...sky," Emerson became "a transparent eye -ball," ecstatic revelation ensuing:"I see all. The currents of Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." It was Romanticism in American form, the imagination lifted above reason as a gift from the gods. Kerouac...

...nearly two hundred years after Religio Medici—but also some one-hundred forty after the Opticks—that "I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me" (CollW, 1:10), one must surely be speaking in anything but literal terms, right? In each age, one finds...

...nature. In "Nature," originally titled "Pan," Emerson famously wrote of being "bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space — all mean...become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing; I see all."28 Even more than in The Blithedale Romance — a novel that derides this "blithe air" of transcendentalism—...

...130). Lee's transcendentalism bears a strong resemblance to Emerson's, whose famous declaration goes, "[A]ll mean egotism vanishes, I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all" (Ziff 39). Lee's "360-degree seeing" and Emerson's "transparent eyeball" offer a political liberal...