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Reviewed by:
  • Emerson & Thoreau: Figures of Friendship
  • Michael Brodrick
Emerson & Thoreau: Figures of Friendship. John T. Lysaker and William Rossi, eds. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010.

Of the great American intellectuals, few are as intriguing as Emerson and Thoreau. They share a keen eye for beauty, a profound sense of the preciousness of life, and a passionate love of the perfect. Add to this the almost childlike honesty with which they disclose their deepest feelings and convictions, and it is easy to see why so many of us are fascinated by their writings.

Emerson & Thoreau: Figures of Friendship, edited by John T. Lysaker and William Rossi, provides plenty of fuel for our fascination with the ideas and the lives of these remarkable thinkers. The volume consists of contributions from nine prominent scholars—Lawrence Buell, Barbara Packer, David M. Robinson, Russell B. Goodman, John T. Lysaker, William Rossi, Alan D. Hodder, James Crosswhite, and Naoko Saito—each of whom offers a novel perspective on the way in which one or both transcendentalists conceived of friendship and related to friends.

One interesting feature of Emerson & Thoreau is that it reveals the odd trajectory of friendships that are mediated by a lofty ideal of what a friend ought to be. Delight in the other climbs to astronomical heights as the points of contact between the real person and the ideal friend are noticed, then crashes as the light dawns that no human being of flesh and blood is a complete actualization of the ideal. In their sincere and beautiful articulations of perfect friendship, Emerson and Thoreau rivaled Keats and Word-sworth; but in believing or half believing that what they dreamed of would come true, they were like lovesick adolescents mistaking guys with bulging [End Page 91] muscles for white knights or cheerleaders for fair maidens. Fortunately, the introduction to Emerson & Thoreau sets us up to learn from their mistakes by considering how we might “fare better” in our friendships. A touch of idealism lights up our lives, revealing the beautiful and the good in those around us; too much leaves us open to bitter disappointment when life comes up short of our dreams.

In Chapter 1 of Emerson & Thoreau, Lawrence Buell wonders how the two transcendentalists could have been friends in the first place, in view of the asymmetry of their relationship—Thoreau was fourteen years younger, and Emerson was his mentor—and in light of their steadfast commitment to the ideal of perfect friendship. They had to reach a compromise between the ideal and the actual, but since both men tended to be uncompromising in their idealism, they could not officially acknowledge this approach. The result, according to Buell, was a series of lived contradictions. In their essays, they extolled the idea of the friend while lamenting the sad fact that life offers us but shabby substitutes for this ideal companion. Yet in practice, the two philosophers developed genuine affection for each other, attempted to benefit one another, and managed to overlook many of their differences. The theorists whose theories seemed to render friendship impossible were friends.

Buell drives this point home in an innovative way, drawing support from Nietzsche’s insight that all friendships are built on compromises. Yet the chapter leaves the reader wanting to know more. If Emerson and Thoreau were friends, why did they describe friendship as an unattainable ideal? They might have lived by their high-minded theories of friendship or revised them to make them comport with their actions. The first course was probably not open to them, as most people would find life without companionship empty of happiness. Emerson, in particular, was not cut out for the life of a recluse. He formed loving bonds with his Aunt Mary, his first wife Ellen, and his children, and these relationships often filled him with inspiration and delight. But if the first course was not one they could take, what prevented Emerson and Thoreau from revising their theories of friendship to bring them in line with the realities of their personal lives?

Sometimes those who love ideas cannot help thinking of them as the very powers that govern the world. Emerson and Thoreau might have created a...

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