Essays Before a Sonata | Page 7

the degree of its failure or success? The composer,
the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One
hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't

fail what matters it?--the fear of failure need keep no one from the
attempt for if the composer is sensitive he need but launch forth a
countercharge of "being misunderstood" and hide behind it. A theme
that the composer sets up as "moral goodness" may sound like "high
vitality," to his friend and but like an outburst of "nervous weakness" or
only a "stagnant pool" to those not even his enemies. Expression to a
great extent is a matter of terms and terms are anyone's. The meaning
of "God" may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls
in the world.
There is a moral in the "Nominalist and Realist" that will prove all
sums. It runs something like this: No matter how sincere and
confidential men are in trying to know or assuming that they do know
each other's mood and habits of thought, the net result leaves a feeling
that all is left unsaid; for the reason of their incapacity to know each
other, though they use the same words. They go on from one
explanation to another but things seem to stand about as they did in the
beginning "because of that vicious assumption." But we would rather
believe that music is beyond any analogy to word language and that the
time is coming, but not in our lifetime, when it will develop
possibilities unconceivable now,--a language, so transcendent, that its
heights and depths will be common to all mankind.
II--Emerson
1
It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater--his identity more
complete perhaps--in the realms of revelation-- natural disclosure--than
in those of poetry, philosophy, or prophecy. Though a great poet and
prophet, he is greater, possibly, as an invader of the
unknown,--America's deepest explorer of the spiritual immensities,--a
seer painting his discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie
at hand-- cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder, freely
describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise-- perceiving from
this inward source alone, that every "ultimate fact is only the first of a
new series"; a discoverer, whose heart knows, with Voltaire, "that man
seriously reflects when left alone," and would then discover, if he can,
that "wondrous chain which links the heavens with earth--the world of
beings subject to one law." In his reflections Emerson, unlike Plato, is
not afraid to ride Arion's Dolphin, and to go wherever he is carried--to

Parnassus or to "Musketaquid."
We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite where
many men do not care to climb, peering into the mysteries of life,
contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he discovers
there,--now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can, and translate--now
placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands, things that we may see
without effort--if we won't see them, so much the worse for us.
We see him,--a mountain-guide, so intensely on the lookout for the trail
of his star, that he has no time to stop and retrace his footprints, which
may often seem indistinct to his followers, who find it easier and
perhaps safer to keep their eyes on the ground. And there is a chance
that this guide could not always retrace his steps if he tried--and why
should he!--he is on the road, conscious only that, though his star may
not lie within walking distance, he must reach it before his wagon can
be hitched to it--a Prometheus illuminating a privilege of the Gods-
-lighting a fuse that is laid towards men. Emerson reveals the less not
by an analysis of itself, but by bringing men towards the greater. He
does not try to reveal, personally, but leads, rather, to a field where
revelation is a harvest-part, where it is known by the perceptions of the
soul towards the absolute law. He leads us towards this law, which is a
realization of what experience has suggested and philosophy hoped for.
He leads us, conscious that the aspects of truth, as he sees them, may
change as often as truth remains constant. Revelation perhaps, is but
prophecy intensified--the intensifying of its mason-work as well as its
steeple. Simple prophecy, while concerned with the past, reveals but
the future, while revelation is concerned with all time. The power in
Emerson's prophecy confuses it with--or at least makes it seem to
approach--revelation. It is prophecy with no time element. Emerson
tells, as few bards could, of what will happen in the past, for his future
is eternity and the past is a part of that. And so like all true prophets, he
is always