language, this is not
very convincing, but as philosophy-
ontology-it is appealingly direct, un-
complicated by custom and tradition,
esoteric terminology, or even compli-
cated mysticism. It gives some reassur-
ance that the unknown may be known.
"Circles" and "Over-Soul" expand
and systematize the insights of Nature.
"Circles" is noteworthy primarily for
its vision of man and the universe in an
always-evolving series of concentric
circles. The circles are a metaphor for
the experience of revelation, or more
humbly, for inductive reasoning. We
are surrounded by phenomena which
strike our senses with maddening irregu-
larity until, magically, a unifying prin-
ciple is perceived. Whether a major
breakthrough in the structure of matter,
like Einstein's, or merely a personal in-
sight into social relationships, our point
of view alters, our horizon widens, and
we enter a larger circle.
What may be most interesting about
"Circles," however, is Emerson's ob-
servation that, "Whilst the eternal gen-
eration of circles proceeds, the eternal
generator abides." Truth is not relative,
but absolute. The search for it is worth-
while because, once known, it never
changes. History, politics, religion, so-
ciety cease to perplex by their multi-
plicity and contradiction.
"Over-Soul" postulates the essential
sameness of man and God: "Man is a
stream whose source is hidden. Our be-
ing is descending into us from we know
not whence." All men are one in God:
"Ineffable is the union of man and God
in every act of the soul. The simplest
person, who in his integrity worships
God, becomes God. . . ." Thus, "Char-
acter teaches over our head." Man can-
not do wrong, sin, or fail as long as he
obeys the teaching of his soul, which is
the presence of God within him.
The absolute confidence of "Self-
66 ENGLISH JOURNAL

Reliance"-"To believe your own ings of Emerson. These qualities are

thought, to believe that what is true for best expressed in the youthful and lusty
you in your private heart is true for "Song of Myself." The apparent form-
all men,-that is genius"-is natural and lessness of this long poem has been ef-
clear against the background of Nature, fectively resolved by critics who see it
"Circles," and "Over-Soul." Students as the narrative of a mystical experi-
will not be put off by the egotism and ence (Gay Wilson Allen's Walt Whit-
seeming "preachiness" knowing the man Handbook [Hendricks, 1962] and
source of Emerson's Godlike confi- James E. Miller's Critical Guide to
dence. The riches of "Self-Reliance" Leaves of Grass [University of Chicago,
are practically limitless, but those parts 19571). The details of their analyses need
most relevant to youth today are the not be repeated here, but one element
reassurances that self-trust and noncon- of Whitman's experience has special
formity are the marks of independence: bearing on the problems facing young
people. It is the ancient paradox of in-
There is a time in every man's education nocence and experience. "Song of My-
when he arrives at the conviction that self" is the
journey of a soul beautifully
envy is ignorance and imitation suicide; naive, and in its naivet6 receiving and
that he must take himself for better, for
worse, as his portion. accepting all experience indiscrimina-
tively:
Whoso would be a man must be a non-
conformist. I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assumeyou shall assume,
The objection to conforming to usages For every atom belonging to me as good
that have become dead to you is that it belongs to you.
scatters your force.
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, adored by little statesmen speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original
and philosophers and divines.
energy.
To be great is to be misunderstood. (Section 1)
Let us affront and reprimandthe smooth Expanding and encompassing, his soul
mediocrity and squalid contentment of transcends himself, the atmosphere, time,
the times, and hurl in the face of custom creation; himself the hand and spirit of
and trade, and office, the fact which is God, he looks about, reviewing the life
the upshot of all history, that there is a and lives that compose his life. But while
great responsible Thinker and Actor
working wherever a man works; that a gathering to himself the endless particu-
true man belongs to no other time and lars of experience, his innocent soul can-
not deny the horrible experiences of life.
place, but is the center of things.
The heroism of the four hundred and
"Thisone fact the world hates, that the twelve young men in Texas (Section 34)
soul becomes; for that forever degrades or of the old-time sea fight (Sections
the past, turns all riches to poverty, all
35-36) inevitably degenerates into the
reputation to shame, confounds the saint
with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas grisly reality of the surgeon's bay; the
equally aside. knife hisses, the saw gnaws, something
drops horribly into a bucket, a scream
W ALT Whitman'srelevanceto mod- tapers into a groan. The survivor be-
emrnyoung people is both his pri- comes the prisoner, mutineer, cholera
vate mysticism and his universal human- victim, thief, beggar (Section 37). At
ism, characterized by the Godlike self- this threshold of despair, Whitman is
confidence which epitomizes the teach- mystically delivered from the brink to
 PRE-HIPPIE TRANSCENDENTALISM
soar once again, saved from the "usual
mistake" (Section 38).
The "usual mistake" is the common
disease of budding idealists, despair, the
natural reaction to the overwhelming
evidence of agony and degradation. But
despair is a mistake because, like the
more
grass, life goes on, more potent and
enduring than suffering and death. This
truth has been mystically revealed, and
with the new-found confidence his
soul's journey continues. The poor are
raised, the sick healed. Self-seeking mer-
chants and politicians sink below notice;
the barbarities of religion pale. The per-
fection of himself reveals to others the
perfection of themselves. Poised on the
brink of eternity, he pauses for a last
invitation. The spotted hawk swoops by,
accusing, and-
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at
the runawav sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it
in lacy jags.
(Section 52)
The mysticism which has so caught
the imagination of the young recurs
throughout "Song of Myself."
Have you reckoned a thousand acres
much? Have you reckoned the earth
much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to
read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the
meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you
shall possess the origin of all poems....
(Section 2)
Swiftly arose and spread around me the
peace and knowledge that pass all the
argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the
promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the
brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also
my brothers, and the women my sisters
and lovers ....
(Section 5)
67
Do you guess I have some intricate pur-
pose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month show-
ers have, and the mica on the side of
a rock has.
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the
early redstart twittering through the
woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will
tell you.
(Section 19)
Why should I pray? why should I ven-
erate and be ceremonious?
Having pried through the strata, analyzed
to a hair, counseled with doctors and
calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my
own bones.
(Section 20)
I am an acme of things accomplished, and
I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of
the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larg-
er bunches between the steps,
All below duly traveled, and still I mount
and mount.
(Section 44)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
(Section 51)
This mysticism is not the contempla-
tive introspection which denies the sur-
rounding world; rather it is ecstatically
all-encompassing. It is ecstatic poetry,
and ecstacy is, I believe, the very core
of what motivates today's avant-garde,
the hippies. "The now generation,"
"turned on," LSD, psychedelics-all the
cant and phenomena of the hippie move-
ment demonstrate the centrality of sen-
How the circle comes
suality-ecstacy.
full round was recently revealed in the
liner notes written by Allen Ginsberg
for an album by the Fugs, the way-
out Greenwich Village peace-rock
68 ENGLISH JOURNAL

group led by Ed Sanders. Wrote Gins-
burg, "The Fugs came to tell the truth
that was only dreamy till they opened
their mouths for Whitmanic orgy
yawp!" (The Fugs, ESP-DISK' 1028,
1966). Sanders and Ginsberg also head
the hippie political-activist group known
as Yippies (Youth International Party)
which operates under the "politics of
ecstacy" (Time, April 5, 1968, p. 61).
Ecstacy is what makes the hippie
movement important, despite the seem-
ing irresponsibility of their acts, for with
ecstacy they have overcome the apathy
or constraint of previous generations.
The "cool" of the beats has been re-
placed by the hippies' passionate inten-
sity, and that is no small achievement.
In the March 1968, Media and Methods
Edmund Carpenter speculates on the
possibility that literature may survive
the onslaught of the electronic media
through the hippies' revival of interest
in the language of print. "They've [the
hippies] taken the classics and fled from
campuses which have fallen to weapon
development, the CIA, and schools of
Social Work" (p.12). Revealing to our
budding enthusiasts their heritage in
Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman is a
delight we fading zealots should not
deny ourselves.

For the Defense

Mr. Ciardi:Sonnet cannot speak

a thing in modern English.Truly a
poetical pronouncementany day.
Perhapshe overlooksthe formless,meek
trimly unpoetic truth of bleak
Things as what a poet only may
see aroundand pastin roundelay,
quatrain,sonnet.Turn the other cheek.
The earthspinsoverfull of specialists
gone generalizersviewing nation, space,
peace and war, and clumps of humanrace
like rockhoundsblind for crystalsin their schists.
Sonnet burnsone magnifyingeye
arounda cooling sun or past a sigh.
Or one can try.

Annis Cox

Palo Alto, California