Thursday, April 14, 2005

cheers to the transcendentalists

Which writer has most influenced my own writing? It doesn't take long to decide on Thoreau in the lead, followed by a cast of fellow transcendentalists and preceding romantics from the nineteenth century back to the 1700s. But it is definitely a lot of transcendentalism. It's odd how I end up incorporating transcendentalism into - everything. Evidence: my research paper (theme: return to nature) and a paper on a poem by a British writer that is due tomorrow. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is one of my favorite poems by itself, but it just so happens that Yeats, in writing it, was influenced by Walden.

Yes, so, I love the transcendentalists. They are my favorite. They seem like one of the most joy-loving of the literary movements. (Thoreau - my favorite of 'em! - said, "Surely joy is the condition of life.") And so they have really influenced my writing quite a bit. As surely as one can look at a roaring drunk and say, "He's been at the wine cabinet again," one can look at me when I get especially lofty and say, "Oh, she's been at the transcendentalists again."

It is due to them that I came to make use of "Would that we..." and "Not to be [this], but instead to [insert lofty ideal here] - to be [adjectives like free, wondering, etc. etc.]." I've even slipped in a "would fain" every so often. And while it is Tolkien who was first responsible for my putting dashes between the parts of compound words (rose-bush... fence-post... counting-house, etc.), it is the transcendentalists who were mostly responsible for my trips of imitative lofty speech that come in quite a bit, in addition to my obsession with past groups of writers that started with the gravity of the transcendentalist "circle" in Concord. I owe a lot to them, really.

1 Comments:

Blogger Laura said...

aw, heheh. Why thank you. The fight was a bit much, ah well, but I kinda was freaked about someone else [reasonably] not reading the things like "st o - p
...s" right. :P I mean, I can't even read it right. *sigh* I guess I'm glad it got read though because I like that one. ^^;

7:40 PM  

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