Black Devil and Gentle Cloud: Ruskin and Emerson at Odds

Abstract

John Ruskin and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the ‘representative men’ of the Victorian period and have by now assumed a place alongside the sort of Great Men whom they esteemed. Our current debates about education, nature, and labor echo with Ruskinian and Emersonian notions, from self-culture and self-reliance to mutuality and the value of work. We continue to face many of the problems with which they wrestled and to seek answers to the questions they asked. The two men had often admired one another’s work, but did not meet in person until 1873. While their meeting promised to be memorable, it ended in a disagreement provoked by personal and cultural differences that proved stronger than their affinities. This essay explores the ways in which Ruskin’s and Emerson’s vision of the world and of human nature, diverged, leaving each man convinced that the other’s understanding was misguided and incomplete.