Cross-Cultural Affinities

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Introduction

Most critics have traced back the origins of American Transcendentalism to German Idealism, British Romanticism and Asian religions and have completely eclipsed its connection to Africa. The aim of this book is therefore twofold: first to bring out the resemblances between the sources of Transcendentalism and those of Negritude in a bid to prove that African religions and philosophy have impacted on American Transcendentalism. Secondly, to show the influence of this American literary movement on Senghorian Negritude and the connection of both trends to modernist fiction. By examining their epistemological, ontological, and literary dimensions, this work demonstrates that American Transcendentalism and Negritude have a lot in common. It thus centers on cross-cultural affinities. Cross-cultural means pertaining to, or involving different cultures or comparison between them (OED). Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917), the British anthropologist defines culture thus: “Culture or civilization taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”¹ As for affinities, the term is defined, in the context of this study, as similarities or resemblances (OED). This book compares Emersonian Transcendentalism and Senghorian Negritude as cultural and literary movements that address, in analogous ways, some aspects of American and African cultures such as knowledge, beliefs, art, morals and customs.

Transcendentalism, a movement that flourished in Concord and Boston in the 1830s, had a far reaching effect on the American literary thought. In “The Transcendentalist” (1841), Ralph Waldo Emerson associates the origin of the term “transcendentalism” with Immanuel Kant’s use of the word “transcendental” that relates to Kantian transcendental idealism. This theory acted as a bridge between seventeenth-century rationalism and eighteenth-century empiricism, two schools of thought that were diametrically opposed at the time Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.

In the United States of America (US), the seventeenth century was dominated by Puritanism which preceded eighteenth-century rationalism that profoundly marked the country’s philosophical and literary trends. By the time Emerson ← 13 | 14 → launched Transcendentalism, he had read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and other writings of the members of the movement known as German Idealism. Deriving from German Idealism, Puritanism, Romanticism, American Unitarianism, Asian mysticism and other world religions, Transcendentalism stresses the ability of the human mind to apprehend human truths transcending the senses. In literature, Transcendentalism is associated with Romanticism. Emerson’s Nature (1836) and his essays highlight the main tenets of this movement: self-reliance that implies that man must trust himself and rely on his own aptitude to know truth, the belief in goodness in man, an idea that undercuts the Calvinistic and Puritan assertion of man’s innate depravity.

To the Transcendentalists, nature is a source of beauty and inspiration for the poet; it fosters both individualism and brotherhood of community. It also enables man to convey his thoughts, as Emerson posits that “Language is the third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and threefold degree. 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.”2

This statement highlights the intricate link between language, nature and spiritual truth. Quoting Emerson in “An Overview of American Transcendentalism,” Martin Bickman replicates the same view: “The truly creative writer is one who can pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things.”³ Fastening “words again to visible things” means relating language to nature, society and the spirit or mind.

Besides Emerson, other prominent Transcendentalists⁴ examine various aspects of the movement. In Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau probes into the ← 14 | 15 → simplicity of pastoral life, individual development and man’s communion with nature. He also campaigns for non-conformism in “Civil Disobedience” (1849). Margaret Fuller, the feminist critic, tackles the issue of gender equality in Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), first published in July 1843 in the Dial Magazine as “The Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women.” In 1841, George Ripley monitored Brook Farm whose ethics promotes brotherhood of community by combating discrimination generated by social stratification. His brotherhood of community paved the way for Theodore Parker’s social engagement translated into action in his support for the abolition of slavery. Transcendentalism thus has an undeniable influence on American literature. This influence is perceptible in the works of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, as well as in the writings of modern and postmodern American writers.

Many studies have investigated the relation that exists between Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism. In his poem “A Pact,” Ezra Pound, one of the founding fathers of Modernism, acknowledges Walt Whitman’s contribution to modern poetry: