Analysis - "Emerson and the Work of Melancholia"

In his criticism, Edmundson brings up the reason of why Ralph Waldo Emerson began to write Romanticism literature. Emerson refused to mourn the dead. Even when his wife died in 1831, Emerson refused to mourn because it was almost like showing weakness and conformity, which he was very against. Edmundson says that Emerson lost his best friend and brother, Charles. Then he talks about how James Cox told Emerson it was okay to be sad in his The Circles of the Eye. "Getting over the deaths of loved ones is no tired or traditional 'spiritual' vision for Emerson precisely because it is a literal breathing in, or inspiration, of the death in life" ("Emerson and the Work of Melancholia."). I think that after reading this, Emerson became aware of everything that he was holding in. He finally let it out by mourning two of the people closest to him. I think that because of that new feeling of mourning, Emerson channeled a lot of his new emotions into his literature. This helped them to express even more Romanticism because of all of the emotion that Emerson put into his writing. Later in the Edmundson's criticism, he discusses an excerpt that can be found in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Compensation, "Every soul is by … intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant…. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day…. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks" ("Emerson and the Work of Melancholia."). This quote is about how Emerson handled all of the recent deaths he suffered through. He tells of how he continued to ignore it until he got used to almost having a "shell" on his back. By not facing this problem, it continued to grow.

I think that Emerson rejected Romanticism later in his life because he finally accepted the deaths of his loved ones. He began writing in the Romanticism style because he had a lot of bottled up emotion from not originally mourning the deaths of his loved ones. All of those new emotions he was feeling were then channeled into his writing, thus giving it a Romanticism feel. Once he accepted those deaths, I think he experienced a sense of calm that put him at peace with the deaths. His motivation for writing Romanticism literature was gone. I think he reflected back on his old works of Romanticism literature and saw that he was no longer as compassionate as he used to be. His over abundance of emotions had finally been quelled, and in it's wake it left Emerson without the will to write Romanticism literature any longer.

"Emerson and the Work of Melancholia." Raritan (Spring 1987). Quoted as "Emerson and the Work of Melancholia" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Updated Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. (accessed November 7, 2010).