A Transgressive Transcendentalist Inheritance

In addition to a handful of genetic traits, my paternal grandparents passed down to me (through my parents) part of their personal library. I started to peruse this treasure in my early teens.

Some of those books were of passing interest only (e.g., a copy of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road); others, like Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River, had a more lasting impact. Still others became constant companions and formative influences: The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (published in a single volume by Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York, in 1929) and The Works of Voltaire (translated by William F. Fleming and published in forty-two volumes in 1904).

To my mind, Emerson and Voltaire were both exemplars of what I term "transgressive transcendentalism" for both sought to "overcome" the found world through the cultivation of a capacious (and critical) consciousness. Although both men were seasoned ironists, Emerson's tone tended to be more measured than Voltaire's. To be sure, this difference may be attributed, in part, to their distinctive personalities. But we should also be mindful of their historical contexts: Voltaire was a great Enlightenment precursor, and it was his sufferings that purchased the more liberal air that subsequently blew with the West winds to North America and filled the sails of the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Emerson was a beneficiary of the struggles of earlier generations; he could afford to be more judicious in his thinking, more temperate in speech.