...reinforce and expand my discussion of his reading of Webster's speech. Nature's fourth sentence — "The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we through their eyes" — alludes to I Corinthians 13: 9-13: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,...

...basic tenets. He said that earlier generations beheld "God and Nature face to face."29 He then asked "[w]hy should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" A closer relationship to nature, however, would have its benefits at various levels. In the final analysis...

...of his first book, he wrote: "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.... The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face...we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?" Nature, in Essays and...

...stresses Origen's role as a type of Logos. A pun on "Origen" arguably points to Emerson's famous query: "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" ( Works, 1:3). This suggestion may sound far-fetched, but Origen's actual failure to be an origin or...

...Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who visited Muir in his cabin, had written, 'The foregoing generanons beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?' (1835, in Finch and Elder, p.45.) Most nations, including those of Native Americans, have a bloody...

...has brought about a similar shake-up in many a reader as well. "Our age is retrospective," he begins. "It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism." Emerson clears the agenda with a dismissive sweep, pointing out that "the foregoing generations beheld...

...the sepulchers of the fathers" he asserts in the first lines of ЛД/ure. and famously goes on to ask "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (7). Emerson's scorn for retrospect and sepulchers sees in mourning's attachment to the past, its effort...

..."Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," restages the classic American drama of the return to origins (CP 382). "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe," Emerson asked in the introduction to his 1836 essay Nature (EL 7). Stevens's Emersonian dream of a...

...problem was partly, in today's jargon, a generation gap. Nature begins with the well-known complaint that "[o]ur age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (CW, 1:7). Emerson frequently gives voice to his generation's desire to make its own mark. Nature's...

...that language, in mediating our perceptions, actually comes between us and our experiences. He writes: "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (1). We have moved away from having experiences, to reading about others' experiences. We prefer the...