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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)
Along with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the leading voices of the transcendentalist movement in America. Emerson's essay Nature advocates for the self-fulfilling promise of nature and individualism over the demands of society and conformity. Like his friend Thoreau, Emerson believed that solitude was necessary to experience the full beauty of nature, saying "to go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society." Emerson's essay greatly influenced what is known today as the back-to-nature movement, and his ideas are very apparent in Thoreau's most famous work, Walden. Throughout his career, Emerson wrote many poems as well as essays. |