Words Are Finite Organs of the Infinite Mind’: Emerson’s Paradoxical View of Language

Abstract

Emerson’s writing is not only about content but also about language. In this essay, I examine Emerson’s paradoxical ideas about language in relation to how he writes. According to Emerson, language is a symbolic system that aims to achieve an ideal unity between nature and thought, which in turn leads to his claims about the limits of language. Nonetheless, his claim of the limitations of language is contradicted by what he performs with words in a text, as he allows contradictions and redefinitions to be created in varying contexts. Emerson’s essayist is free to search and is not bound by the absolute, so that the more essayists search, the more they violate and betray what motivates and justifies the search—i.e., the functioning of language as a symbolic system that should aim for the union between nature and the mind. Emerson allows a thought to be revised, redefined, contradicted, or replaced in his essays, but his view of language suggests no such possibility. What he performs with words in essays thus goes against what he claims about words. This contradiction speaks to the very dilemma in which he situates himself and thus indirectly explains his writing style—a style that goes against what he himself sets forth, a style that allows a text to shift, to question definitions and concepts, to challenge systems of thought, and even to go against itself.