My favorite 19th Century author said:
"Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today."
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."
"Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints."
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done all you could."
"Give all to love; obey thy heart."
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
"Insist on yourself. Every great man is unique."
"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new."
. . . and, best of all. . .
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
The interviewer who asked me who my favorite 19th Century author is explained that his favorites are Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, and (Samuel Clemens) Mark Twain. These three together, according to the interviewer, define what it means to be American - the notion of American-ness, as it were. He makes a valid point. Certainly, Moby Dick says a lot about American Quixoticism. Tom Sawyer conveys something about egalitarianism and fantasy in the American mindset. Poe's verse and short stories define our pessimism, self-hatred, fascination with the darkness, and more. The interviewer had put a great deal of thought in to how these authors' works define the American literary identity and if you talk with him, I'm sure you can get a more complete and cogent explanation. Many critics and scholars of American Literature spend a lot of time examining the American identity.
I'm more interested in the transcendence of Americanism - even the transcendence of human norms.
I think that Emerson is on the right track like few others ever have been, and that's more important to me than what is or isn't "American."
