Fragmentary Thoughts From Margaret Fuller’s Journal
I gave the world the fruit of earlier hours:
O Solitude! reward me with some flowers;
Or if their odorous bloom thou dost deny,
Rain down some meteors from the winter sky!
Poesy.—The expression of the sublime and beautiful, whether in measured words or in the fine arts. The human mind, apprehending the harmony of the universe, and making new combinations by its laws.
Poetry.—The sublime and beautiful expressed in measured language. It is closely allied with the fine arts. It should sing to the ear, paint to the eye, and exhibit the symmetry of architecture. If perfect, it will satisfy the intellectual and moral faculties no less than the heart and the senses. It works chiefly by simile and melody. It is to prose as the garden to the house. Pleasure is the object of the one, convenience of the other. The flowers and fruits may be copied on the furniture of the house, but if their beauty be not subordinated to utility, they lose the charm of beauty, and degenerate into finery. The reverse is the case in the garden.
Nature.—I would praise alike the soft gray and brown which soothed my eye erewhile, and the snowy fretwork which now decks the forest aisles. Every ripple in the snowy fields, every grass and fern which raises its petrified delicacy above them, seems to me to claim a voice. A voice! Canst thou not silently adore, but must needs be doing? Art thou too good to wait as a beggar at the door of the great temple?
Woman—Man.—Woman is the flower, man the bee. She sighs out melodious fragrance, and invites the winged laborer. He drains her cup, and carries off the honey. She dies on the stalk; he returns to the hive, well fed, and praised as an active member of the community.
Action symbolical of what is within.—Gœthe says, “I have learned to consider all I do as symbolical,—so that it now matters little to me whether I make plates or dishes.” And further, he says, “All manly effort goes from within outwards.”
Opportunity fleeting.—I held in my hand the cup. It was full of hot liquid. The air was cold; I delayed to drink, and its vital heat, its soul, curled upwards in delicatest wreaths. I looked delighted on their beauty; but while I waited, the essence of the draught was wasted on the cold air: it would not wait for me; it longed too much to utter itself: and when my lip was ready, only a flat, worthless sediment remained of what had been.
Mingling of the heavenly with the earthly.—The son of the gods has sold his birthright. He has received in exchange one, not merely the fairest, but the sweetest and holiest of earth’s daughters. Yet is it not a fit exchange. His pinions droop powerless; he must no longer soar amid the golden stars. No matter, he thinks; “I will take her to some green and flowery isle; I will pay the penalty of Adam for the sake of the daughter of Eve; I will make the earth fruitful by the sweat of my brow. No longer my hands shall bear the coal to the lips of the inspired singer—no longer my voice modulate its tones to the accompaniment of spheral harmonies. My hands now lift the clod of the valley which dares cling to them with brotherly familiarity. And for my soiling, dreary task-work all the day, I receive—food.
“But the smile with which she receives me at set of sun, is it not worth all that sun has seen me endure? Can angelic delights surpass those which I possess, when, facing the shore with her, watched by the quiet moon, we listen to the tide of the world surging up impatiently against the Eden it cannot conquer? Truly the joys of heaven were gregarious and low in comparison. This, this alone, is exquisite, because exclusive and peculiar.”
Ah, seraph! but the winter’s frost must nip thy vine; a viper lurks beneath the flowers to sting the foot of thy child, and pale decay must steal over the cheek thou dost adore. In the realm of ideas all was imperishable. Be blest while thou canst. I love thee, fallen seraph, but thou shouldst not have sold thy birthright.
“All for love and the world well lost.” That sounds so true! But genius, when it sells itself, gives up, not only the world, but the universe.
Yet does not love comprehend the universe? The universe is love. Why should I weary my eye with scanning the parts, when I can clasp the whole this moment to my beating heart?
But if the intellect be repressed, the idea will never be brought out from the feeling. The amaranth wreath will in thy grasp be changed to one of roses, more fragrant indeed, but withering with a single sun!
The Crisis with Gœthe.—I have thought much whether Gœthe did well in giving up Lili. That was the crisis in his existence. From that era dates his being as a “Weltweise;” the heroic element vanished irrecoverably from his character; he became an Epicurean and a Realist; plucking flowers and hammering stones instead of looking at the stars. How could he look through the blinds, and see her sitting alone in her beauty, yet give her up for so slight reasons? He was right as a genius, but wrong as a character.
The Flower and the Pearl.—— has written wonders about the mystery of personality. Why do we love it? In the first place, each wishes to embrace a whole, and this seems the readiest way. The intellect soars, the heart clasps; from putting “a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes,” thou wouldst return to thy own little green isle of emotion, and be the loving and playful fay, rather than the delicate Ariel.
Then most persons are plants, organic. We can predict their growth according to their own law. From the young girl we can predict the lustre, the fragrance of the future flower. It waves gracefully to the breeze, the dew rests upon its petals, the bee busies himself in them, and flies away after a brief rapture, richly laden.
When it fades, its leaves fall softly on the bosom of Mother Earth, to all whose feelings it has so closely conformed. It has lived as a part of nature; its life was music, and we open our hearts to the melody.
But characters like thine and mine are mineral. We are the bone and sinew, these the smiles and glances, of earth. We lie nearer the mighty heart, and boast an existence more enduring than they. The sod lies heavy on us, or, if we show ourselves, the melancholy moss clings to us. If we are to be made into palaces and temples, we must be hewn and chiselled by instruments of unsparing sharpness. The process is mechanical and unpleasing; the noises which accompany it, discordant and obtrusive; the artist is surrounded with rubbish. Yet we may be polished to marble smoothness. In our veins may lie the diamond, the ruby, perhaps the emblematic carbuncle.
The flower is pressed to the bosom with intense emotion, but in the home of love it withers and is cast away.
The gem is worn with less love, but with more pride; if we enjoy its sparkle, the joy is partly from calculation of its value; but if it be lost, we regret it long.
For myself, my name is Pearl.42 That lies at the beginning, amid slime and foul prodigies from which only its unsightly shell protects. It is cradled and brought to its noblest state amid disease and decay. Only the experienced diver could have known that it was there, and brought it to the strand, where it is valued as pure, round, and, if less brilliant than the diamond, yet an ornament for a kingly head. Were it again immersed in the element where first it dwelt, now that it is stripped of the protecting shell, soon would it blacken into deformity. So what is noblest in my soul has sprung from disease, present defeat, disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.
For you, I presume, from your want of steady light and brilliancy of sparks which are occasionally struck from you, that you are either a flint or a rough diamond. If the former, I hope you will find a home in some friendly tinder-box, instead of lying in the highway to answer the hasty hoof of the trampling steed. If a diamond, I hope to meet you in some imperishable crown, where we may long remain together; you lighting up my pallid orb, I tempering your blaze.
Dried Ferns about my Lamp-shade.—“What pleasure do you, who have exiled those paper tissue covers, take in that bouquet of dried ferns? Their colors are less bright, and their shapes less graceful, than those of your shades.”
I answer, “They grew beneath the solemn pines. They opened their hearts to the smile of summer, and answered to the sigh of autumn. They remind me of the wealth of nature; the tissues, of the poverty of man. They were gathered by a cherished friend who worships in the woods, and behind them lurks a deep, enthusiastic eye. So my pleasure in seeing them is ‘denkende’ and ‘menschliche.’”
“They are of no use.”
“Good! I like useless things: they are to me the vouchers of a different state of existence.”
Light.—My lamp says to me, “Why do you disdain me, and use that candle, which you have the trouble of snuffing every five minutes, and which ever again grows dim, ungrateful for your care? I would burn steadily from sunset to midnight, and be your faithful, vigilant friend, yet never interrupt you an instant.”
I reply, “But your steady light is also dull,—while his, at its best, is both brilliant and mellow. Besides, I love him for the trouble he gives; he calls on my sympathy, and admonishes me constantly to use my life, which likewise flickers as if near the socket.”
Wit and Satire.—I cannot endure people who do not distinguish between wit and satire; who think you, of course, laugh at people when you laugh about them; and who have no perception of the peculiar pleasure derived from toying with lovely or tragic figures.