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epilogue in order to attract and relate to an audience, Emerson had to partially affirm his listeners’ worldviews. But despite Emerson’s working within an ideological framework, the listening experiences Emerson enabled his audiences to have are not reducible to this ideology. What I have described throughout the foregoing chapters as fractured idealism allowed him to imbue his lectures with a dramatic potential that could be translated into listening (and, once published, reading) experiences of inspirational excess. It is not that the requirements of the public lecture hall forced him to distort his philosophy. Rather, his professional engagement bolstered the eclectic character of his thinking, a characteristic that can be traced back to his days as a student. As I have argued, Emerson’s thought is marked by a tension between aiming for limitlessness and questioning the feasibility of this aim in the face of limitation, whether he considers language and representation, friendship and identity, or the nation and empire. Thus, his idealist nationalism lets him promote the embodiment of what he calls, following Cousin and others, a “national Idea.” Yet when he comes across a putative achievement of embodiment, he turns into a skeptic, raising doubt not only about whether the individual in question really embodies the idea but also about whether such embodiment is possible at all. Similarly, when Emerson ruminates on the conditions and potential of friendship, he affirms the generative and enriching effect of meeting friends. In conversing with friends, the individual receives a kind of spiritual enlargement that allows both friends to achieve their higher selves. Yet the beneficent effects of friendship quickly wear off and tend to leave the individual isolated and spiritually depleted. It is not enough to say that true friendship now appears as an ideal moment only to be experienced on rare occasions. The possibility of such an elevating friendship is called into question altogether (though it is not denied). Instead, Emerson tries to formulate alternative modes of interpersonal contact in which sustainability replaces rapid growth. Epilogue 245 Finally, language promises the Emersonian figure of the Poet a means of giving expression to the highest truth, which will allow all others to witness the Poet’s experience. Yet language, in Emerson’s writings, turns out to be insufficient for representing or expressing an experience of insight, because this insight consists of that which eludes language. In fact, because the insight cannot be represented, neither can it be remembered. Between reception and expression there emerges a fissure that is ultimately unbridgeable, and what remains of reception is decidedly less than an idea: it is the faintest idea. But if Emerson’s idealism is marked by fractures and fissures, his philosophical thinking does not therefore indulge in failure. On the contrary, whether concerned with representation, identity, or the nation, Emerson imagines moments of failure to generate a dynamic of excessive overcoming. Representation is the best example of this dynamic. For Emerson, the shortcomings of expression lay the groundwork for signifying acts that, because they can never capture what was obtained in reception, must engage in an ever-shifting semiosis. The best language use is creative precisely because of its failure to grasp what was received in a moment of spiritual abandonment. Furthermore, by transforming failure into creativity , expression itself enables new moments of receptive abandonment. Key to this argument is the idea that expression and reception constitute types of signification that are incommensurable but that are nevertheless capable of energizing each other. The dynamic of aiming for limitlessness and encountering limitation is thus productive of an excess that incessantly refuels this very dynamic. In order to turn Emerson’s gyratory performances of fractured idealism into an experience of inspiration, his listeners had to contribute their share. When Emerson motivated them to move from the world of the Understanding to that of Reason, and when he juxtaposed particulars with generalizations , they had to provide the mental connections called for by these juxtapositions . They were, in fact, morally compelled to do so. It was not that the mental work of the audience was able to make Emerson’s sentences add up to coherent and rational insights. Nor was it supposed to. Rather, Emerson ’s juxtapositions were designed to stimulate his listener’s minds, allowing them to perceive his vague promises of deep meaning as a web of unlimited connections. Entering this imaginary sphere in which everything seemed connected could lead to an imaginary experience of pure potentiality. Emerson switched back and forth from scolding to...

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