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Jones Very, The Transcendentalists, and the Unitarian Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David Robinson
David Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
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Extract

Although he considered himself set apart from the world, a man through whom the Spirit revealed a higher truth, Jones Very has consistently provided his critics with an irresistible challenge to classify him historically in a tradition that would explain his unique poetry and personality. Histories and descriptions of American Transcendentalism usually list him hesitatingly as a peripheral member of the movement, but Very seems to worry recent historians in much the same way he worried Emerson and the other members of “Hedge's Club,” who were both attracted and repelled by his spiritual intensity. His association with Emerson was undoubtedly a fortunate historical accident for him—Emerson both encouraged him in his poetry, valiantly tried to give him editorial assistance, and used his influence to find a publisher for the only collection of poems Very was to publish in his lifetime. Yet this close personal association has helped to perpetuate the historical assumption of Very's ties with Transcendentalism. This assumption, both when it has been affirmed or vigorously rejected, has obscured the kind of objective reading that is necessary to our understanding of Very's poetry and his place in American letters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 103 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1975

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References

1 Goddard, Harold C. (Studies in New England Transcendentalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1908, rpt. Hillary House, 1960] 35–36Google Scholar) lists Very as among those who “joined the group at later meetings.” Miller, Perry (The Transcendentalists: An Anthology [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950] 341Google Scholar) calls Very “a welcome and a trying recruit to Transcendentalism.” Of the thirty meetings of the Transcendental Club which Joel Myerson catalogues, Very attended only four: on May 20, 1838; June 1838; December 5, 1838; and May 13, 1840. Myerson, Joel, “A Calendar of Transcendental Club Meetings,” American Literature 44 (1972) 197–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For the best description of Very's introduction to the Transcendentalists, see Gittleman, Edwin, Jones Very: The Effective Years, 1833–40 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967) 156–80.Google Scholar

3 Essays and Poems by Jones Very (Boston: Little and Brown, 1839).Google Scholar See Gittleman, Jones Very, 331–52, fora description of Emerson's role in the book's publication.

4 Hutchison, William, The Transcendentalist Ministers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959) 22–28.Google Scholar

5 Miller, The Transcendentalists, 8.

6 See Wright, Conrad, “The Rediscovery of Channing,” The Liberal Christians: Essays on American Unitarian History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970) 22–40Google Scholar, esp. 38–40; and Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970) 20–23Google Scholar, and passim.

7 Howe, 151–73.

8 Reeves, Paschal, “Jones Very as Preacher: The Extant Sermons,” ESQ 57 (1969) 17.Google Scholar

9 Very was licensed to preach by the Cambridge Association in 1843. For an account of his preaching see Bartlett, William I., Jones Very: Emerson's Brave Saint (Durham: Duke University Press, 1942) 114–19Google Scholar; and Reeves, Paschal, “The Making of a Mystic: A Reconsideration of the Life of Jones Very,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 103 (1967) 24–27.Google Scholar The content of his sermons is also discussed by Reeves in “Jones Very as Preacher,” 16–22.

10 Very's senior essay on “Epic Poetry” won the Bowdoin Prize at Harvard (he had, most remarkably, won it the year before as well), and was later revised and published in The Christian Examiner. This essay, along with “Shakespeare” and “Hamlet,” was published by Emerson in Essays and Poems, and then in Clark, 3–66.

11 For a detailed discussion of this phase of Very's life, see Gittleman, Jones Very, 82–84. For Very's own discussion of his conversion, see his letter to Bellows, H. W., reprinted by Jones, Harry L., “The Very Madness: A New Manuscript,” CLA Journal 10 (1967) 196–200.Google Scholar

12 Poems and Essays by Jones Very (ed. Clarke, James Freeman; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1886) 73.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as “C” after quotations. Clarke's edition of Very's poetry is the most complete, but there is as yet no complete and reliable edition. For a brief discussion of the difficulties the student of Very faces in finding an accurate text see Fone, Byrne R. S., “A Note on the Very Editions,” American Notes and Queries 6 (1968) 67–69.Google Scholar

13 In his discussion of Very's moral use of nature in his poetry, Carl Dennis finds that nature's chief example to man is that of submission. Dennis, Carl, “Correspondence in Very's Nature Poetry,” New England Quarterly 43 (1970) 258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Very was most trying to Emerson in his constant attempts to convert him to his religious views on will-less existence. See Gittleman, Jones Very, 260–65.

15 Winters, Yvor, Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism (Norfolk: New Directions, 1938) 126.Google Scholar

16 Carl Dennis (“Correspondence,” 250–51) responds briefly to Winters's attack on Emerson.

17 Winters, Maule's Curse, 128.

18 As William Hutchison has pointed out, the “practical” cause of the Unitarian split with Calvinism was disagreement “over the nature of man and his ability to contribute to his own salvation.” Hutchison, Transcendentalist Ministers, 4.

19 Buell, Lawrence (Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973] 312–30Google Scholar) argues that Very's technique of assuming different voices in his poetry, especially divine voices, is part of the Transcendental notion that the individual self can become unified with the Universal Self, or God.

20 Howe (Unitarian Conscience, 60) has called the desire for “harmony” between reason and emotion, or “the impulses,” a “conception that dominated Harvard Unitarian thought.”

21 Bartlett, Jones Very, 50–52.

22 MS Sermon No. 24, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 134 of Very's sermons are still available in manuscript: 105 are in one bound volume, originally presented to the Andover-Harvard Theological Library of the Harvard Divinity School by the poet's sisters. This volume is now in the Houghton Library. Twenty-eight of Very's sermons are in the Harris Collection at Brown University, and one is owned by the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.

23 Buell, Lawrence (“The Unitarian Movement and the Art of Preaching in 19th Century America,” American Quarterly 24 [1972] 177–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar) has commented on the dilemma that left Unitarians straining for the emotion that would make religion appealing, but wary of an excess of emotion that hinted of evangelistic revivalism. Much of Very's preaching suggests this struggle to balance fervor with propriety.

24 Howe, Unitarian Conscience, 158.

25 See, for example, “The Son” (C, 74), “The Spirit” (C, 82), “The Will” (C, 104), “Forgiveness” (C, 105), “The Father” (C, 113), “Help” (C, 116), and “The Rock” (C, 117).

26 Winters, Maule's Curse, 126.

27 For a discussion of the Unitarian doctrine of the moral regulation of impulses, see Howe, Unitarian Conscience, 56–64.

28 The discipline of the flesh by the Spirit was part of Very's doctrine of sacrifice, which called for the regenerated man to give up an important part of his worldly existence in obedience to the Spirit. For a detailed discussion, see Gittleman, Jones Very, 273–80.

29 Printed in Lyons, Nathan (ed.), Jones Very: Selected Poems (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966) 76.Google Scholar Lyons restores the proper reading of the final couplet, which Clarke obscures in his edition.

30 Clarke prints this sonnet twice, with minor variants, in his edition, once as “Thy Better Self” (254). See Buell's (Literary Transcendentalism, 321–23) discussion of this poem. In several other poems, Very assumes a similar voice. See “The Corner-Stone” (C, 115), “Yourself’ (C, 116), ‘The Cup” (C, 122), “Thy Name” (C, 137), and “The Guest” (C, 146).

31 Gittleman, Jones Very, 273–87, and passim.

32 Herbold, Anthony, “Nature as Concept and Technique in the Poetry of Jones Very,” New England Quarterly 40 (1967) 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Herbold, “Nature as Concept,” 240.

34 Herbold, “Nature as Concept,” 259.

35 Dennis, “Correspondence,” 259.

36 Ibidem.

37 Dennis, “Correspondence,” 251.

38 Ibidem.

39 Berthoff, Warner (“Jones Very: New England Mystic,” Boston Public Library Quarterly 2 [1950] 63–76Google Scholar) argues that Very's reliance on conversion as a means of reconciling his dualism was “his chief difference from the Transcendentalists,” and stresses the conflicts this view causes with Emerson.

40 As Lawrence Buell (Literary Transcendentalism, 150–51) has noted the doctrine of correspondence was more widely assented to by the Transcendentalists than it was practiced. It is better to regard it as “connoting a general preoccupation with spiritual analogies between nature and man” than as an iron-clad rule of aesthetics or life. Very, however, like Emerson and Thoreau, was known for his love of nature walks, and as Dennis has shown, often uses natural facts as poetic illustrations of spiritual facts.

41 The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Spiller, Robert E. and Ferguson, Alfred R.; Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971) 1.Google Scholar 7.

42 Wright, “Rediscovery of Channing,” 35–36.

43 Wright, “Rediscovery of Channing,” 37.

44 Wright (“Rediscovery of Channing,” 5–6) discusses this term and the movement it denotes.

45 In the only other assessment of Very's position on the authority of the Scriptures, Paschal Reeves (“Jones Very as Preacher,” 19) labels him a “conservative” on the miracles question. While Reeves is certainly right in insisting that Very believed firmly in the truth of the miracles, the more important issue is the epistemological basis for belief in the miracles. On this point, it seems clear that Very was an “intuitionist,” like most of the Transcendentalists, rather than a “sensationalist.”

46 Gittleman, Jones Very, 119–21.

47 For a discussion of Very's later years, see Bartlett, Jones Very, 108–29, and Reeves, “The Making of a Mystic,” 27–30.