2. Transcendentalism
• It is any system of philosophy, that emphasizes intuition as
a means to knowledge or the importance of the search for
the divine
• Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature,
religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New
England in the early to middle 19th century. It is sometimes
called American transcendentalism to distinguish it from
other uses of the word transcendental.
• Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general
state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of
intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian
church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among
transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state
that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only
realized through the individual's intuition, rather than
through the doctrines of established religions
3. Influence on other
movements
• Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of
the individual and divine messages. Their beliefs are
closely linked with those of the Romantics.
• The movement directly influenced the growing
movement of Mental Sciences of the mid 1800s which
would later become known as the New Thought
movement. New Thought draws directly from the
transcendentalists, particularly Emerson. New Thought
considers Emerson its intellectual father.
4. Days
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
5. •
Analysis attract attention,
This tiny Emerson poem continues to
because of the ambiguity of the word "hypocritic." Readers
choose sides in the debate according to the meaning of
"hypocritic days." One side claims that the days are "actors";
while the other argues that they are "deceivers."
• Actually, the two terms are not mutually exclusive. In a sense
actors are deceiving, because they are pretending to be other
than they are, but some people suggest the real significance of
the term, as well as the total meaning of the poem, depends
upon the human perception of things in the poem. It is the
human mind that conceives the notion of days as "daughters
of time." The speaker has learned something by the end of the
poem-something that perhaps has taken him a lifetime. He
has learned that he has taken from life according to his own
will-"To each they offer gifts after his own will."
6. • After this realization, the speaker looks back, and
in order to give others a clear image of what he has
learned, he personifies the passage of time as
"daughters of time." In qualifying the definition of
days, the speaker calls them "hypocritic." The
"days" are surely actors since the speaker has
personified them and portrayed them in a specific
role: they act like "barefoot dervishes"; they march
"in an endless file"; they "bring diadems and fagots
in their hands"; and by the end of the poem, the
speaker has even attributed to one of the daughters
an attitude, because he sees scorn on her brow-"I,
too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."
7. • As actors, the days are merely playing a role.
They apparently are neutral and thus play no
part in hypocrisy, but to the human mind that
wants and expects some nudge in the right
direction, such a neutral actor might be
considered hypocritical; one might reason: "if I
could have the 'diadems' as easily as the 'fagots'
and all I had to do was will it-then why didn't
someone tell me?" And this attitude, suggested
to be the heart of the poem. Learning to use our
will is not so easy, and that is why we settle for
lesser "gifts." But when we learn the truth that
the speaker learns, we indeed feel tricked. We
feel that these acting "daughters of time" have
been hypocritical in not urging us to demand
more than a "few herbs and apples."
8. • It is suggested that the synthesis of the two
meanings places primary emphasis on the human
being, not on the days. After all, it is the human
mind that creates the concept of a day. The
human mind conceives the ideas of acting and
deceiving; the days, as daughters of time, take on
the human projections of action and deception,
but the speaker in the poem is the one who
determines their identity, and the speaker is the
one who changes. The days cannot be any more
than "muffled and dumb," but the speaker who is
human contains both concepts of action and
deception, as well as the ability to talk about his
experience in human terms.
