Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:19:00.742Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reading Resistances in Ralph Waldo Emerson and José Martí

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2020

ANDREW TAYLOR Open the ORCID record for ANDREW TAYLOR [Opens in a new window]
ANDREW TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
Department of English Literature, University of Edinburgh. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point a consideration of the ways in which the ideological methodology of “New Americanist” criticism has closed off possibilities of reading that might choose to value ambiguity, contradiction, and excess – elements which militate against the discursive neatness of critique. In readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and José Martí, I argue that resolutely politicized interpretations of Emerson fail to do justice to the unstable texture of his prose. In turn, Martí's writing about the United States is more uneven, surreal and excessive than a straightforward account of postcolonial resistance allows. Both Emerson and Martí exhibit a discursive flexibility that puts pressure on readings driven by inflexible ideological parameters seeking to position both men within frameworks of political quietism and postcolonial revolution respectively. I explore how the idea of revolution is imagined by Emerson in ways that run counter to our more conventional understanding of political transformation. To be sure, Martí's revolutionary actions in the cause of Cuban independence were tangible in ways that Emerson could never have countenanced for himself; nevertheless Emerson's understanding of resistance as differently located and performed provoked in Martí a high, and consistent, degree of sympathy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 841 - 862
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 James, Henry, The American Scene (New York: Penguin Books, 1994; first published 1907)Google Scholar. Page references are given parenthetically in the text.

2 Giles, Paul, The Global Remapping of American Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Henry James to H. G. Wells, 8 Nov. 1906, in Horne, Philip, ed., Henry James: A Life in Letters (London: Allen Lane, 1999), 442Google Scholar.

4 Gregory Helmick has noted that Florida can usefully be configured as “a poetic terrain and amphibious space, where the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Gulf constitute fluid zones of contact.” Helmick, Gregory, “North Florida in the Cuban Literary Canon: Contact Zone, Chronotype and Liminal Space,” Southern Literary Journal, 46, 2 (2014), 45–66, 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Posnock, Ross, The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James, and the Challenge of Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 74Google Scholar.

6 Blanco, Maria del Pilar, Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Martí, José, “Our America” (1891), in Foner, Philip S., ed., Our America: Writings on Latin America and the Struggle for Cuban Independence (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 84–94, 91Google Scholar. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text. “Eramos una vision, con el pecho de atleta, las manos de petimetre y la frente de niño. Eramos una máscara, con los calzones de Inglaterra, el chaleco parisiense, el chaquetón de Norteamérica y la montera de España.” José Martí, Obras Completas (hereafter OC), 27 vols. (Havana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963–73), Volume VI, 15–23, 20.

8 Ramos, Julo, Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Del Pilar Blanco, 17.

10 Lomas, Laura, Translating Empire: José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects, and American Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Page references are given parenthetically in the text.

11 For a critique of Lomas's reading, see López, Alfred J., “Translating Interdisciplinarity: Reading Martí Reading Whitman,” The Comparatist, 35 (2011), 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Pease, Donald, “New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon,” boundary 2, 33, 3 (1990), 1–37, 11–12Google Scholar.

13 Voelz, Johannes, Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists & Emerson's Challenge (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2010), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Rowe, John Carlos, At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 22–23Google Scholar.

15 Voelz, 50.

16 Ibid., 51.

17 Felski, Rita, The Limits of Critique (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 9, 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Castiglia, Christopher, “Twists and Turns,” in Blum, Hester, ed., Turns of Event: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies in Motion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 61–78Google Scholar. Castiglia argues that a hermeneutics of critique needs to be accompanied by one of hope: “Shaken loose from the stranglehold of precedent and convention, an unanticipated moment can rearrange the social landscape, generating possibilities that seem impossible under the regime of fact, nature, or truth.” Ibid., 69.

18 Felski, 9.

19 Cameron, Sharon, Thinking in Henry James (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 5Google Scholar.

20 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Emerson, Edward Waldo, 12 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903), Volume I, 199Google Scholar. Hereafter CWE, cited parenthetically in the text.

21 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, ed. Gilman, William H. et al. , 16 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960–82), Volume IV, 27Google Scholar. Hereafter JMN, cited parenthetically in the text.

22 Posnock, Ross, Renunciation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Robinson, David M., Emerson and the Conduct of Life: Pragmatism and Ethical Purpose in the Later Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Posnock, Renunciation, 296.

25 James, William, Writings 1902–1910 (New York: Library of America, 1987), 496Google Scholar.

26 Insko, Jeffrey, History, Abolition, and the Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Gradert, Kenyon, “Swept into Puritanism: Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and the Roots of Radicalism,” New England Quarterly, 90, 1 (March 2017), 103–29, 107, 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume I, 1833–1836, ed. Whicher, Stephen E. and Spiller, Robert E. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 127Google Scholar. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text.

29 Schoolman, Martha, Abolitionist Geographies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 North, Michael, Novelty: A History of the New (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 43, 44–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. North cites Stanley Cavell, an important interlocutor of Emerson, who argues that our usual “sense of revolution” suggests the idea “of the past escaped and our problems solved,” but in fact genuine revolution brings us back to “a world lost.” Ibid., 183. See Cavell, Stanley, Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), 73–96Google Scholar.

31 Levin, Jonathan, The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, and American Literary Modernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), xiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Button, Mark E., “Reading Emerson in Neoliberal Times: Contesting the Abandonment of Authority,” Political Theory, 43, 3 (2015), 312–33, 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For the history of the lecture's delivery see The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1843–1871, 2 vols., ed. Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), Volume II, 336–39. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text.

34 Mastroianni, Dominic, Politics and Skepticism in Antebellum American Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Bosco and Myerson in Emerson, Later Lectures, II, 354, 155.

36 Martí, José, Selected Writings, ed. and tr. Allen, Esther (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 44Google Scholar.; OC VII, 225: “Un inmenso hombre pálido, de rostro enjuto, ojos llorosos y boca seca, vestido de negro, anda con pasos graves, sin reposar ni dormer, por toda la tierra, - y se ha sentado en todos los hogares, y ha puesto su mano trémula en todas las cabeceras! Qué golpeo en el cerebro! qué susto en el pecho! qué demándar lo que no viene! qué no saber lo que se desea! qué sentir a la par deleite y náusea en el espíritu, náusea del día que muere, deleite del alba!”

37 OC VII, 227: “Todo es expansión, comunicacíon, florescencia, contagio, esparcimiento … Nacen a caballo, montadas en relámpago, con alas.”

38 Martí, Selected Writings, 46; OC VII, 227: “se deshacen en chispas encendidas; se desmigajan. De aquí pequeñas obras fúlgidas.”

39 González, Aníbal, A Companion to Spanish American Modernismo (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007), 74Google Scholar. See also Beckman, Ericka, “Man on the Market: José Martí and the Poetics of Commerce,” Revista Hispánica Moderna, 61, 1 (June 2008), 19–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Martí, Selected Writings, 49; OC VII, 230: “El primer trabajo del hombre es reconquistarse. Urge devolver los hombres a sí mismos … Toca a cada hombre reconstruir la vida: a poco que mire en sí, la reconstruye.”

41 Giles, Global Remapping, 195, 194, 196.

42 See Fountain, Anne, José Martí and U.S. Writers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003)Google Scholar.

43 Martí, Selected Writings, 121; OC XIII, 22: “Sus libros son sumas, no demostraciones.”

44 OC XIII, 20: “No obedeció a ningún sistema, lo que le parecía acto de ciego y de siervo; ni creó ninguno, lo que le parecía acto de mente flaca, baja y envidiosa.”

45 OC XIII, 22: “A veces, parece que salta de una cosa a otra, y no se halla a primera vista la relación entre dos ideas inmediatas.”

46 OC XIII, 20: “en permanente vuelo a lo alto.”

47 OC XIII, 21: “La lectura estimula, enciende, aviva, y es como soplo de aire fresco la hoguera resguardada, que se lleva las cenizas, y deja al aire el fuego.”

48 Martí, José, “Coney Island” (1881), in Foner, Philip S., ed., Inside the Monster: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 165–71, 165Google Scholar. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text. OC IX, 123–28, 123: “En los fastos humanos, nada iguala a la prosperidad maravillosa de los Estados Unidos del Norte.”

49 OC IX, 125: “lo que asombra allí es, el tamaño, la cantidad, el resultado súbito de la actividad humana, esa inmensa válvula de placer abierta a un pueblo inmenso, … esa movilidad, ese don de avance, ese acometimiento, ese cambio de forma … esa marea creciente, esa expasividad anonadora e incontrastable, firme y frenética, y esa naturalidad en lo maravilloso; eso es lo que asombra allí.”

50 OC IX, 125: “los rostros cadavéricos de las criaturitas.”

51 OC IX, 127: “un desventurado hombre de color que, a cambio de un jornal miserable, se está día y noche con la cabeza asomada por un agujero hecho en un lienzo esquivando con movimientos ridículos y extravagantes muecas los golpes de los tiradores.”

52 OC IX, 126: “Otros pueblos – y nostros entre ellos – vivimos devorados por un sublime demonio interior, que nos empuja a la persecución infatigable de un ideal de amor o gloria; y cuando asimos, con el placer con que se ase un águila, el grado del ideal que perseguíamos, nuevo afán nos inquieta, nueva ambición nos espolea, nueva aspiración nos lanza a nuevo vehemente anhelo, y sale del águila presa una rebelde mariposa libre, como desafiándonos a seguirla y encadenándonos a su revuelto vuelo.”

53 José Martí, “General Grant” (1885) in Foner, Inside the Monster, 71–122, 80; OC XIII, 83–115, 89: “los que arrancan de la Naturaleza, pujantes y genuinos, activos y solitarios.”

54 Lawrence, Jeffrey, Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 58Google Scholar.

55 Lipsitz, George, “Their America and Ours: Intercultural Communication in the Context of ‘Our America’,” in Belknap, Jeffery and Fernández, Raúl (eds.), José Martí's “Our America”: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 293–316, 294Google Scholar.

56 José Martí, “Carta a Bartolomé Mitre y Vedia,” my translation; OC IX, 17: De mí, no pongo más que mi amor a la expansión – y mi horror al encarcelamiento del espíritu humano.”

57 Giles, Global Remapping, 195, 197.

58 José Martí, “From Notebook 8,” in Selected Writings, 76; OC XXI, 242: “Hay algo de buque en toda casa en tierra extranjea. Dura aquella sensación de indefinible disgusto. Se siente oscilar la tierra, y vacilar sobre ella nuestros pies. A veces, se sujeta uno de las paredes, - y por donde otros van firmes, camina uno tambalcando. El espíritu está fuera de equilibrio.”