MASTER'S THESIS M-1483

GRIFFITH, Janet Cox THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OF MARGARET FULLER AND LITERARY NATIONALISM.

The American University, M.A., 1968 Language and Literature, modem

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OP MARGARET FULLER AND LITERARY NATIONALISM

by Janet Cox Griffith

Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirementsfor the Degree of Master of Arts

Signatures of Committee:

Chairman;

Dean of the College Date Date

19__ The American University Washington, D.C. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MAY 13 1968

WASHINGTON. 0 . C TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I . A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 The Development of the Young C ritic . . 3 II. THE DIAL ...... 26 I I I . NE^.'J Y O RE...... 50 IV. EUROPE...... 73 V. A GENIAL SYSTEM OF CRITICISM ...... 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY'...... 9^ CHAPTER I

A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES

Intro due ti on. Margaret Puller has been described as one of the best-equipped, most sympathetic, and genu­ inely philosophical ante-Bellum American critics.^ Yet, her attempt to create a meaningful criticism was not a reconciliation of different concepts into a systematic "philosophy of criticism#" Rather, I believe that the critic*s own eclectic characteristic of thought intui­ tively led to a successful application of a variety of concepts in her writings, although it did not create a pattern of logically consistent thought.^ She was, in this respect, one of the true Transcendentalists who "breathed rather than acquired ideas, and were not at all proponents of any systematic logic."3 Seeing the need for a critical theory liberal enough to serve an age of rapid social and intellectual change, Miss Fuller arrived at a diverse set of criteria from which to judge the lite r a tu r e o f her day. By choos­ ing among theories #s disparate as those belonging to

IW.P. Trent, John E rskine, S .P . Sherman, and Carl Van Doren, I^e Cambridge History of American Literature (New York: The )4ackillan dompany, I 9 6 1 ) , p. 3^3* ^The term eclecticism , originally from the Greek meaning to select, may be used to designate any body of theories or doctrines combined without regard for their systematic coherence or unity in order to achieve a practical application of single views. 2 Classicism, Renaissance Humanism, Neo-Classicism, and Romanticism, she created a body of critical thought befitting an historical period requiring new terms and fresh concepts. In devoting her extraordinary energies to fur­ thering the development of literary and cultural endea­ vors in her native land, Margaret Fuller viewed litera­ ture as having an intrinsic role in the life of the times. She was a significant contributor to that lit­ erary "debate" described by Howard Mumford Jones as seeking a philosophic interpretation of the reciprocal relationship between literature and society, conscious

Ll of European theories of the nature of literature. It is generally agreed that the realistic ele­ ment in Miss Fuller*s work an increasing interest in social and political questions— strengthened consider­ ably during her mature years. Her ideal critic was both appraiser and educator, one whose sense of so c ia l responsibility concurred with his private sensibilities. He recognized that beauty merely for beauty's sake tended toward embellishment, and that such a condition was the result of the separation of art from its roots in the community.

3Perry Miller (ed.). The American Transcendental- ists (New York; Doubleday and Company, Inc., 19!?7)j P* X. ^Howard Mumford Jones, The Theory of Am eric^ Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 196?), pp. 70-71. 3 Moreoever, by broadening the critic's function thus to include the concept of the social relevance of lite r a tu r e , Margaret F uller anticipated the future d ir ­ ection of the Realist tradition with its inherent con­ cern with the everyday life of the observable world#^ It was, doubtless, her increasingly inclusive view toward lite r a r y subject matter that prompted her to comment on her friend, Boston w riter Lydia Maria Child, "I think she lives at disadvantage by keeping so entirely apart from the common stream of things,"

The development of the voung critic. The first-born in the family of nine children of Timothy F u ller and Margaret Crane F u ller, Sarah Margaret was early subjected to her father's rigorous tutelage-- learning English and Latin grammar in order to read both languages at the age of six. ^ "Poor child* I had no natural childhood," she later wrote. No dog, cat, or bird inhabited the Fuller household, but discipline of considerable severity abounded. Timothy Fuller trained his precocious daughter to a high degree of precision, accuracy, and clarity of thought. She was forbidden to express an

?In contrast, W.B.O. Peabody, a reviewer contem­ porary with Margaret F u ller, offered the follow ing restrictive statement as to a realistic treatment of subject matters "Whoever undertakes then, to give sketches of life...m ust be careful to set these things in their true light, and to allow to each its just pro­ portion, so that the whole impression conveyed by his writings shall be decidedly in favor of benevolence." 4 idea unless she could give an adequate reason for it. Furthermore, she had to be sure of all particulars. She was permitted no "buts," "ifs," "unlesses," "I am mistakens," or "it may be sos." Her father, she wrote, "had no belief in minds that listen, wait, receive...no conception of the subtle and indirect motions of imagi­ nation and feeling." "The force of feeling, vdiich, under other circumstances might have ripened into thought, was turned to learn the thoughts of others."^ This pitched battle between mind and feeling was to be waged from childhood on in Margaret Fuller's psyche. The effect of her traditional education was already apparent in the values placed by the eight-year- old g ir l on r a tio n a lity and decorum in the follow ing le t t e r to her fath er, the R epresentative from Massa­ chusetts in Congress. Dear Papa, This paper is blotted but it is not my fault. While I was writing Eugene stood by the table. He laid the point of a penknife he had in h is hand on i t and in taking i t up he made a b lo t. I do not think he did it intentionally and 1 should not have told you of it but I was afraid you would thirds me careless. I wrote you a short letter as a forerunner to this. I think your maxim with regard to letter writing is good, but it is not easy for me to use it. For anybody whose ideas flow fast it i s easy but as mine do not i t i s not to me. Like you Papa I have no fa ith in dreams. I want to ask you a question. Whether my manners ought to in ­ crease with my growth or with my years. Mamma says

%er Latin reading consisted of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid.

7r.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke (eds.). Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (London; R. Bentley, 1«^2) I, 13, 19. people vri.ll judge of me according to my groivfch. I do not think this is just for surely our knowledge does not increase because we are tail,,,°

In 1823 Timothy Fuller sent his bookish daughter to the Kisses Prescott School in Groton. After several unhappy experiences there she left the establishment in 1824'. To a former teacher she wrote of planning a rigorous course of study for herself in French, Greek, Italian, philosophy, singing, and piano. "I am deter­ mined on distinction," she declared to the same corres­ pondent. As the fam ily p o litic a l fortunes expanded, the Fullers moved to a mansion near the Harvard campus. Here Miss Fuller renevred old friendships as well as made im portant nev/ on es. 9 Frederick Henry Hedge, a former acquaintance nev/1 y returned from five years* study in Germany, found her especially eager to study German l ite r a tu r e . In only a fevr years she and James Freeimn Clarke vrould undertake this task which would profoundly influence her future career. By the time l^rgaret Fuller reached maturity, German Idealist philosophy had already exerted consid­ erable impact on American thinkers, particularly in Nev/ England. From translations of the "New Criticism" of

SMason Wade (ed.). The Writings of Margaret Fuller (New York: Viking Press, 19^1), p. ^44.

9 t ,V7. Higginson mentioned the following as influencing MF during th is period: Judge Story; Edv/ard Everett; E.T, Channing; George Ticknor; George Bancroft. 6 the Schlegels, which appeared as early as 1817 In the Port Folio. American readers could easily have deduced the central argument of the German school, i.e., th at a "universality of mind can only be approximated through an awareness of the peculiarities in the life and cul­ ture of other nations and other tim e s th a t the making of the rules of any literary epoch into universels thus constitute a "despotism in taste;" that the literature of the ancients had been perverted by the modem, and that man must go back to classical art itself for its spirit; that poetry-making is a gift shared even by barbarians; and, finally that great geniuses following spontaneous inclination have become favorites of the p eop le. Just as Clarke and other friends of hers in the Harvard Divinity School were being emancipated from Locke's philosophy by the "New Criticism," so Margaret Fuller pursued a similar course on her own. In May of

1 8 2 6 , in addition to Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and the Castilian Ballads, she noted she was studying the "New Critic," Madame De Stael.^^ She praised the French Exile's "grand scale," and her "liberalizing, regenera­ tive principles." During the next two years she read

l^Benjamin T. Spencer- The Quest for Nationality (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1957), p. 90. ^^Bmerson (et al). op. c it.. I, 67. 7 Locke and a commentary on h is system w ritten by Ifedame De 8tael.l2 Miss Fuller was greatly impressed with the letter's emphasis on the effect of the emotions on human conduct.^^ Furthermore, she followed the French

^^In the 1 9 th century, the French philosopher Victor Cousin founded a school of eclecticism which sought to unite German Idealism with the Scottish Asso- ciationist philosophy of David Hume, James Mill, and Alexander Bain, and the doctrines or Descartes. Though not an original thinker. Cousin was regarded as elo­ quent, enthusiastic, and possessed of a clarity of style and exposition winning him great popularity in his day. How influential Cousin's presentations were on Margaret F u ller i s not clea r ly known. I t is known, however, that Margaret F u ller read Cousin, recommending h is Preface to Locke to her brother Richard, for one. As William Charvat has pointed out in The Origins of American Critical Thought, many early 1 9 th century American writers had been inimically hindered by the ideas of association borrowed from the Scots. Cooper, for example, in his preface to The Prairies (1827) said that the prairie had no historical recollections, no "poetical associations." Nevertheless, it has been sug­ gested that Archibald Allison,, an advocate of associa­ tion psychology, actually provided a system of justifi­ cation for romantic criticism in his Essavs on the Nature and Principles of Taste, first published in Î790, revised in l8l$%"then republished in I817 by the same firm that put out the North American Review. Allison argued for the importance of environment in man's appre­ ciation of beauty. He claimed that environment and experience, including Die physical sensations man derives from them and the associations of ideas he builds around these sensations form man's intellectual and emotional character. Vide: Darwin Schrell, "Nation­ alism and Aesthetics in the North American Review: I8l5- 1 8 ^0 ," Studies in American Literature, o (1960)« 16. ^^In her "Essay on Fiction," (1795) îfedame De Staël wrote: "The pleasure it affords is not the sole benefit of fiction. When it reaches only the reader's eyes, i t can do nothing but amuse, but when i t moves the heart, it can have a great influence upon all human con­ ceptions. So this ability is perhaps the most powerful means of guidance or enlightenment. Man has only two distinct faculties, reason and imagination; all the others, even sentiment, are dependent upon or made up of 8 writer's interest in a comparative study of literature, and in an historical-sociological approach to criticism . No doubt it was from Madame De S ta e l's De La L itté r a tu r e Considérée dans ses Rapports avec Les Institutions Sociales that the future critic discovered three areas of realtionship of literature to social institutions to be considered in literary analysis; (1) to study lit­ erature as a cause of interaction between a writer and his audience, in light of their social, economic, and political backgrounds; (2) to study literature as a reflection of the social life of the time and place in which it was created; (3) to study literature as a significant result of the social life from which it emerged#l4 Madame De Stael also exerted influence on Thomas Carlyle, who soon published several essays of great significance for Margaret Fuller. In 1828 his "Goethe" appeared in the Foreign Review; the previous year his d escription of the new ronantic movement in Germany entitled, "The State of German Literature," had appeared in the Edinburgh Review. Both of these articles, as them...Philosophy ought to be an invisible power that guides fiction's effects, but if it becomes obvious it destroys its magic."

^Slorroe Berger (ed. J, Madame De Stael on Politics. Literature and Nation^ Claaraoter (Rew York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1964), p. 69. 9 well as others by him on related subjects, later col­ lected in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, sounded a "wild bugle call" to both Miss Fuller and James Freeman Clarke, who began their study of German together in 1832 . The young Transcendentalists, who had rejected the rationalism of Locke for a Platonic Idealism, res­ ponded to C arlyle's view of a new system which could replace the ghost of l8th century rationalism. In "The State of German Literature," Carlyle wrote that "the Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers, both of the French and English or Scottish School, commences from within and proceeds outwards, interpreting the external world as in itself illusory but nevertheless as dynamically expressive of an inner reality.This philosophy permeated the whole spirit of German literature and was fundamental to Transcenden­ tal thought in America. To Carlyle, Goethe was the incarnate genius of the age, whose "giant strength of character" revealed the stimulating power of great personality, the cultiva­ tion of which was set forth in detail in Wilhelm Meister. Goethe gave to Carlyle, and later to Margaret Fuller, the clue to a vitalizing conception of life, i.e., to seek

15c.F. Harrold, Carlyle and German Thought (London: Archon Books, 1 9 6 3 )> P- 6 7 . 10 its meaning through a life of affirmative creative acti­ vity, Both writers also found the Romantic concept of genius a much more satisfactory means of accounting for great men than the mechanical psychology of Bume and h is school,Furthermore, Carlyle's critical theory was predicated on the assumption, soon held by Margaret Puller, that the artist's mind and his work represented an organic unity and that the one cannot be understood 17 without knowing the other. ' After a year's German study Margaret Fuller had read most of Goethe's better-known works, and soon after had examined Tieck, Novalis, Korner, Richter, Heine, and Schiller. From Tieck and Schlegel, T.W. Higginson reported that she learned to appreciate the "good quali- 18 ties" in an artist. But, it was also from mystics like Tieck, Novalis, and the wildly romantic Jacobi that she formed her taste for the intuitive and ecstatic mys­ teries of the soul she exploited in such pieces as "Leila" in the Dial, as further evidence of her revolt against rationalism. Under the same name she also

lÔMiller, op. c it.. p. 153» Goethe, according to M iller, was "irresistible" to the Transcendentalists since he, more than any other figure of that day, embodied for them their idea of the disparate manifesta­ tions of genius. ^^Louise M. Young, Carlvle and the Art o f History (Philadelphia : Univer sity of Pennsylvania Pres s, 1939), p. 101. ^®T.W. Higginson, Marearat Fuller Ossoli (Boston; Houghton Mifflin and Coi, 1884), p. l02. 11 composed highly sentimentalized verses about herself in her d ia iy . At one point during this period she noted prefer­ ring Schiller's lyrics to Goethe's "merciless art," but this preference did not last, and she turned to Goethe as a major and lasting influence upon the shaping of her thought. Her plan was to write a life of the artist taking up his writings in order of their composition so as to obtain a true history of his life as expressed in thought rather than action. That she found his genius complex and contradictory is brought out in a comment written by her in 1 8 3 6 : I do not know our Goethe yet. I have changed ngr opinion of his religious views many times. Some­ times I am tempted to think that it is only his wonderful knowledge of human nature which has excited in me such reverence for his philosophy, and that no worthy fab ric has been elevated on this broad foundation...On the whole, though my enthusiasm for the Goethean philosophy is checked, my admiration for the genius of Goethe is in nowise lessened, and I stand in a sceptical attitude, ready to try his philosophy, and, if needs must, play the Eclectic. Thus persevering in her study of Goethe, Margaret Fuller gradually attained such considered views of the artist as were recorded in her Preface to Eckermann's Conversations. and in her Dial essay, "Goethe," which Emerson recognized as among her best works. There is no doubt that she v/as fascinated by the

l^Emerson (et al), on. c it.. II, 219-220. 12 sheer force of Goethe's genius alone. However, his ideal of self-culture and progression impressed her equally as much. For, like the Transcendentalists, Goethe viewed reality as lying behind the temporal, and saw the fundamental duality between matter and spirit resolved through art, or Beauty. Since Goethe held that Beauty, leading to ultimate wisdom, derived in part from self-culture, the idea of self-culture became an inseparable part of his aesthetics. 20 All her life the Goethean conviction that the art of living necessitated the intensive cultivation of inborn talents was one of Margaret Fuller's guiding principles, Goethe spoke to her as well as Eckermann when he said, "But whoever w ill reproduce anything great must have so improved h is cu ltu re, th a t, lik e the Greeks, he can elevate the trivial actualities of nature to the level of his o\m mind.. Out of her own background she saw the universal value implicit in this concept.

20joel Spingarn (ed.), Goethe's Literary Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921), p. 3o. Goethe described Beauty, in "The Collector and His Friends" (1799), as "the veil and integument of an org­ anized whole," the spiritual significance of which was revealed to the beholder as a Platonic formative ascent to divine truths and higher values. Therefore, since he believed "the veil of poetry" came *^out of the hand of truth," and knowledge of self developed with know­ ledge of the world, it follows that Beauty, vhich led to ultimate Truth, derived in part from self-culture. Ifoorhead (ed.), Conversations of Goethe with F.fikermann (London: J.M. Dent and Sons^Ltd., 1930), p. 273. 13 vhich she reiterated in Woman in the Nineteenth Century. "He [Goethe] aims at a pure self-subsist en ce, and a free development of any powers with which they [womei^ may be gifted by nature as much for them as for men. They are units addressed as souls." lihat Thomas Mann has called Goethe's ideal of "individual universalism" came to assume a leading role in Margaret Puller's quest for self-realization for all mankind. In keeping with such a highly developed sense of philosophic idealism, Margaret Fuller soon arrived at an equally liberal political philosophy. It is gener­ ally agreed that her outlook grew, in great part, out of her reading of Jefferson's letters with her father, p4 shortly before his sudden death in 1834. Her political liberalism doubtless was one very good reason for her association with Horace Greeley less than a decade later. Further, the historical perspective she brought with her to the European poli­ tical scene of 1848, fraught with high republican ideals of liberty and equality, was also greatly influ-

22iiargaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893), p. 88. 23Thomas Mann (ed.). The Permanent Goethe (New York: The Dial Press, 1958), p. x lii. 2^In 1829 Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's graUdson and h e ir , published at C h a r lo tte sv ille , Virginia, a collection of Jefferson papers entitled Memoirs, Correspondence^, and M iscellaneous Papers o f Thomas Jefferson . In a l l p ro b a b ility th is work was lé''s source, for the letters of Jefferson per se were 14 enced by her period of political study with Timothy

F u l l e r . T,w. Higginson goes so far as to suggest that the political tastes of her father influenced Mss Fuller to turn to the "strong side" of American intel­ lect "which was statesmanship," and encouraged her to be a "literary pioneer. As she came to recognize that American letters did not follow the old formulas, HP perceived that in this nation practical thought had been given precedence over the imaginative faculty by which the Scottish rhe- 27 toricians had characterized other young societies. The result, that both Margaret Fuller, and earlier, Madame De Stael discerned, -vra,s a vitality in political records and writings lacking in other American litera­ ture of the day. Such a discovery ultim ately led M ss F uller to further develop her critical abilities by undertaking activities which she believed were important to progress in all the arts. As a member of the Transcendental Club she was aware that the creation of a worthy national literature was one of the prime considerations of the

not distributed until several decades later. See Calen­ dar of Jefferson Papers. University of Virginia, 25 V.L. Farrington, Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Wrld, inc., 1927), II, pp. 422, 424. Farrington also maintained that Rousseau was a strong influence upon her social thought.

^^Higginson, o p . c i t . . pp. 132-133» 15 group. In fact, the topic of discussion at the club's f i r s t meeting was "American Genius-—the Causes which Hinder its Growth and give us no First-Rate Productions.^^ The Transcendentalists agreed that in order to develop a n ative lite r a tu r e , European traditions would have to be laid aside to understand the newly-emerging mind and character of America. However, th is "laying aside" for M r gar et F u lle r meant specifically a discarding of all dead forms of the past, not the progressive tendencies of the age, no mat­ ter what their national origin. For most of her career she was to work vigorously to disseminate important European thought. It was her b e lie f that developing American genius required a shocking recognition of the ideas of outstanding thinkers in other cultures. As early as the m id-l830s she had written to James Clarke of her aspirations: You speak of my writing about Tieck. It is my ear­ nest v/ish to interpret the German authors of whom I am most fond to such Americans as are ready to receive. Perhaps some might sneer at the notion of my becoming a teacher; but where I love so much, surely I might inspire others to love a little: and I think this kind of culture would be precisely the counterpoise required by the utilitarian ten­ dencies of our day and place.30

27Spencer, on. cit.. p. 206. 28serger, op^ cit.. p. 20, Introduction. Though America did not have a well-developed literature, in Mdame De Stael's view, she considered that American civil officials had acquired the "most useful sectets o f style." 29Spencer, op. cit.. p. 158. 16 A decade later, before leaving for Europe, she reaf­ firmed her eclecticism in her Preface to Papers on Art. L iteratu re, and The Drama: It has been one great object of my life to introduce here the vrorks of those great geniuses, the flower and fruit of a higher state of develop­ ment, which might give the young who are soon to constitute the state, a higher standard in thought and action than would be demanded of them by their own tim e... Margaret Puller's earliest published criticism in James Freeman Clarke's Western Messenger contains this same precept. Her essay on Philip van Artevelde begins with the very pronouncement that the function of sound criticism is "to teach." 8 ^ Henry Taylor's c lo se t drama, the most definitive review Miss Fuller did for the Messenger, offered her the opportunity to state her principles of criticism. These turned out to be a mix­ ture of classic and romantic thought. In fact, the few essays she wrote for the Messenger showed that Margaret Fuller's critical thought was already characteristically e c le c tic . After her first statement of purpose in the van Artevelde essay. Miss Fuller suggested qualifying the widely-accepted critical canon of the comparison of one work with an example of the best in its genre. It was not contrary to this canon, stated the critic, to value

30Emerson (e t a l ) . op. c i t . . I , 219-220. 3lMargaret Fuller, "Philip van Artevelde." The WestemMessenger. I (1 8 3 5 ), 398-43^. 17 works under the light of a new standard, i.e., the con­ sideration of how well the work succeeded in attaining the object the artist himself had in view. The critic must try to determine the artist's aims and vrtiether his work effected them. Under this standard a critic could not present a cursory statement praising or condemning a production on feeble grounds. Miss Fuller stated her case thus : The natural process of the mind in forming a judgment is comparison. The office of sound cri­ ticism is to teach that this comparison should be made, not between the productions of d ifferen tly - constituted minds, but between any one of these and a fixed standard of perfection. Nevertheless i t is not contrary to the canon to take a survey of the labors of many artists with reference to one, if we value them, not according to the degree of pleasure vre have expreienced from them, which must always depend upon our then age, the state of the passions and relations with life, but according to the success of the artist in attaining the object he himself had in v ie w . 32 Here, like Coleridge, Margaret Puller moved her criticism in the direction of process, i.e., an interest in the author's mind, aim, powers, as well as his product. He? plea reflected an awareness of the critical climate of the d ay,33 Moreover, the critic offered a rational principle by which to judge works to replace the subjective one of "pleasure," or taste, with its transitory implications. In so doing she attempted to avoid xÆiat M.H. Abrams has

32parry Miller (ed.), Mrgaret Fuller (New York: Doubleday ad Co., Inc., 1963), p. 3^«

33m.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York: W.W. Norton and Compary, Inc., l9lp8), p. 118» 18 called "the chronic dilemma of neo classic theorists" vrtio discovered that egalitarianism did not breed equally agreed-upon "good taste* Distinguishing between classical and romantic, she named the classical as her preference, defining it a s, ...in its wide and best sense...a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judi­ cious limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the interest, perfect the illusion,.- and make the impression most distinct and forcible. She declared that she opted for the classical school in spite of the possibility that "a vagrant bud of poesy here and there be blighted by conforming to its rules" because "our loss is more than made up to us by our enjoyment of plan, of symmetry, of the triumph of genius over multiplied obstacles." As perfect specimens of th is sty le she named the F ilip p o . Saul, and Mvrrha of Alfieri; Wallenstein of Schiller; Tasso and Inhigenia of Goethe. Her delineation holds with the classical atti­ tude toward simplicity, regularity, and uniformity of plan, and the observance of the unities in order to obtain strength and clarity of effect. Unlike the roman­ ticist, the classicist does not place the artist omni-

3^Ibid. pp. 108 - 1 0 9 . 35ife,rgaret Fuller, Life Without and Life Within (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875'), P* 130. 19 potent In the center of his art, which is valued as a portrayal of his experience, however seeriingly frag­ mentary, and having an organic unity rather than the oreconceived unities of time, place, and action. Instead, for the classicist, art only attains its "higher beauty" \ihen. it is "arranged upon a plan, made subservient to a purpose."3^ Her classical preference at this point led the critic to declare that genius should restrain its exu­ berance, acting by "the rule its taste approves," For, "art is nature, but nature nevf-modelled, condensed, and harmonized* We are not merely like mirrors, to r e f le c t our o^m times to those more d is ta n t, The mind has a light of its-own, and by it illumines what it re-creates."37 Yet, her view of genius vms in the romantic tra­ dition. Genius v/as a transcendent and extraordinary manifestation of power. "Geniuses perceive results so remote, are alive to combinations so subtle, that com­ mon men cannot rise high enough to see why they think or do as they do...crying 'He is r^dj He hath a devil.'"38 Genius had its own laws and privileges

36ibid. p .331. 87Hiller, Margaret Fuller, p. 4?, citing Memoirs. I, 73. Comparing Goethe and Byron, MF praised the for­ mer's infinitely greater power to make a thought or feeling universal. 20 necessary for attaining its development. Still, in spite of being outside the bounds of social conformity, genius was "endowed with a sacred comission* He is the natural priest, the shepherd of the people," she w r o t e . 89 In reviewing the L ife o f George Crabbe. w ritten by his son, Miss Fuller praised the elder Crabbe*s life for observing this principle. As a writer he had "per­ formed h is duty to h is race through h is pen*"^ This statement, equating literature with life, and writing with social responsibility, illustrates one of the major tenets in the critic's developing outlook on the nature and function of literature. She was to see lit­ erature, as well as all the arts, as bearing a social imperative, realized not so much by inculcating doc­ trines as by evoking an affective state essential to human betterment in the mind of the reader, viewer, or listen er* Nevertheless, in an estimate of genius, she held that moral judgments should not preclude intellectual ones. Genius must be understood in its relation to the Zeitgeist and not considered a separate phenomenon. "It

S^Fuller, OP* c i t . . p. 7 8 , "Beethoven." 3 9 iîille r , Margaret F u lle r , p. 193» ^^^^Margaret Fuller, "TheLife of George Crabbe." The Western Messenger. X (1835), 21, 23* 21 is worth your while to appreciate that [genius] if you wish to understand the work that the spirit of the time did, and is still doing through him; for his mind is still upon the earth, working here through the tribu­ tary minds it fed."^^ In the van Artevelde review she also pointed out that genius--in drama differed from that in other depart­ ments of literature. Both Coleridge and Byron, in spite of their mastery of language, lacked this genius. In fact, la te r in a D ia l essa y , "The Modern Drama," she \ms to conclude that the dramatic form was not a growth native to the era. Imitation and emulation had dulled the taste and stifled the creative springs of aspiring nineteenth century dramatists. American dramatic genius would evolve only when it developed a taste for the fruits of its own fields. In concluding the van Artevelde essay. Miss Fuller affirmed her principle of "genial" receptivity to "every species of talent," Here, one is made aware of the inherently eclectic spirit behind her plea for a more positive and inclusive critical approach to litera­ ture that "enriches the mind.. .without debasing the dis­ positions or stultifying the understanding,It was

^iFuller, Life Without and Life Within, p. 111. ^^Ib id . p. 140. 22 this same principle that Khrgaret Puller was to elabor­ ate into one part of the critical plan which underlay her mature criticism in the Tribune.^3 In the-meantime she followed this precept in her review of Letters from Palmyra. This was an historical work written "as recreation" by William Ware, who was a "busy professional man,"^ Miss Fuller took especial interest in this fact since it bore out her principle that art came from active, committed lives, not from dilettantes. In her famous essay on Goethe she was to say, "He who cannot act will be imperfectly appreciate a c tio n . In L etters the c r itic saw a work of value in imparting a sense of history useful in interpreting "our own day." She praised its sincerity and objecti­ vity. Even the contrast between Paganism and Christi­ anity was not forced into "overbold relief." Inter es tihi-y enough, her essay on Bulwer-Lytton for the Messenger presaged her development of the idea of the critic as friend of the artist in the Dial. Defining the critic's function, she wrote, "But.. .every author...requires a little band offeithful friends who w ill...explain him to the careless m illions...will be

^8cf. Chap. I l l , p. 5 2 , th is paper. *+^*Margaret F uller, "Letters from Palmyra." The Western Messenger. VI, 24-2^x Setters was originally published under the title Letters of Lucius M. Plso from Palmyra, the first nine letters of whicE”appeared in Khickertxtcker Magazine. ^^Fuller, L ife Without and L ife W ithin, pp. 26-27. 23 indulgent to his efforts, mindful of his intentions... will study him faithfully. From these earliest efforts it may he said that Margaret Fuller already displayed an awareness of the need for a critic to consider (1) the artist’s mind and his times, as well as his wrk; (2) the social rele­ vance of literature, including the value of a realistic treatment of materials; (3) the importance of promot­ ing a more informed taste through (a) the introduction of foreign vrorks, and (h) increasing understanding of the position of the artist. On the whole, her eclectic body of premises w s based on the organic theory com­ bined v/ith the classical values of form and discipline.

In 1839 after having given up a brief teaching career, Margaret Fuller published under the auspices of George R ipley, her tra n sla tio n of Bckermann* s Conversa­ tions v/ith Goethe. This was the fourth volume in a series of foreign translations called Specimens from Foreign Literature. All the translators were members of the Transcendental Club vAio founded the Dial. Miss Fuller’s evaluation of Goethe in the Pre­ face to her translation rested on several points. From a literary standpoint, she judged Goethe the finest lyric poet of his age. He had, she said, availed him-

^^Margaret Fuller, "Bulwer-Lytton," The Western Messenger. I (18351, 101. 2M- self of the richness and flexibility of the language, and more than any other writer of his time he tended to correct the cumbrous, "centipede” style indigenous to Germany. However, her classicism did not permit her com­ plete approval of Goethe’s genius* He had the artist’s hand and eye, but not his love of structure.T he cobwebby effect of his later works she likened to Piranesi’s Visions. Here again she pleaded for the studied clarity of a more disciplined treatment of form. Prom an ethical viewpoint, she claimed that renunciation of the temporary for the permanent was the leading idea in both Wilhelm Meister and Faust. Simi­ larly, she praised the poet’s searching and extended observations, his scientific discoveries, claiming that such work was directed to far greater ends than merely to satisfy the artist’s personal plans. Margaret Fuller asserted that Goethe, as a cri­ tic of art and literature, was unsurpassed in indepen­ dence of thought, fairness, powers of sympathy, and largeness of view. She expressed the need for a study o f German lite r a tu r e , not only to comprehend the sp ir it of Europe for the past fifty years, but especially to learn from the Germans the habit of liberal criticism.

^7Wade, op. c it.. p. 240. 25 i.e ., the relinquishing of judgments based purely on personal predilection instead of reasoned judgments based on a statement of principles. Goethe, she con­ cluded, should be judged from the grand, historical point of view. 49 The Preface won her the commendation of both Emerson and Cleirke for it s c la r ity and cogency. Certainly, the critic’s excellent rebuttal of charges that Goethe was not a Christian, or an Ideal­ ist, or a Democrat, or Schiller, won over many a young American Transcendentalist like T.VT. Higginson to her 50 side. Emerson even suggested that the Preface was so brilliant that she need say no more on the subject. Margaret Fuller, however, had just begun to voice her convictions about the German poet.

^^Charvat, op. c it., p. 189. Charvat stated that George Bancroft considered Schiller a greater poet than Goethe, and that the cause of his prejudice against Goethe came to light in a statement that Goethe thought man could never be politically free. As a cri­ tic, therefore, Bancroft laid himself open to the same charge of political bias which was laid against him as an historian. It is this kind of unsound critical thinking MP probably had reference to in her Preface. *+9wade, op. c it .. pp. 232-24-1. ^^Higginson, op. cit.. p. I89, CHAPTER II

THE DIAL

Margaret Fuller agreed to become editor of the proposed Dial in November of 1839* By early spring she was aware of several d iffic u ltie s she would continually encounter during her tenure as editor: lack of disin­ terested agreement among the Transcendentalists as to the periodical’s aim; lack of "original," native expression; and, lack of copy.^ Yet, by her oim nearly single-handed efforts, the first issue of the magazine came off the press on July 1, l84o. The introductory article in that issue, "Editors to the Reader," although co-authored by Margaret Puller and Emerson, so closely reflected the former's view that it is considered as belonging even more properly with her writings than with Emerson’s.^ This statement recognized the strong current of thoughtand feeling of

lEmerson (et al), op. c it.. II, 199-200. In con­ nection with the first two problems she wrote on March 22, 184-0, "How much those of us who have been formed by the European mind have to unlearn, and lay aside, if we would act herei I would fa in do something w orthily that belonged to the country where I was born, but most tim es I fear i t may not be." And, on A pril 19, 1840, "...doubtless people will be disappointed for they seem to be looking for the Gospel of Transcenden­ talism . " ^Miller, Margaret Fuller, p. 57. 27 "many sincere persons in New England to make new demands on literature, and to reprobate that rigor of our conventions of religion and education which is turning us to stone..."3 The editorial further pointed out the existence of a special spirit of the times. "It is," the editors proclaimed, "in every form a protest against usage, and a search for prin­ cip les." To achieve the Dial's aim "to report life," the editors proposed to draw from amateur as w e ll as professional contributors a concept to become of great importance in Miss Fuller's critical views. For she came to see litera tu r e more and more in a framework of increasing realism, expressive of the life of the times, and not as the finished product of "practised writers." Out of this context she devel­ oped her prin cip le of encouraging a wide range o f talent in preparation for the time vAien the necessary American genius should appear able to capture the quintessence of the American scene.

3O0 .B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (-Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith," ' 19o5), p. 1 3 5 . "A remarkable feature of the Dial were the chapters of 'Ethical Scriptures,' seven in all, containing texts from the Veeshnu, Sarma, the laws of Menu- Confucius, the Desatir, the Chinese 'Four Books, ' Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldean Ora­ cles...To read such things then, showed an enligh­ tened and courageous mind; tb' print them in a maga­ zine under the sacred title of 'Scriptures' argued a most extraordinary breadth of view." 28

Reviewing the 18 39 Allston Exhibition in the Dial's first issue, she dealt directly with the ques­ tion of the artist's milieu. She contemplated his small audience and asked, "How the poetical mind can liv e and work in peace and good faith * How i t may unfold to its due perfection in an unpoetical society]"^ Puritanism, being a religion of good deeds, appealed to the understanding, not the imagination, she suggested. It did not readily foster an aesthetically-oriented cultural tradition.^ However, not to be dismayed at her nation's state of cultural underdevelopment, she urged upon her readers the principle of "examination which cannot be too close." This principle, and "not blind faith," would allow America to reach the neces­ sary level to appreciate those "finer manifestations of nature which slow growths of ages and peculiar aspects of society have occasionally brought out."^ It was this very principle of examination and analysis that put the "Comprehensive Critic" at the

^ h e D ial (New York: R u ssell and R u ssell, I n c ., 19 ^ , I , 7 1 . ^American Monthly ^ g a z in e (W illis ), I (September, 1829), 381-384. For purposes of compari­ son, the Anglophile "P.Q." had been less optimistic than MP on the subject of American genius producing a thing of beauty. He wrote in American Monthly. "What effort of genius can breathe the least spirit of poetry or romance in to the d u ll, cold , ca lcu latin g prudence of American life?" ^Tbe Dial. I, 73-74-. 29 top of the hierarchy of critics Mhrgaret Fuller des­ cribed in "A Short Essay on Critics," also appearing in the f i r s t issue of the D ial. Here was her most pointed answer to the prevailing critical modes of the day. Dismissing the "Subjective Critic" as being of little value, she accepted the method of the "Appre­ hensive," or expressionist critic, only because he reproduced a work, thereby making it better known. The "Comprehensive Critic" alone attempted to under­ stand the artist as well as the work, with all that relationship implied,and therefore had the breadth of vision to authenticate the true voice of the nation when it should speak. He was able to judge a work by its ov/n laws and to estimate its relationship to other works by comparing it to the best of its kind. For "the moment we look for a principle, we feel the need of a criterion, a standard; and then we say what the work is not, as well as what it is."^ She further interpreted the critic's functions as those of an analyst, historian, philosopher, and friend of the artist.& As a man of sensibility the

^Bernard Smith, Forces in American Criticism (New York: Hare our t. Brace an5“Conpany, Inc.. 1939), pp. 1 1 7 - 1 1 8 . "What she said, in effect, was that the battles of literature must be fought over philosophies, not over styles, and she was therefore directly in the movement of the best and most serious modern criticism," wrote Smith. Bsmerson (et al), op^ c it.. II, 4-8, "Margaret's love of a r t...w a s not at a ll technical, but a sympathy . . 30 critic must not, however, be satisfied with "mere beauty of details." He must stimulate the reader to think for himself. "Wo to that coterie where some critic sits despotic...," she warned.^ In her attempt to av/aken American critics to new standards apart from "vulgar rules," Margaret Puller wrote an essay entitled "Menzel's View of Goethe" for the third issue of the Dial. This article accused Menzel whose History of German Literature at that time had been translated by Professor Felton of Harvard-—of innate philistinism.^^ Therefore, the critic concluded, Menzel ;vas an incompetent judge of Goethe. In similar terms she denounced the strictures on Goethe's lack of patriotism in Professor Felton's translation. vmth the a r t is t , in the p rotest vhich h is work pro­ nounced on the deformity of our daily manners; her co­ perception with him of the eloquence of form; her asp iration vdth him to a fa ir e r lif e ," 9Miller, Margaret Fuller, p. 71; Bernard Smith terms the period between 1830 and 1850 as one of "Moral Utility" in literary criticism. According to this con­ cept, the critic's function became one of making the artist toe the moral mark of the day; yet, the critic expressed this function merely as an attitude. He did not define or explain his philosophy. Smith, Forces in American Criticism, pp. 4-0-4-1. ^^Opoiier, Life Without and Life Within, p. 2. In calling Menzel a **Philistine MF v/as in great probabi­ lity borrowing the German derived term of opprobrium (Philister = Philistine)—-used by students in German u n iv e r sitie s to describe tovmsmen as o u tsid ers, hence devoid of culture—-one-half century before Matthew Arnold's famed use of "philistinism." 31 With courage and in te g r ity in the face o f a gen­ erally hostile American reaction to the German poet, Mss Fuller published her longest and most spirited essay on Goethe in the July 184-1 Dial.^^ Emerson con­ sidered it her finest piece of criticism. Indeed, his judgment has been confirmed by twentieth-century cri­ tics, such as Bernard Smith, who praised the work saying, "In short, she estimated Goethe as vre do now.Perry M ller called the essay a "basic document in the his­ tory of intellectual freedom in the United States."^3 it is also indisputable that this vm>rk was a heroic act on the part of a female critic who determined to evaluate the highly-controversial Goethe on the basis of criteria other than moral scrutiny. 14- Distinguishing between morality and aesthetics ---- one of her major critical principles— she stated: "If his genius lost sight of the highest aim, he is the best instructor in the use of means; ceasing to be a prophet

The North American Review was unsympathetic to Goethe, linking his moral faults to a failure in intel­ lectual and artistic skill. The Knickerbocker termed him a "foul corrupter." l^Smith, op. c it.. p. 116. ^3piiiier, Margaret Fuller, p. 79. l^Arthur Brown, Mrgaret Fuller (Syracuse: Twayne Publishers, 1964-), p. 1221 TEnsofar as she was able to show the men and women of New England that Goethe should be judged by the law of his own genius, she was a lso helping them to r e a liz e that they must be true to their ovjn hearts and minds instead of submitting them to some tribunal of social conformity." 32 poet, he was s t i l l a poetic artist,Goethe had achieved much in fulfilling his genius which was insep­ arable from his environment, i.e ., "the antagonistic influences under vAiich he was educated,” his home and family, "the history of his intimacies,” his life at Weimar, "IVIriting is worthless except as a record of life," she stated, a pronouncement similar to those made in earlier criticisms, i.e ., George Crabbe for the Western Messenger, and "A Short Essay on Critics" for the Dial. Werther*s excellence lay in its recording of

"the effect...of outward pressure on the young p o e t . "17 The book was invaluable for illustrating the growth and change of genius, which "must always be attended idLth daily pain...the seer is mocked for pretending to see what others cannot."1 ^ Comparing Faust to Dante's Paradiso. she noted both works reflected their times. Faust represented the " s p irit of the age,—-discontented with the shadowy man- isfestation of truths it longed to e m b r a c e. .."19 Faust was the "impassioned seeker," who, in Wilhelm Meister

l^Miller, Margaret Fuller, p. 91* l^Ibid. pp. 85, 87. l^ibid. p. 8 6 . iSjbid. p. 84-. 19ibid. p. 94-. 33 metamorphosed in to "a d isc ip le o f circumstance." Goethe depicted a negative character like Wilhelm in scenes of vulgarity "to obtain room to paint life as it really is," which "may not be spoken of to ears polite," commented the critic. The artist broke the bonds of literary convention in order to attain a more realistic subject matter. For the romantic Wilhelm "cannot abide in tradition."^0 However, the ending of the work had a classic simpli­ city. "Surely the simple soberness should please at least those who style themselves, preeminently, people of common sense," commented Miss Puller, not without pique.21 Of the Elective Affinities she noted particu­ larly the author's unique universalizing power, and the organic form of the work, "a form known only in the world of g e n i u s ."22 Here was a "world w ithin a world," a second cosmos, sui generis, concretely envisioned, and subject only to its own laws of being. "I was not carried away, instructed, delighted...! was there...," she declared.23

20ibid. p. 96.

21lb id . p . 1 0 0 . 22Ibid. p . 105. 23ln conversation with Eckermann on A pril 18, 1827, Goethe said: "The artist, grateful to the nature, which produced him, gives back to her a second 3^ Yet, despite his compelling artistry, Miss P uller judged that Goethe wanted heart. He did not gratify his desire for "deeper truths" except through the i n t e l l e c t , 2^ Nevertheless, toward the end of the essay she admitted she v/as tempted to recant any dis­ paragement she had made of the poet simply because of 25 his artistic genius. Such equivocating father illustrated that continual psychic struggle between mind and feeling she experienced from early childhood^^ It v/as then, in this sympathetic evaluation of the poet, that Miss Puller attempted her most "compre­ hensive criticism " of him. She succeeded in apprehend­ ing and reproducing leading ideas in his work. Fur­ th er, as the "Comprehensive C ritic," she tried to judge the works according to their own laws, i.e ., as records of the Zeitgeist, and to compare a v/ork, like Faust, vri-th a comparable production of the past, such nature, but one which has been f e l t , thought out, and humanly perfected."; Also, see M.H. Abrams* discus­ sion of the heterocosmic analogue in critical theory. 2^^Miller, Margaret F u ller, p. 101.

2 5 r b id . p. 107. Although she asserted in the beginning of the essay that Goethe's intellect was too developed in proportion to his moral nature, she quali­ fied the statement by saying, "It is difficult to speak xfithout seeming narrow, blind, impertinent.. .For...if you feel a want of a faculty...is is hard to say they have it not, lest, next moment they puzzle you by giv­ ing you some indication of it." Life Without and Life Within, p. 24-. 35 as Dante's Paradise. Though a diffuse style weakened the essay's structure considerably, "Goethe" is cer­ tainly an effort to produce the judicially compre­ hensive criticism Margaret Fuller thought best. At this point in her editorial career she was forced to f ill much space with her own hastily-pre­ pared copy, often material taken from her copious notebooks. Of the October 184-1 Dial. Miss Fuller wrote 85 of the total I 36 pages, her major contribu­ tions being "Lives of the Great Composers," and "Festus. A Dialogue." On Christmas Day of that year she v/rote her mother: "I am in a state of extreme fatigue; this is the last week of the Dial, and, as often happens, the copy did not hold out and I have had to w rite in every gap o f tim e." Festus was described as a book that answered "the call of the age" for its (1) sincerity, (2) home­ liness, and C3) "majestic negligence of nature as opposed to artificial polish and traditional graces" -—all criteria of the romantic school. Miss Fuller commended Philip James Bailey, the author of the book, for his philosophical insights. The aesthetics of Festus. she pointed out, were part of a moral point of v i e w . 27 The work's interest in the irrational was a

26ef, Chap. I, p. 4-, this paper, ^^The D ia l. I I , 24-5. 36 step forward "from slavish fears of outward injury or retribution, to representations like these of inward dangers, the p itfalls, and fearful dens within our n a tu re."28 In "Lives of the Great Composers," she praised the biographical treatment of the musicians because artists' biographies, if at all truthfully recorded, cast "new light on their w o rk s . "29 The next Dial saw a part of her translation of Goethe's Tasso, and Bettina Brentano and Her Friend Gunderode. both works of no little effort on her part to help fam iliarize Americans with contemporary foreign writing. The critic expressed surprise at the popular­ ity of her second translation, eventually published in book form in Boston by Burnham (184-2).3^ Exhausted and without a penny to show for her self-sacrificing labor on behalf of the journal, in the spring of 184-2 Margaret F u lle r announced her inten-

2 8 Ib id . p. 2 6 0 . 29Margaret Fuller, Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1 88 9 ) , pp. 222,“2^. 30iîigginson, op. p it.. p. 1 9 2 , citing a letter in the Fuller mss. from M^ to W.H. Channing, her life­ long spiritual mentor. This document suggested that MP considered the psychological extremes represented in the lives of Bettina and Gunderode were only to the detrim ent of the two women. "Gunderode throws herself into the river because the world is all too narrow. Bettina lives, and follows out every freakish fancy, till the enchanting child degenerates into an 37 tion of relinquishing her post. Weeks and Jordan, the Dial 's publisher, vdio had been extremely san­ guine of the magazine's success, failed during its second year o f o p eration . E lizabeth Peabody ivho, upon taking over the journal found it virtually insolvent in March of 184-2, told the editor she could not pay her the $ 3 0 0 per year salary she had earlier agreed upon. However, Emerson agreed to edit the "starveling” Dial with the assistance of Thoreau. Y et, Margaret F u ller by no means l e f t th e Dial scene. For Emerson's first issue she produced "Entertainments of the Past Winter," and "Notices of Haivthorne." Later she provided essays on such varied subjects as Tennyson, Canova, ballads, modern drama, and the s o c ia l p o sitio n o f women. Her review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales and Stories for Children emphasized the author's pro­ mise— that "great reserve of thought and strength not yet brought forward." She predicted Hawthorne eccentric and undignified old woman." The critic postulated that Sir Philip Sidney had found a middle road between the impulsive "real" of Bettina, and the suicidal "ideal" of Gunderode. Miss Puller's reference to Sidney is also indicative of her concern with the Renaissance con­ ception of literature. She developed in some detail the Renaissance analogy between poetry and a flower garden, hinting at a variety of-possible relations th e r e in . For example, the "weeds" in lit e r a t u r e , though a lesser species, still contained a beauty of their own. Poetry was for both MP and Philip Sidney an educator and nourisher, though as a lesser func­ tion it also served to delight. Life Without and L ife W ithin, p . 3 ^ » 38 would continue to grow in power and favor with the public. He had, the critic pointed out, great feel­ ing for individual character traits, and he success­ fully portrayed "familiar life." On the other hand, though his children's books were pleasing, they but inadequately demonstrated his powers. His genius needed to be more "fully aroused to its work."3^ In sum. Miss Fuller judged that Hawthorne had not yet attained that imaginative and organic approach to art that would eventually express his particular vision, as exemplified in her review o f Mosses from An Old Manse for the Tribune. 32 Tennyson she termed the songster of the age whose "ivory lute" helped dull the "wailing and sermon­ izing" in vogue by winning the reader to truths rather than forcing them upon him. Besides his melodic gifts, Tennyson had exceptional powers of picturesque repre­ sentation. Unlike most of his contemporaries he painted "eye-pictures, not mind-pictures." He suc­ ceeded in masterfully conveying color and scent por­ tio n s . She judged the p o e t's la te work as deeply thoughtful probings of "the secrets of the shaping spirit." It contained the sweetness of "the hived

SlThe Dial. Ill, 1 3 0 -I 3I. 32<3f. Chap. Ill, pp. 63-64, this paper. 39 honey of fine experiences. "33 Among the latter group she listed "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," and "Two Voices." In "Romaic and Rhine Ballads," beyond the fact that she again sought to introduce foreign works, the critic argued for the necessity of encouraging the development of a sense of history. The only fit interpreters of a nation's g>irit and tradition were those who had the "intellectual life to comprehend the past, life of the affections to reanimate it, life of faith to feel that this beauty is not dead but sleep- eth, while its spirit is reborn into new and dissimi­ lar forms. "34- In "The Modern Drama" she concluded th at the age was not conducive to dramatic genius. Drama-—at least English showed a "reflected light," not a

"spreading fire." Yet, all was not lost because, b y organic analogy, "beneath the roots of the drama lay seeds of the historic novel, the romantic epic, which were to take its place to the reader, and for the scene, the oratorios, the opera, and b a l l e t . "35

33lhe Dial. Ill, 273-2/6, 34-ibid. pp. 137-138. 3^Ibid. IV, 310. 4-0 Understandably, the Dial did not please com­ pletely either Its diverse-minded audience or contri­ b u tors. 36 Even Margaret F u ller would have lik e d to see the magazine "court some of the good fa n a tic s." Such a policy would have been more in keeping vd.th her spirit of ethical boldness and her principle of giving voice to a wide range of spokesmen. In this connection she strongly opposed Theodore Parker's attem pt to dominate D ia l p o lic y , knov/ing that the journal must air a variety of views in order to reflect the "spirit of the times." Transcendental- is t s : lik e Miss F u lle r and Emerson were n eith er prac­ tical nor militant idealists like Parker. Instead, they followed a view more like that of Coleridge, \*io advocated the beneficial "certain reaction of the Fine Arts on the more immediate u tilities of l i f e . " 37

36perry M iller, Consciousness in Concord (Boston: Houghton, M ifflin Company, 1958), pp. 11, 1 3 8 , 14-2-14-3. Although Emerson, according to M ille r , envisioned the Dial as a vehicle for "his young gen­ ius" Thoreau, MF was less than enthusiastic about the letter's verses and essays, some of vhich, like "The Service," she rejected claiming thevfailed to achieve organic form. Thoreau, suggests Miller, never really forgave MP's galling judgments of his earliest efforts, His "mosaic" method of composition, using refined excerpts from his stockpiled journals she found objec­ tionable, and, in M iller's words. "A writer of Thoreau's temper can forgive aryching except being found out!" 37T-/aiter J . B a te, C riticism : The Mai or Texts (New Yorks Ear co u rt, fer a ce~ an d dompa ny, 1952), pp. 386-387. 4-1 Margaret Fuller's increasingly inclusive atti­ tude toward the nature and purpose of literature even­ tually became a source of disagreement between her and some of the Transcendentalists. A strong indication of growing differences is plain from her letter of November 12, 184-3 to Emerson: VJhen I had the care of the 'Dial, ' I put in vhat those connected with me liked, even when it did not well please myself, on this principle, th a t I considered a magazine was meant to su it more than one class of minds. As I should like to have writings from you, Mr. Ripley, Mr. Parker, etc., so I should like to have writings recommended by each of you. I thought it less important that everything in it should be excel­ lent, than that it should represent with some fid elity that state of mind among us, as the name o f 'D ial ' said was i t s in ten t. So I did not regard your contempt for the long prosa on 'Transcendentalism-Progress, ' etc., any more than Parker's disgust at Henry Thoreau's pieces. You go on a d iffe r e n t prin ciple; you would have everything in it good according to your taste, which is. in my opinion, though admir­ able as far as it goes, far too narrow in its range. This is your principle; veryjwell! I acquiesce, just as in our intercourse I do not expect you to do what I consider justice to many things I prize... I do not care for your not liking the piece, because, when you wrote in your journal that I cared for talent as well as genius, I accepted the words written in dispraise as praise. I wish my tastes and sympathies still more expan­ sive than they are, instead of more severe. Here we differ.3o Miss Fuller's reply to Emerson is almost in the form of a defense of her own eclectic temperament. She

3^Higginson, op. c it.. pp.166-167. 4-2 would have variety and breadth of ideas in the Dial rather than a pinnacle of excellence. She would have literature relate to the life and mind of the times, crude thought they might be, provided it made an honest statement. In arguing for more expansive tastes and sym­ pathies, she doubtless had reference to Emerson's lack of involvement with the world, a condition she believed was to his aesthetic detriment. Not through progressive self-detachment, but through full-blooded identification vith life, the "natural"as well as the spiritual side of man, could the meaning of literature become apparent. The following lyric by îfergaret Fuller was quoted by T.W. Higginson as a comment on Emerson's isolation in Concord. The poet, it proposes, might well have benefitted from a change in surroundings. Gentle river. Stealing on so slowly ever. From reeds that grow thy bank along Easy would flow the pastoral song. But the s h e ll ’jJhich may be strong for lyric swell Or trumpet spire for oratory. Seek these mid the tritons hoary, VJhere an in c a lc u la b le wave ;Æ*ecks the war-ship ta ll and brave, Rushes up a mile-long strand. Hails the stars and spurns the land. Pushes back the noblest river Seeking in vain its love forever. There mightest thou find a shell Fit to be strung for strains of Delphian swell. ^3 In keeping with romantic thought, the critic believed a broader measure must be applied favorably to the uncultivated American scene, a measure inclu­ sive enough to account for the wild as well as the tame lite r a r y p la n ts. I t was no accident th at she acclaimed Festus for its portrayal of the irrational. She was aware and approved of the growing interest in a more realistic treatment of the "dark side" of man's inner life, differing here sharply with Emerson. Margaret Fuller agreed with a young poet Wio once told her, "Mr. E. is quite wrong about books... Literature is not merely a collection of gems, but a great system of interpretation.She came to allude repeatedly to a "mutual system of interpreta­ tion" in defining the nature and function of litera­ ture. Such a view, similar to Friedrich Von Schlegel's in Lectures on the History of Literature. Ancient and Modern, in terp rets lite r a tu r e as v ir tu ­ ally everything written, vdth belles-lettres serving as the most sensitve focal mirror of a society's character, beliefs, and ideals. Literature, thus broadly defined, enters in every %vay into the intel­ lectual life of man, and by corollary should be 4-0 studied in relation to general intellectual history.

39Hmerson (et a l ) . op. c i t . . I, 260-281. 40Bate, op. c it.. pp. 4-14--4-15. 44 When no longer editor of the Dial. Jfe,rgaret Fuller continued her "Conversations," tutoring, and visits to Brook Farm. Then, in May of 184-3 she began a trip through the Great Lakes region with James Freeman Clarke and his sister Sarah. The next May she completed her book of the journey vhich was entitled Summer on the Lakes.Although a commer­ cial failure, selling only 700 copies, Summer looked forv/ard to Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimck Rivers published eight years later. Wow, in the tradition of Madame Da Stael, Margaret Fuller turned from purely literary to social criticism, just as she was to do in Woman in the Nineteenth Century. This expansion of her cri­ tical office was in accord with her principle that literature and life were part of an organic whole; that Wiat shed light on one would inevitably illu ­ mine the other; that it was the critic's function to apprehend and to criticize aspects of life, as well as literature, to be involved in the social order in order to provide the impetus necessary for grovrth and change of an ultimately universal charac­ ter.

^■^-Hi g gins on, op. c i t . , p . 194-. In preparing Summer, MF m s probably the first woman ever to use Harvard C ollege L ibrary. A lle g e d ly , i t was on account of Summer that Horace Greeley hired MF to replace Albert Brisbane as literary critic on the Tribune. 4-5 Summer on the Lakes allowed Miss Fuller the opportunity to record her pungent sociological obser­ vations on the rapidly-developing Middle West. Many of her comments were based on her critical principle of judging a thing by standards relative to time and place instead of by meaningless precedents. Referring in Chapter II to the seeming monotony o f the f la t Plains country with its lack of scenic mountains and valleys, she stated, "It is always thus ^/dth the new form of l i f e ; we must learn to look at i t by i t s own standard," Though she spoke with distaste of the "mush­ room growth" in the West, she pointed out certain healthier virtues in its freer atmosphere. The new settler, "armed with patience," would not be disap­ pointed by the "rich sod." It was a question of his doing honor to the land. In the West people are not respected merely because they are old in years; people there have not time to keep up appearances in that way; vAien persons cease to have a real advantage in wisdom, knowledge, or enterprise, they must stand back and l e f those are o ld est in character 'go ahead,'...There are no banks of established respectability in which to bury the talent there; no napkin of precedent in which to v/pap i t . 4-2

^^Wade, Selected Writings of Margaret Fuller, pp. 70-71. 4-6 Much of the digressive narration, is devoted to a sympathetic treatment of the Indian the spoliation of his surroundings by the vulgar squatter, an outlaw from nature, "Their progress is Gothic, not Roman, and their mode of cultivation w ill, in the course of twenty, perhaps ten years, obliterate the natural expression of the country.Nor was she immune to the difficult lives of Indian and White wmen on the frontier. In a specific denunciation of their drud­ gery and melancholy, she declared that life in Inland America necessitated a new kind of education and new ways of thinking, especially for wmen, to w it: Methods copied from the education of some English Lady Augusta are as ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer as satin shoes — to climb the Indian mounds...Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the s o i l . 44- In evolving that "original growth," she urged. Literature should not be left to the mere literati; eloquence to the mere orator; every Caesar should be able to write his ovai commen­ t a r y ...45 Before moving to New York, tfergaret Fuller completed one last task. Expanding her July 1844

^3>îiiier, Margaret Fuller. p. 125. 44Higginson, op. cit.. p. 336. 45wade, op. c l t . « p. 95. 47 Dial article, "The Great Lawsuit," she made it into book length by November of that year. Published by Greeley and McElrath in February 184-5, the work entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century quickly sold, yielding Miss Fuller $85, which she considered proof 4-6 of an ample hearing for her thesis. Described as the "first considered statement of feminism in this country," Woman in the Nineteenth Centnry was widely read here and abroad.Testimoni­ als were offered to its message at women's rights con­ ventions in the l850s. Even Susan Anthony tried to find Margaret Fuller's grave in an act of homage to the courageous author. Nevertheless, the writer's broadly philosophical feminism soon became lost among more single-minded pursuits such as obtaining the franchise.For her view was a long one recognizing spiritual needs that far surpassed in difficulty of achievement, and therefore in ultimate importance, those political and economic rights, important as they were, which are now legalized feminine preroga­ tives. As George Eliot so succinctly pointed out in

46Higginson, op. c it.. p. 194. 47Jane Carlyle mentioned reading Woman in Chelsea. 48%atharine Anthony, Margaret Fuller (New York: Harcourt. Brace and Howe, 1920), pp. 80-81. M-8 the British publication, The Leader, the best things v/hich Miss Fuller wrote in Woman were "on the folly of ab so lu te d e fin itio n s of woman's nature and abso­ lute demarcation of woman's mission, William Cullen Bryant wrote in the Evening Post that although Woman's language was strong, "the thoughts it puts forth are so important that we should rejoice to know it read by every man and woman in America," Edgar Allan Poe termed the book "for­ cible, thoughtful, suggestive, brilliant and to a certain extent scholarlike," He found some of Miss Fuller's judgments subjective, but disavowed "the s i l l y condemnatory c ritic is m of the work which appeared in one of the e a r lie r numbers of the Broadway Journal," Ifrote Poes "That article ivas not W itten by myself, and y/as written by ray asso­ ciate, Mr. Briggs. Though much of Margaret F u lle r's "fame" in the past has rested upon her feminist declaration of

^9George E liot, "Margaret Fuller and Mary Wo11stonecroft," The Leader, VI (February 17 - September 2y, 185^5, Ffb. 290, 9 8 8 - 9 8 9 , Comparing MF and Mfery W ollstonecroft, Miss Eliot said: "One point on vÆiich they both write forcibly is the fact that, yiiile men have a horror of such faculty or culture in the other sex as tends to place it on a level with their own, they are, really in a state of subjection to ignorant and feeble-minded women... MF says, 'The English shopkeeper's ivife does not vote, but it is for her interest that the politician canvasses by the coarsest flattery,'" 49 Independence in Woman, as Perry Miller has emphasized, ■women's rights, in actuality, was but one part of a "comprehensive program of nineteenth century libera­ tion."^^ The book, which V.L. F arrington called Margaret Puller's "parting shot at a world that had done its best to stifle her," did shock the proper Bostonians with its uninhibited discussion of not only economic and p o litic a l equality for women, but also marriage, prostitution, and physical passion.How­ ever, although the critic's social philosophy y/as, like her critical principles, much broader than espousing a particular cause. Woman did, in fact, establish the philosophical basis for the freedoms now enjoyed by American women, largely unay^are of their debtw

^OEdmund Wilson. The Shock of Recognition, I (New York: GrosSet and Dunlap, 19?3), p. 147. At this time Poe had not developed his enmity toward MP. ^^M iller, The American T ranscendentalists. pp. 329 - 3 3 0 . ^^Parrington, op. c it., pp. 424-426. ^Bprancis E. Kearns, "Margaret Puller and the Abolition Movement," Journal of Historical Ideas. XXV, 120-127. A recent study has Indicated m!f^'s desire for a more rad ical form of lib e ra tio n than any recognized by the abolitionists. CHAPTER I I I

N0W YORK

In hiring l^rgaret Puller, Horace Greeley recog­ nized her value as a cultural status symbol to his paper, launched in 1841 as an organ for liberal V/hig opinion and a penny paper that appealed to ladies as T well as gentlemen. Miss Fuller's three feature articles per week, t^vo on literature and one on social questions, appeared on the front page of the Tribune 2 marked y/ith an asterisk. Many of her reviews dealt T,d.th current publications in France, England, and Germany, besides America, Sporadically she produced a column of political interest called "Items of Foreign G ossip." Boston opinion to the contrary, she liked New York and werking fo r Greeley^ Her p o sitio n on the Tribune allowed her to pursue one of her major criti­ cal aims in helping promote a higher level of cultural sophistication among her contemporaries through the introduction of European literatures. In her crusade against parochialism and insularity. Miss Fuller con­ stantly urged Americans to read the best in contem­ porary foreign writing.

iBrown, op. c it.. p. 75; Higginson, op. cit., p. 205. ^Helen McMaster, "Margaret Fuller As a Literary Critic," University of Buffalo Studies. VII (December, 1928), 66-Ô7. 3Miller, The American Transcendentalists, p. 187. 51 Moreover, she vras eminently qualified in this undertaking, Margaret Puller alone among the American critics of her day had the breadth of knowledge neces­ sary to deal with literatures ranging from the classics to the latest publications in Europe and America, Not one of them could natch her theoretical grounding in European critical thought, particularly that of the l 8 th and 1 9 th centuries,^ Early in her Tribune career she wrote a defense of the "common and daily purpose of literature" in an article entitled "English Writers L ittle Knovm Here." Literature, she stated, cannot and will not dispense with the prophecies of genius, but the healthy discharge of its function must not be disparaged for the sake of exalting genius. "TJhat is truly and forcibly said is valuable to literature though not highest as to origi­ nality of thought or form...for every fact is worth knowing and stating. Only we must not dy/ell too long on what is temporary, not give to wliat is but rela­ tiv ely good, absolute p ra ise ."

^Roland Burton, "Margaret Fuller's Criticism of the Find Arts," College English, VTj 18-23. Beyond her wide acquaintance with the leading ideas of Carlyle, Goethe, and De Stael, Mr. Burton asserts that MF was also familiar with the following authors and concepts; Lessings' expression of pain and transitory emotion; Novalis' identity of poetry with absolute reality; Reynolds' distinction between the Sublime and the Beau­ tiful; Rousseau's theory of emotional states evoked by natural beauty; Schiller's discrimination between naive and sentimental and between classic harmony and romantic discord; A.W, Schlegel's delimitation of boundaries betv/een fin ite and in f in ite a s p ira tio n . 52 This is the critical concept which underlay Margaret Fuller's Tribune work. It was, in essence, to give recognition to lesser literary productions, but in so doing to review them briefly, not judging them by the same standard as w rks of genius required or giving them the same "absolute" praise. Pointing out a class of ivriters half-way between geniuses and men of merely "healthy energy," the critic evaluated this group as important in three areas; (1 ) as an audience to genius; ( 2 ) as an interpreter to the multitude; and, (3) as a cultivated friend.^ These "lesser" writers, as well as the energetic men who had something valuable to say to their contemporaries she considered important enough to bring to the notice of the reading public, though she did not cri­ tic iz e them formally. Two strongly Transcendental overtones per­ meate this article. One is the repudiation of a con- cep"^ of ^polite letters" or the separation of litera­ tures for the few and many. The other is the assump­ tion that the scholar must act in relation to society, in this case, as "interpreter to the multitude." As Miss Fuller had long suggested, literature should not

5v/ade, OP. c i t . , pp. 230-231. 53 be considered as separate and apart from the active and committed lives of men. Hers was one of several attempts "to construe America's energetic atmosphere as congenial to the literary imagination" and encour­ age "an organic national literature,. .which...yrould faithfully show the imprint of American behavior, climate, institutions, and social values."^ In a review of the English poet William Thom, she declared that literature may be regarded as the "great mutual system of interpretation."? She fur­ ther contended that literature may be judged so as to "tolerate only yhat is excellent," or so as to value first the "degree of its revelation," and second the "perfection of form in which that revelation is expressed." She warned that the first mode of criti­ cism tended to hypercriticisra and pedantry, but the second, or genial mode, leaned toward "indiscriminate indulgence and a lev elin g of the b eau tifu l with what is merely tolerable." Ideally the two schools should be harmonized. Meany/hile, the genial mode had the lead, she noted, recognizing how much encouragement, rather than dis-

^Spencer, op. c it., pp. 182, 152. ^Margaret Fuller,. Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama, pp. 178-180, "jPoels of the People." 54 paragemant, would serve to strengthen the struggling Infant American literature. In a significant review of Emerson's Second Series of Essays, the critic gave high commendation to the poet's idealism, to his devotion to the "claims of individual culture in a nation which tends to lay such stress on artificial organization and external results ..." She evaluated him as a major influence on Ameri­ can letters, and "as an incentive to a nobler disci­ pline than the age in its general aspect appears to require."^ Perceiving a condition in Emerson's work simi­ lar to what T.S. Eliot termed "the dissociated sensi­ bility," she described it as "'underdevelopment,' or a want of expansion..." The poet had "raised himself too early to the perpendicular and did not lie along the ground long enough to hear the secret whispers of our parent life. We vriLsh he might be thrown by con­ flicts on the lap of mother earth to see if he would not rise again vdLth added p o w e r s ."9 Similarly, she had criticized Emerson's lack of "expansive" tastes in editing the Dial.^^

SMiller, Margaret Fuller, p. 197• 9lbid. p. 197.

10Gf. Chap. I I , pp. 41-43, th is paper. 55 Among her early reviews of foreign works was her criticism of the contemporary French novelists, Honore de Balzac, George Sand, and Eugene Sue, Here she spoke out for the historical-sociological method: "To read these or any foreign works fairly, the reader must understand the n atio n al circumstances under which they were written,"H Miss F u ller saw Balzac as the r e a lis t he ^vas, combining "the spirit of a man of science v/ith that of the amateur collector," "He has a keen sense of what­ ever is peculiar to the individual," she observed. "Nothing in modern romance surpasses the death-scene of Father Goriot, the Parisian Lear, in the almost immortal life \>i±th which the parental instincts are d isp lay ed ."12 Eugene Sue's atta c k on so c ia l abuses and human weaknesses y/as admirable, but MF judged his style too melodramatic and mechanical. She justly estimated that his yrorks, though important to his oy/n generation, would be fo rg o tten . 13 George Sand's personal and highly evocative style the critic likened to Rousseau's. Hoy/ever, the novelist's greatest difficulty lay in her being an

llWade, op. c it.. p. 3 1 1 . l^Fuller, Life Without and Life Within, p. 164, 13lbid. p. 167. 56 an incarnation of the "femme incomprise. "1*+ On the other hand, De Vigny had an exquisite prose style, but was too cloistered from reality to be effective. Of the French writers she concluded, "They all promise more than they can perform.Therefore, in keeping yvith her plan of criticism as stated in "English Vfriters L ittle Known Here, " she wrote a descriptive rather than an analytic review. In her companion piece to "Modern French Novel­ ists," called "Modern British Poets," the critic dealt xd-th nine leading poets of the Romantic Movement, four of vAiom were still alive at the time of her composi­ tion. She divided the poets into three groups:---- Singers: Campbell, Moore, Scott; Poets embodying the peculiar sufferings of their time: Crabbe, Shelley, Byron; and, Philosopher-Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. Although she found Campbell deserving of poetic acclaim, she could not justify the highest praise for him. Moore she located on a scale of

^^rown, on. cit.. pp. I3O-I3I, citing Woman in the Nineteenth Century. "Women who combine this organization with creative genius are very commonly unhappy at present." l5Fuller, Life Without and Life Within, p. 305» In this essay MF denied Balzac's genius because it did not agree vdth her definition that "genius is. in its nature positive and creative, and cannot exist where there is no heart to believe in the realities." It must be remembered that the ultimate reality for MF 57 achievement comparable to that of the musician-composer Rossini. Her evaluation of Scott differed from the "formidable Coleridgean view" in that she believed S c o tt's poetry ("Marmion" and "Lay of the Last Minstrel") useful historically in presenting pictures of particular epochs, and in revealing the character of the poet. His productions she termed "invaluable ;" they "must always hold a place in English history." "Much poetry has come doxm to u s ...o f the same nature; in xvhich, at least, moral conflict does not constitute the prominent in te re s t. Printing Wordsxvorth's and S helley's "Skylark" poems side-by-side, she illustrated her claim for Wordsxvorth's su p eriority. However, she pointed out Shelley's "fertility of fancy" and "sympathy with nature." She considered this extract of his work of special importance to readers in the United States, xghere his works had not been republished. In a later review of the American Edition of Shelley's xforks, Margaret Fuller saw in the poet what

ms the expression of an internal and spiritual real­ ity, not materialistic conospbions of positivists like Balzac. See Rene Wellek, The Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt. Brace and World, Inc., Iv56), p. 117. l^Fuiier, Papers on Art, Literature, and The Drama, p. 73» 58 she had seen in Korner an incarnation of his times, "a foreshowing of the weather of this day,"^? Though not of the ranlc of Dante or Shakespeare, she estim ated that Shelley xvas indeed a poet to be reckoned with. Posterity would assign Byron "no obscure place," wrote the critic. However, he would be classed beneath Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, even though his poems were important as "supplying materials for the history of opinion." 18 Unlike Byron, Scott, and Campbell, whose poetry depicted peculiar aspects of their times, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey believed "poetry was, must be, the expression of what is eternal in man's nature... the voice of Nature and of God, numanized by being echoed back from the understanding hearts of P rie s ts and Seers’" Yet, Wordsxrorth v/as the greatest poet of his day in spite of being a didactic poet.^9 Coleridge's greatness lay in. his psychological over­ tones, or "his suggestive power. "20

ITFuller, Life Without and Life Within, pp. 150, 152. 18 mP thought Byron a "bewildering Id e a lis t" whose moral perversion never obscured his intellectual powers though it might lower their aims. 19ldeally, MP followed the belief of the Schlegels and the German Romantic School th a t great poetic geniuses, "following spontaneous inclination have become favoritès of the people," not only the select few. 59 Margaret Puller said of /ordvrorth essentially •what she had said of Emerson that the truest kind of poetry was not philosophical poetry. Such verse was incomplete, failing to account for the whole nature of man. To achieve the dynamic tensions of great art, the artist must observe the principle of the reconciliation of opposites, since perfect poetry should "satisfy the intellectual and moral faculties no less than the heart and the senses."2^ There is little doubt that Miss Fuller ultimately believed in a harmonious ideal uni"ty of the sensual and spiritual side of human nature in true art and poetry in x-riiich 22 speculative reasoning was unnecessary. Margaret Fuller's reviews of both Robert Bro-wning and Elizabeth Barrett were inspiriting and commendatory,^^ She found Browning one of the most promising English poets of his day and a genius -who should be knovm to the American reading public. She noted especially his great originali-ty and his admir-

20Fuller, Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama, p . 90. 2lFuller, Life Without and Life Within, p. 22p,A. Braun, Margaret Fuller and Goethe (New York; Henry Holt and Company, 1911)» p. 81. 23puller, Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama, pp. 198-206, 207-221. 60 able poetic technique. From Bells and Pomegranates she selected "Pippa Passes" and "My Last Duchess" as outstanding examples of his art of dramatic and lyri­ cal sketches. In them were evident his convincing portraits of wmen andhis able rendering of human emotion. As examples of his satirical abilities she chose "The Cloister," "The Confessional," and "The Tomb at St. Praxed's." The c r i t i c awarded Miss B arrett high rank fo r her "vigor of conception," a quality lacking in many female writers. Yet, she also found the poetess could vie with any in her delicacy of perception, generally a woman ynriter ' s forte. Her ’/rork displayed great personal feeling tempered by reason and imagination, wrote MF. On May 12, 184-5 Margaret Fuller went to the defense of Charles Anthon's A System of Latin Versifi­ cation, a vrork designed to help bolster the diminish­ ing prestige of classical education. Her support was strongly indicative of the Enlightenment influence on her thought. Speaking of "the beautiful propriètylin referring back to the Greeks and Romans," she claimed that only pedantry and indolence made such reference dangerous. "The honey of Hymettus need not spoil the taste of the American wild bee, but only teach him not 61 to content himself with the coarsest flowers when he might do better." "Those nations brought some things to a perfec­ tion that the world will probably never see again, We must not lose the sense of their greatness because our practice is in a different sphere. For this it is that marks the true eclectic, that he need not cling to the form because he reveres the spirit that informed it, but treasures the seed of each plant that bloomed in the garden of Humanity, without demanding their fruit xvhen the season is past."2^ In other words, he had that "sense of history" she had declared necessary for the man who was to be a "fit interpreter of an era,"25 Furthermore, the eclectic could appre­ ciate the informing spirit in a xvork and, at the same time, accept the organic principle of the succession of form s. Learning by rule promotes only cheap imitation, wrote the critic. But, genius "will take pleasure in examining" the rules and benefit by becoming "more deeply familiar with the sense in which poetry has been written, by refining the taste and cultivating the ear," Her theèis was that the ideas thus gained

2 ^ ille r, Margaret Fuller, p. 106, 25cf, Chap, II, p. 39, this paper. 62 became a liv in g p art of genius, transmuted in each according to his own personal language and vision, shaped by the times, I'Jhereas "tra d itio n a l" form pre­ supposed a characteristic pattern or imitable plan, the eclectic, after studying the classics, assumed innate laws unifying his own work into an organic whole, not a preconceived "classical" form. Though Longfellow wanted such spontaneous, organic expression, the critic praised the poet as an editor and arbiter of literary taste in txvo reviews of his selections and translations. He:performed a desirable service in "promoting a taste for foreign literature even before his readers are aware of it," Describing his ballads as excellent imitations, she y/rote, "He has touched no subject where he has not done somey/hat that is pleasing.Longfellow was, in her eyes, a strong and significant cultural influ­ ence on American society,^?

26p^iier, Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama, pp. 326, 332, 3 3 3 . _ ^?R,W,B, Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1 9 5 5 ) , PP* 79-80. In this work Prof. Lewis suggests that Longfellow’s Havanagh contained two major elements in the newly emerging culture, the literary nationalist Kavanagh, and Churchill, the disciple of the old masters, Longfellow*s ironic recognition of this dichotomy in his own attitude, Lewis further adds, might very well be the reason the poet remained friendly to MB’ even after she said "he views life through the windows of literature," 63 In spite of the fact that Miss Puller soon lost favor v/ith both Edgar Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, her reviews of both of them, generally speaking, were generous, revealing an objectivity pQ almost non-existent among critics of her day. ° In her Dial articles on Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales and Stories for Children, she had predicted that the author would continue to grow in power and favor vith the public. Now, in the Tribune. she held a similarly commendatory view of his work. Perceiving the psychological implications in Mosses from An Old Manse, with its "fearless scrutiny of the secrets of the heart," she said Hawthorne had captured the "fam­ iliar yet pensive sense of the spiritual or demonia­ cal influences that haunt the palpable life and com­ mon walks of men, not to be apprehended by many except in results." Hawthorne's yfork xvas "a record of objects and influences unique in our country and tim e,"29 Although she found P o e's poetry in the main fragmentary, Margaret Fuller praised his Tales abun­ dantly for their author's invention and originality. And, since she found him better at prose than poetry.

28Broxm, on. cit. « pp. 64-66. See this refer­ ence for a description of Haxvthorne's relationship v/ith I"IF, his characterization of Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance, and his maligning of her character in his American Notebooks, 64 she urged him to yrrlte a longer "metaphysical" tale to display his true talents, "No form of literary activity has so degenerated among us as the tale," she wrote. She considered the average short story no longer organic and spontaneous, but crude and calcu­ lated. Yet, Poe's stories were refreshing, the "fruit of genuine observations and experience." He had a vigorous narrative style and created fantastic but meaningful effects. Even his failures, she said mag­ nanimously, "are those of an intellect of strong fiber and well-chosen aim ,"30 She took exception to Poe's critical ferocity, however, "We have joined the gentle, affirmative school," she vmote, "Yet vm are not blind to the uses of severe criticism, especially in a time and place so degraded by venal and indiscriminate praise as the pre­ sent," She feigned surprise at finding inaccuracies in Poe's diction, when, as a "professed critic," he yjas "of all the band the most unsparing of o t h e r s , "3^ She also dismissed Poe's charge of plagiarism against Longfellow. Longfellow did not consciously

^^Wade, on. c i t . . p. 373- 3Qlbid, pp. 396-397. 31lb id . p . 401, 65 imitate any writer, but failed to develop his own style, maintained Miss Fuller. Early in the winter of 1845-46, the critic moved from the Greeley "Farm" on the East River to rooms on Amity Place. From there she had but a short walk to the soirees of Anna Lynch, hostess to a mixed group of authors, critics, artists, v/its, and dilet­ tantes often attended by Edgar Poe, xÆiose description of "The Literati of New York City" reads like a roll- call at Miss Lynch's,^^ Although Poe appeared pleased by the Tribune critic's favorable reviews of his work, he admitted dislike for the "Emerson and Hudson Coterie" in his series of articles on the "Literati," And, after becoming involved in retrieving Fanny Osgood's let­ ters from Poe, Ifergaret Fuller too came in for bitter denunciation from him as an "inconsistent old maid" who belonged to the "Goethean, aesthetic, eulogistic" school of criticism.Poe was omitted from Ifergaret Fuller's essay "American Literature," the same piece in xAiich she piqued the ego of James Russell Loxvell.

^^Brown, op. c i t . . p. 8 6 . 33j,v;, 0Strom (ed.). The L etters of B.A. Poe. II (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1948), 335» 394, 427-428; Also see Brown, OP. c i t . . pp. 85-89. 66 Edgar Poe probably attacked "American Litera­ ture" as a "silly and conceited piece of Transcenden­ talism" partly on personal grounds# He did, however, hold differing views from the Trans c end ent al i s t s on the subject of originality. Poe saw originality as developing from the subjection of Feeling and Taste to Reason, in contrast to the Transcendental concept of literary self-reliance developing out of an author's felt experience. As Benjamin Spencer has pointed out, Poe's desired "contrived novelty" was not a new representation of universal or national themes. Such a view had little relation to that con­ cept of the imaginative perception and expression of reality held by Margaret Fuller and the Transcenden- t a l i s t s . 34 During her last year on the Tribune. Miss Fuller, at the request of Evert Duyckinck, who ^vas an in flu e n tia l editor a t Viley and Putnam and the acknoxfledged leader of the "Young America" literary movement, collected some of her y/rltings for Duyckinck to publish in a work e n title d Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama. This publication represented another of the critic's efforts to stimu-

34gpencer, op. c it.. pp. 196-197, 215, 269-270. 67 late the production of native literature*However, that it was a somewhat disappointing venture for MF is evidenced in a letter from her to Duyckinck, the letter later being printed in the Bulletin of the Nexv York Public L ibrary. December, 1901. Besides indicat­ ing displeasure at the number of deleted essays she had wished included in Papers, she accused Duyckinck of a "purely capricious manner" of selection. In the Preface to Papers she sought to défine some of her underlying critical principles. This, too, met with unfortunate handling. Her sentence, "I feel v/ith satisfaction that I have done a good deal to extend the influence of German and Italian literature among ray com patriots," James R ussell Loxmll made the theme of h is s a tir ic a l "Fable fo r C ritic s" in 1848* On the other hand, MF xvas apparently one of Walt Whitman's most esteemed critical oracles in the l840s. He reviev/ed her Papers on Art. Literature, and The Drama for the Brooklyn Eagle (November 9, 1846) voicing the same distaste for "cast-off literary fashions" she mentioned in th at vrork, Benjamin

35perry M iller, The: Raven and the ^‘/hale (New York: Har court. Brace and (Company. 1956), pp. 170- 171. In 1844 Duyckinck xvrote in his diary that Summer on the Lakes v/as the only genuinely American booS he Had published. B^McMaster emphasizes th a t MF's writings have never been adequately edited or collected and that some of her most import essays can only be read in the Tribune files of 1845-46, 68 Spencer noted that "her Transcendental plea for a literary manifestation of the Idea underlying American life" made a definite impression on '^hitman. In later years the poet made explicit references to her pros­ pectus for an American literature; in his opening sentence in an essay entitled "Criticism;" and, in his last years when he wished to inform his countrymen that a mass of publications alone did not confirm a truly American literature*3? Miss Puller's only original vrork vn/itten exclusively for Papers was "American Literature; Its Position in the Present Time and Prospects for the Future*" It is usually considered her most important xvork, and, as such, reflects the grovrth of her criti­ cal perspective from that of Boston Transcendentalism to a more cosmopolitan outlook on the position of the arts in America.38 Despite the fact the v/ork suffers from the cri­ t i c 's hasty composition, "American L iteratu re" is a courageous and judicious evaluation of her contempor­ aries. Her judgments have proved remarkably just, although she did not have the advantage of historical perspective in her analysis. Many of the writers she considered did their best work after her death.

37Spencer, op. c it.. pp.220 - 2 2 1 . 36Miller, Margaret Fuller, p. 228. 69 The works of Charles Brockden Brown she cor­ rectly esteemed as important prototypes in American literary history. She commended Brov/n's successful adaptation of the Gothic novel to the American-scene. Pointing out his penetrating insight into "the oblique course of human nature," the terrifying compulsion psychoses of Carwin and Wieland she showed an uncommon perception of the d irection of literature.Discounting any evaluation of him as a mere melodramatist, the critic wrote that his "darkest disclosures" were not "hob-goblin shows, but precious revelations. Although she estimated that only Brov/n, Irving, and Cooper were to be compared to English n o v e lists, in the interest of realism she mentioned minor novel­ ists like Miss Sedgwick and Mrs. Kirkland as chroni­ clers of rapidly disappearing phases of American l i f e . Her naming of Sylvester Judd's Margaret. A Tale of the Real and Ideal, as the herald of a new school of native fiction, v/as accurate in that Judd did, in fact, anticipate Haxvbhorne, whom Miss Fuller considered the most promising fiction v/riter of the day.

39see The American Novel and I t s Tradition in v/hich Richard Chase suggests how American w riters have- attempted to resolve their cultural contradictions in a kind of melodramatic, or Manichean, all-questioning, fable, romance, or idyl, cloaked in an abstract real­ ity of morality and metaphysics. 40puller, Papers on Art. L iteratu re , and The Drama, pp. 322-326. 70 Judging the representative American poets, she found the list "amazingly scanty," Bryant headed the list although his range was limited, Emerson should have been first for his beauty of melody, thought, and expression, except that "his poems are mostly philosophical, vhich is not the truest kind of poetry?^ Longfellow v/as artificial and imitative because of excessive and superficial "culture v/hich he has derived from an acquaintance with the elegant litera­ ture of many nations and men, out of proportion to 42 the experience of life v/ith himself," Lov/ell she said v/as "absolutely wanting in the true spirit and tone of poesy.. .his verse is stereotyped; his thought sounds no depth." He was a reformer more than a poet. In spite of the fact that she suffered cen­ sure for her scathing comments on Lowell and Longfellow, and for her selection of Cornelius Matthews and W.E, Channing as re p re se n ta tiv e young American p o ets, she did please some of the more nationalistic literati in her audience. One reviex'/er of Papers x/rote, "Here is a c r i t i c . . . th a t teaches us that the theatre needs *a true, genuine, invincible Americanism.'" He further asserted that

^^Miller, Ifergaret Fuller. pp. 239-240. MF did see symptoms of a national cultural awakening , however, in the teachings of Emerson and Channing. 42ihid. p. 229. 71 Margaret Fuller proclaimed the message of both pro­ phets of nationalism , Emerson and Matthews.^8 There is no denying Margaret Puller's consider­ able contribution to the cause of developing American letters.44 in fact, as the above statement serves to indicate, her efforts helped bridge a xd.de^p between the Transcendental idea of American Genius and New York's "Young America." Although Boston and New York xvere blatant rivals in this period, the aforementioned reviexver graciously saw f i t to combine both Emerson and Matthews in the same thought and under the same aegis, thanks to the Tribune critic. Beyond her excellent estimates of the leading and lesser figures in American letters, and her expres­ sion of confidence in the groxvth of American genius in "American L iteratu re ," Miss F uller displayed fa ith in the pox/er of the press in the "work of diffusion" a prophetic commentary in lig h t of the ro le of journalism in American literary history. America had become for her a far more expansive ideal than the embodiment of individual Americans she had knox'/n in parochial Nex/ England. To realize that cultural ideal in which social and literary aims x/ere interrelated, Margaret Fuller came to believe that American literature needed more than the literati. In

^i^iiiier. The Haven and the lifhale, pp. 170-171- Miller conjectured the notice xvas more in the style of Nilliam Alfred Jones than Evert Duyckinck. 72 New York she had gained an appreciation of the diverse potential of the American artist and his plight in attaining self-realization. For this reason her cri­ ticism was g en ial, generous, and courageous enough to admit the sometimes seemingly astigmatic views deline­ ated in indigenous compositions. In time and from such efforts, she "believed there would issue a vigorous, new species of literature, for "we cannot have expression until there is something to he expressed. "45

)|i[. M iller, The American Transeendentalists. p. 188. 45 Miller, Margaret Fuller . p. 232, CHAPTER IV

EUROPE

During her residence in Europe, Margaret F uller produced little or no literary criticism per se. She did, however, meet numerous European lite r a r y figures about vjhom she wrote dispatches to the Tribune. Although these are of slight value in further elucidat­ ing her critical thought, the material included in the chapter which follows does evidence Miât influences certain personages, in the main literary, had upon her during her European stay, or, as in the case of Carlyle, for instance, far antedating it.

******

On August 1, 184-6 Margaret Fuller fulfilled a life-long ambition in sailing for Europe. She had been given a leave of absence from the Tribune on the condition that she act as foreign correspondent for the paper possibly the first such position in Amer­ ican history. As a result she sent 33 dispatches to the newspaper during her four years in Europe. There, moreover, she vra.s far from an unknovm quantity, her vrork already having been read vdth interest and having led to journalistic offers in both England and France. 74- Arriving in Liverpool, Miss F u ller was appalled at the poverty, squalor, and "shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness," She early noted that in England, unlike America, it was not "really possible for one to grow.Her first dispatches written on August 23 and

27 from Ambleside, Westmoreland, sketched meetings with the venerable Wordsworth and H arriet Martineau. MF was pleased to find that Wordsworth spoke v/ith more liberality about the Corn Laws than she had expected, and that he was apparently opening his mind more to p the needs of the real world. From Edinburgh in Letters III and TV, Margaret Fuller told of the local reverence for Scott and Burns, each of whom, she said, "acted the important part assigned him by destiny vdth a wonderful thoroughness and completeness. Scott.. .caught the meaning [of ancient Scottish heroism and poetry] just as it v/as about to pass away from us for ever. Burns is full of the noble, genuine democracy..."3 Also, in her

iHigginson, on. c it.. p. 224-; Miller, Margaret Fuller, p. 2^6. ^Yet, to Emerson MF wrote someviiat to the con­ trary that Wordsworth heard "not the voice which cries so loudly from other parts of England, and will not be stilled by sweet, poetic suasion, or philosophy, for it is the cry of men in the javTS of destruction." ---- Memoirs. I l l , 8 3 . 3 sf. F u lle r, Papers on A rt. L ite ra tu re , and The Drama, pp. 73-7^. “ 75 Edinburgh dispatches she spoke of meeting for some hours v/ith the urbane and eloquent De Quineey, so opposite in manner fhom what she termed the "rapid- slang Vivian-Greyish style, current in the literary conversation of the day."^ The meetings between Thomas Carlyle and Ifergaret Fuller, arranged through Emerson, were momen­ tous ones, sealing at last the judgment of each parti­ cipant upon the other.^ On the first occasion they met she v/as delighted with her host, he being in a "sweet humor," "singing his great full sentences" like stanzas "of a narrative ballad." At their second meet­ ing, the critic found Carlyle’s haranguing destructive rather than constructive; the Siegfried of England, she called him. Yet, she acknowledged his extreme importance to his times. I have not yet spoken of one of our benefactors, Mr. Carlyle, vhom I saw several times. I approached him with more reverence a fte r a l i t t l e experience of England and Scotland had taught me to* appreciate the strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions vtiich he more than any man, or thousand men, indeed, he almost alone, has begun to throw do^vn. Wherever there v/as fresh thought, generous hope, the thought of Carlyle has begun the work. He has tom off the veils from hideous fa c ts ; he has burnt av/ay fo o l­ ish illusions; he has av/akened thousands to know v/hat it is to be a man, that we must live, and not merely pretend to others that we live.o

^Emerson (et al), op. c it., III, 84—85. 5john Slater (éd.). The Correspondence of 76 Carlyle, for his part, grew to have more and more admiration for Emerson's "citizen of the world." On December 18, he wrote to Emerson that Margaret Fuller had been welcomed and was found to be "a high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in speech. A sharp subtle intellect too; and less of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in her writ­ ings." Again, v/riting to Emerson on March 2, 184-7 he called MF an "excellent soul," praised her Papers, which he termed the "undeniable utterances...of a true heroic mind; altogether unique, so far as I know, among the ’/riting Women of this generation; rare enough too, God Icnows among the Writing Men. She is very narrow, sometimes; but she is truly high; hon­ our to Margaret, and more and more good-speed to her."? Through Carlyle Margaret F uller met Giuseppi Mazzini, then living in London and a contributor to William and ^iary Howitt's The People's Journal. This

Emerson and Carlyle (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1964-), Letters of July 4-, 1839; July 15, 184-6; July 31, l84p; March 2, 184-7; August 9, 184-9; July 28, 1851; May 7, 1852. ^Miller, Margaret Fuller. p. 257. ?Slater (ed.), op. c it.. Letters of October 8, 184-6; December 18, 184-6; March 2, 184-7. 77 introduction v/as probably one of the events of most significance in the critic's European career. Mazzini ■won her to his cause of freedom for Italy from the first, so that it ultimately became one of her main preoccupations as she turned more and more from the arts to purely social criticism, in the manner of Madame De Stael.® On May 7, 184-7 she wrote the following letter to V7.H. Channing illustrating her devotion to the revolu­ tionary idea. Earlier in February she had found her meeting with the Polish republican exile-poet Mickievn.cz deeply inspiring. They had become fast friends, she later in Home concerning herself vrith his plans for the liberation of I ta ly . 9 I write not to you about these countries, of the famous people I see, of magnificent shows and places. All these things are only to me an illu­ minated margin on the text of my inward life. Ear­ l i e r , they would have been more. Art is not icpor- tant to me now. I like only v/hat little I find that is transcendently good...I take interest in the state of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them. I see the future dawning ; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But I like no Fourierists...Still, they serve this great fu tu re which I sh a ll not live to see. I must be born again.10

^One of Madame De Stael's last works, like Margaret Puller's, %vas also an account of revolution. ^Emerson (et a l ) , op. c i t . . I l l , 129-130* ]-%bid. p. 182. 78 In wintry Paris Margaret Puller accomplished her famous meeting with George Sand, whom she discov­ ered to be an ardent, prolific, and electrifying genius who had "bravely acted out her nature." Madame Dudevant spoke as she wrote, picturesquely and often quite pointedly, all the while smoking "her little cigarette." She emanated her great energy and courage needed in holding her place in the literary and social world of France. Miss Fuller termed her latest i\iorks, Teverino and Mare au Diable, original and inventive. Her real tribute to such feminine genius had, however, been published in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in a statement characterizing the writer as w e ll. Such beings as these, rich in genius, of most tender sympathies, capable of! hilgh virtue and a chastened harmony, ought not to find themselves, by birth, in a place so narrow, that, in breal^:- ing bonds, they become o u tlaw s.12 From Paris Mss Fuller also paid homage to Rousseau after viewing his manuscripts in the Chamber of Deputies. She avowed his position as "precursor of a l l we most p r iz e ," d esp ite h is "madness" and "detours through villainous places." "There is none," she vjTote, "who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold ; they are too present v/ith

^^Mller, Margaret Fuller, pp. 264—265. l^Bro^-m, op. c i t . , p. 130. 79 us; but he who thinlcs really must often think v/ith Rousseau, and learn of him even more and more: such is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd of those rays of whose heat they c o m p la in ,"^3 Here, once again, the critic stated her belief th a t genius v/as a lav/ unto i t s e l f , and th at judgments of the achievements of genius should be distinguished from purely moral judgments. The driving force of geniuses like Rousseau, who provided many significant ideas for social grov/th, v/as generally misunderstood by the great masses, she declared. Though the benefi­ ciaries of his works, they too often saw genius as a miscreant rather than a positive force in the universe. More clues to her active sympathizing v/ith the quickening Italian struggle are revealed in Letters XV and XVI. In them she wrote that modern Italian literature "is...surprisingly rich in tokens of talent, i f v/e consider the circumstances under v/hich it strug­ gles to exist." Although she called Manzoni one of the fev/ v/riters of high rank, she admitted that his v/orks no longer re fle c te d h is age and were rejected by "Young I ta ly ," who needed "a more fervent hope, a more active faith. She is right," concurred the critic.

^3Miiier, Margaret Fuller. pp. 268-269. l^Margaret Fuller, ^ Home and Abroad (Boston: Roberts B rothers, 1874-), pp. 234—235; 236-237• 80 On January 10, 184-8, Miss Fuller in Letter XXI wrote a description of the work and trials of American artists living in Italy, i.e., Luther Terry, Thomas Hicks, Christopher Cranch, Thomas Crawford, Horatio Greenough, and Hiram Powers. In opposition to those narrow nationalists, concerned only v/ith American p re stig e, who said American a r ti s ts should re tu rn to America because their landscapes painted in Italy dis­ played "want of familiarity with Nature," she exhorted: But, friends. Nature wears a different face in Italy from what she does in America.,.it is very glorious* 'Ve thought it v/as the aim of Art to reproduce all forms of Nature, and that you would not be sorry to have tra n sc rip ts of v/hat you have not always round you. America Art is not necessarily a reproduction of American N ature.15 More than a year later, in Letter XXIX, the cri­ tic said she v/as afraid the enthusiasm about Hiram Povrers* Greek Slave statue v/as only "drawing-room rap­ ture and newspaper echo." "Genuine enthusiasm," she declared, "hov/ever crude the sta te of mind from which it springs, always elevates, always educates; but in the same proportion talking and vrriting for effect stultifies and debases. I shall not judge the adorers of the Greek Slave, but only observe that they have not kept in reserve any higher admiration for v/orks even nov/ extant, which are, in comparison with that statue, v/liat that statue is compared v/ith any v/eeping marble on

l5Fuller, on. cit.. pp. 278-279. 81 a common monument,Here Margaret Puller has again employed the p rin cip le, as formulated in "Three Classes of Literature," that one must not judge lesser works according to the same standards as works of genius, nor give such inferior v/orks the same absolute p ra is e .1 ? Meanwhile she had married Giovanni Ossoli, an impoverished Roman nobleman of republican sympathies, given birth to a son, Angelo, and returned to Home as a deeply-committed member of the Republican party, In February 184-9 the Roman Republic was pro­ claimed. On April 25, French troops seized Civita Vecchia, and on April 30, they began to lay siege to Rome. That same day, Garabaldi's troops prepared to resist to death and Margaret Puller Ossoli was named regolatrice of the hospital for the vroimded Roman sol­ diery. Despite its brave defense, Rome fell July 4-, 184-9. The Ossoils fled to Florence where the c r itic attempted to finish her manuscript on the history of the Roman revolution before returning to America, On May 17, 1850, Margaret Fuller and her new family set s a il for Nev; York on the E lizabeth, a nev/ Yankee mer­ chantman, freighted v/ith Italian marble. Misfortune

l?Cf. Chap. I l l , pp. 51-53, th is paper. 82 soon struck. First the captain of the ship died of smallpox and was buried off Gibraltar; then the infant Angelo was stricken i/ith the disease, only gradually recovering. On July 19, 1850, while approaching New York, the Elizabeth ran aground in a gale off Fire Island, In a matter of twelve hours the ship broke up. Her native shore but several hun­ dred yards ai/ay, Margaret Fuller and Ossoli went down in a ship carrying the materials to help satisfy America*s taste for the sublime.

l&Leona Hostenberg, "Margaret Fuller*s Roman Diary," Journal of Modern History, XII, 209-220, c it­ ing diary entry, January 6, 184-9; Fuller, ^ Home and Abroad, pp. 351-353. CHAPTER V

A GENIAL SYSTEM OF CRITICISM*

Among the many critics interested in the develop­ ment of a native lite r a tu r e , Margaret F uller ivas one of the few to recognize that almost v/ithout exception literary nationalism was concerned vdth American things (the frontier, the wilderness, the Indians) rather than with ideas. Even Cooper sav/ by 1834- th a t American "things" were in su ffic ie n t to produce American l i te r a ­ ture and said he v/as switching to American ideology. Although the theory of associ-ationisra did justify Ameri­ can settings, American critics generally during the nineteenth century failed to perceive a nev; and basic philosophy aroung which a writer might vrork his material.^ The American idea must manifest itself before the American genius can express it, declared Margaret Fuller.

*In her thesis, "Margaret Fuller As a Literary C ritic ," U niversity of Buffalo Studies. VII (December, 1 9 2 8 ), Helen McMaster claimed that MP*s criticism is not idiosyncratic because it successfully relates the theories of Carlyle, Goethe, and De Quincey. I should further like to point out that the critic's eclectic modus operand! not only combined the theories of the above three, but also was greatly influenced by Coleridge, De Stael. and the German Romantics to an extent which has yet to be proved. Moreover, my the­ sis goes beyond McMaster by indicating Miss F u lle r's increasing interest in realism, especially in evidence in her many pronouncements on the relation between l i f e and lite r a tu r e . IS h re ll, OP. cit.. p. 21. 84- In lamenting the sad effect of misusing Indian lore in feeble attempts to conjure up an artificially romanti­ cized native literature, the critic composed the fol­ lowing doggerel: American romance is somev/hat stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale. Wampum and calumets and forest dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary.^ Her ideas for an independent American litera­ ture did not include cutting off European ties. From her wide and deep acquaintance with foreign litera­ tu re s, esp ecially the German Romantics, she believed that infusions of other cultures would be of incalcul­ able b e n e fit to the enrichment of America in forming her democratic literature. Further, she felt the ger­ minal s tr a in from Continental thought would help to free American v/r it ing from continued English domina­ tion. 3 She urged for the arts, as she practiced in her ov/n criticism, that selecting and combining of the usable good of other places and times, if need

2 Spencer, op. c i t . . p. 203. 3jbid. pp. 191j 214—215; Peter Du Ponceau of Philadelphia offered a specific proposal to brealc Am erica's dependence on England by forming foreign literary alliances. He reported a successful inter­ change of books and papers with Germany and France in the I 8 3 OS, confident in this manner that American a u th o rs, lik e bees, "could produce the most delicious literary honey." 85 be. "Art is nature, but nature new-modelied, condensed and harmonized." Her works, in great part, represent the attempt to write criticism, providing a "fair and philosophical" investigation, based on standards, eclectic though they were, instead of sentiment.^ At the mid-point of her New York career, the critic was to declare that a genial system of criticism had the lead for the present.^ Although she recognized two modes of criticism, one utilizing an ideal standard of perfection in which works were judged against the best of their kind, and the other, which she called a genial system, in which all natural forms have beauty "if their law and purpose be understood," ultimately she believed the best of criticism in the future would combine the best elements of both modes.^ Margaret Fuller believed genius had nothing to fear from lesser talents. In fact, she thought it only stood to gain from the encouragement of all forms of endeavor in American arts and letters. In her view, only from such a genial climate of opinion would the full-fledged American genius finally develop. This philosophy of criticism v/as a far cry from

^Abrams, op. cit., p. 115, citing Biogranhia Literaria II, 85T ------5ln an essay entitled "On the Principles of Genial Criticism," written to review the works of his friend Washington Allston, Coleridge emphasized, as did MF, the marked influence of the fine arts on every­ day lif e . 86 from the "tomahawk" system of personal abuse which v/as practiced by many editors and critics of the day. As an alternative, the Moral U tility School of the gen­ teel critics busied itself in defending the faith of an "official" code of moral righteousness, whose only contribution to literature was to make it pretentious and anemic. These kinds of criticism v/ere attacked by Miss Fuller in "A Short Essay on Critics," in which she demanded provocative reviews by "thinking men, not school masters or pleaders."? Critics should not be "sieves and drainers," she wrote, but should give stimulus to the sympathies of "earnest inquirers" as v/ell as "voice to the objec­ tions." The critic should not tell a reader vhat to think about books, but what he, the critic, "read in them." In other words, the critic, in order to inter­ pret literature should offer nev; thoughts, not mouth time-v/orn moral or nationalist platitudes.® Not didacticism and deference, but frank and open discus­ sion "alone can make the critic our companion and friend," she wrote in "A Short Essay on Critics."

^Brovm, on. c i t . . p. 116. ?The only tv/o postulates Coleridge considered necessary in understanding his genial system were: "the first, that the reader v/ould steadily look into his ov/n mind to knov/ whether the principles stated are ideally true; the second, he look at the works or parts of the v/orks mentioned, as illustrating ot exem­ plifying the principle, to judge whether or how far it has been realized." 87 By the time she had arrived at the point of writing "Three Glasses of Literature" for the Tribune. Margaret Puller v/as convinced that "gentlemen and scho­ lars," vrfio produced a class of literature "midv/ay between geniuses and men of merely healthy energy," were invaluable to the production of great literature as well. This "middle" class of v/r iters, functioning as "interpreters," "audiences," and "cultivated friends," served genius and also performed the "common and daily purposes" of literature.9 Miss Puller sav/ that only a small part of lit­ erature has a permanent value. Hov/ever, she also recognized the role of the larger, temporary part, if "said fully and pertinently. " Lest there be any con­ fusion as to her meaning, she issued a i/arning to cri­ tics concerning their evaluation of both kinds of lite ra tu re , "Only we must not dwell too long on what is temporary, not give to v/hat is but relatively good, absolute praise. Her comprehensive critic, as described in "A Short Essay," v/as not merely the classic critic v/ho

American Quarterly Review, II (September, 1827 ), 3 1 , where an example of strid e n t nationalism occurred in a review of the novel Yorktown, in which the critic said "every nation ought...to have a litera­ ture of its ov/n. ..to the support of the national honour."

9Wade, op. c i t . , pp. 23O-23I .

lOlbid. p. 2 3 0 . 88 tested artists by applying rules believed to embody unchangeable laws governing art. As Miss Puller care­ fully pointed out, the comprehensive critic must first judge a work in accord v/ith its ov/n laws of being. Or, as she termed the process, he must f i r s t be apprehen­ sive, entering into the nature of the work in order to understand i ts form and content. F inally, the compre­ hensive critic, like her lesser apprehensive critic, reproduced the work he examined "bearing witness of the genial sympathies of nature." 11 But, the comprehensive critic must still evalu­ ate the work. His final step in judging is, after "having ascertained his [the artist's) design and the degree of his success in fulfilling it," to estimate the relation of the v/ork to the best of its kind, or genre, as to informing idea and d e ta ils . This compara­ tive evaluation told "what the v/ork is not, as v/ell as v/hat it is," wrote the critic, The ideal standards she used for her criteria v/ere the highest achievements of the great geniuses in their ov/n particular art form, in literature, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe; in art, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Titian; in music, Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Mozart.

TlMiller, Margaret Fuller, p. 65. IZibid. p. 70. 89 Although she utilized the test of sincerity, it v/as not a major criterion. Nor v/as spontaneity, or self-reliance, or originality. For, although she agreed that originality emphasized the value of the uniqueness of genius as opposed to the disciplines of Taste, by no means did Margaret Fuller accept autistic subjectiv/ism as an approach to either art or criticism. Thus whatever is truly said and forcibly said is valuable in literature as in life, though itâ pretensions be not the highest as to originality of thought or form. Individuality is sufficient, for every f&ot is worth knovving and sta tin g . 13 Certain national changes needed time to take place in order to allov; the natural flowering of Amer­ ican genius. She enumerated these prerequisites in "American Literature," as 1 ) a more complete fusion of races; 2 ) a more equal appreciation of intellectual and moral as v/ell as political freedom; 3 ) a more stable national economy, at which time material exploitation v/ould cease to occupy all the American mind to the exclusion of the "higher depart­ ments of man's existence." It is interesting to note that in these prere­ quisites Miss Fuller was dealing with tv/o modern psy­ chological principles necessary to aesthetic endeavor,

13v/ade, op. c i t . , pp. 230-231» 90 In 1) and 2) she perceived the need for the sharing of psychic level in order to achieve aesthetic communica­ tion. IVhile in 3)» she expressed the idea of psychic d ista n c e , which is the recognition th at a e sth e tic i l l u ­ sion requires, as Kant discovered, a detachment from the workings of pure reason. 14- Applying the organic principle of unity in vari­ ety to the character of American life which shaped its literature, the critic envisioned a "golden age" when diversities would be idally harmonized. "May there not be a mediation, rather than a conflict, between piety and genius? Greek and Jew, Ita lia n and Saxon, are surely but leaves on one stem, at last,"^^ Understanding th a t a new society would create a new art and artist, she greeted v/armly the vital poetry from the lower classes. Their vrork v/as an example of the diffusion of "true" education, she proclaimed. The mind of the time has detected the truth that as there is nothing, the least, effected in this universe which does not somehov/ represent the whole which it is again the v/hole scope and effort of

l^rn st Kris. Psychoânalvtic Explorations in Art (New York: Internationkl Üniversities Press, Inc., 1 9 5 2 ), pp. 255-256. "Nov/ the potential of a ^mbol contributes to a specifically aesthetic experience only i f the in te rp re ta tio n of the symbol evokes the resour­ ces of the primary process. It is a commonplace that communication, of whatever sort^ requires a sharing of interests, knowledge, and experience. V/hat is being said here is that aesthetic communication requires as v/ell a sharing of psychic level." 91 human intelligence to do*. «Thus it is seen that all a man needs for his education is to take what­ soever lies in his way to do, and do it with his might, and think about it with his might, too.I d Having dravm on so many diverse sources, and having combined them together v/ith her own acute insights, to further an understanding of the nature and needs of the American literature of her day, Margaret Puller can be credited with creating a body of critical thought of estimable worth to her contem­ poraries and to posterity. By introducing foreign authors and their works; by spealdLng for an organic, imaginative approach to art, rather than an imitative, rational one; by distinguishing between aesthetic and moral judgments; by recognizing the sociological im plications of a r t; by d iffe ren tiatin g between form and content, and representation vs. expression, Margaret Fuller arrived at a critical method extensive in concepts and generous in outlook. Aiming not to please readers, but to enlighten them, she undertook to make comprehensive and provocative statements on the subjects reviewed in order to stimulate the reader to examine ideas as v/ell as books. As she v/rote in "American Literature," "...the public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to vra.it a hundred years for its bloom.

^^Emerson (et al), op. cit., II, 296. lôpuller. Papers on Art. Literature, and Drama, pp. 186-187. 92 or its garden will contain, presently, nothing hut potatoes and pot-herbs."^7 In conclusion then, it is clear j^hat many con­ cepts in Margaret Fuller's criticism can be traced in American criticism to the present time. Her influence on American culture, like that of Emerson and the other Transcendentalists, was liberal and stimulating. Her generosity of spirit, her Intellectual vigor, and her eloquent pleas for the freedom of the mind over the narrow and parochial tendencies of the age, all bear v/itness to her deep commitment to American l e t t e r s . Although Margaret Fuller's life v/as brief, it has long remained of interest in American literary history. Her v/ritings, however, have been neglected. Most of them v/ere sorrily edited after her death, then col­ lected and published. By 1889 Papers on Art. Literature. and The Drama, generally considered her best v/ork, v/as printed for the last time. Although selections from her works were collected by Mason Wade in 194-1, and P erry

Miller in I 9 6 3 , both of v/hom sav/ Miss Fuller as a critic of merit as v/ell as an outstanding exponent of nine­ teenth century liberalism. Summer on the Lakes today is a rare book, and the other editions of MF's "Little Library" are very difficult to obtain. Such rarity only serves to bury this important early critic's contribu­ tion, an outstanding example of the kind of noble cour­ age and intellect needed in attempting to signify the 93 meaning and d irec tio n of a newly-emerging American l i t ­ eratu re.

^'^1‘liller, The American Transcendentalists. p, 193. BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. PRIMARY SOURCES

The Dial ; A tfegazlne for Li terature. Philosophy, and Religion. 4 vols, H'ew Ÿork: Rus s ell ana Russell, ïn c ., 1 9 6 1 . Emerson, R.W., et a l. Memoirs of Margaret F u lle r O ssoli. j vols. London; R7 S eniley, Ï852# Fuller, Margaret. Art. Literature, and The Drama. Boston; Roberts Brothers, 1 8 8 9 # ______. ^ Home and Abroad. Boston; Crosby, Nichols and Company, 1856. ______• Life Without and L ife W ithin. Boston; Brov/n, Taggard and Chase, 1859. ______. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Boston; Roberts Brothers, IÜ 9 3 .

The Western Messenger. Vols. I, II, and VI. 8 v o ls, Louisville; Western Unitarian Association, 1835- 184-1.

B. SECOmARY SOURCES

1, General References Aiken, Henry D, The Age of Ideology. New York: New AmericanLibrary (Mentor Books), 1956. American Monthly Magazine. Vol. I . (September, 1829). 3SÏ^3HIk ------American Quarterly Review. Vol. II. (September, ÎH 22), 31. Anthony, Katharine. Margaret Fuller. A Psychological Biography. New York; Har court. Bra ce and Ho v/e , 1 9 2 0 . Barbour, Frances M,, "Margaret Fuller and the British Reviewers," New Engird Quarterly Review. IX (December, 1 ^ 6 ),' bl8-625. 95 Berger, Morroe Ced, ), ^dame De Stael on Politics. Literature and National Character. "TTew York; Doubleday and Company, In c ., 1964-* Braun, Frederick A. Ifargaret ^ lle r and Goethe. New York; Henry Holt and Company, I 9 ÏI. Brooks, Van V/yck. The Flowering of New England. New York; Random kouse, 1936. Brown, Arthur W. Margaret F u lle r. New York; Twayne-Publishers, Inc., 196 k. Burton, Roland- "Margaret Fuller's Criticism of the Fine Arts," College English. VI, I 8 - 2 3 . Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradi­ tio n . New York: Doubleday and Company, In c., 1 935 . Clark, H.H., "Changing Attitudes in Early American L iterary C riticism ," The Development of Ameri­ can L iterary C riticism . Chapel H ill; Univer­ sity of North Carolina Press, 1955. Cooke, George W illis. ^ H istorical and Biographi­ cal Introduction to The Dial. 2 volsl New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1961. Eliot, George, "Mirgaret Fuller and Mary Wollstone- croft," The Leader. Vol. VI, No. 290 (February 17-September 29, 1055), 988-989. Emerson, R.W., and Forbes, W.E. (ed s.). Emerson's Journals, 2 vols. Boston: Houghton M iflin Company, I 9 IO. Frothingham, O.B. Transcendentalism in New England. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1965. Goddard, H.C., "Transcendentalism," Cambridge His- toryr of American L iteratu re. New York; The MacMillan Company, 194-4-, pp. 326-34-8. Harding, W and Bbde, C. (eds.)- The Correspon­ dence of Hmnry David Thoreau Washington Square: New York University'Press, 1958. Harrold, C.F. Carlyle and German Thought. London: Archon Books, 1 9 6 3 . Higginson, T.W. l^rgaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Houghton M iflin Company, 1884-. 96 James, Henry. William Wetmore Story and His Friends. Boston: Houghton Miflin and Com­ pany, 1 9 0 3 . Jones, Howard Mumford. The Theory of American L it­ erature. Ithaca: Cornell tlniversity fress, 1965. Kaufmann, Walter, From Shakespeare to Existential­ ism. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., I 9 6 0 . Kearns, Francis H.. "Margaret Fuller and the Aboli­ tio n Movement," The Journal of H isto ric a l Ideas. XXV, 120-127. Kris, Ernst, Psychoanalytic Explorations In Art. New York: International Univ er si ties P ress, 1 9 5 2 . Lewis, R.W.B. The American Adam. Chicago; The U niversity of Chicago Press, 1955* Mann, Thomas (e d .). The Permanent Goethe. New York: The Dial Press, 1958. M atthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941. McMaster, Helen, "Margaret Fuller As a L iterary Critic," University of Buffalo Studies. VII, December, 1928, 35-10U. Miller, Perry (ed.). The American Transcendental­ i s t s . New York: Doubleday and Company, 1957. ______• Consciousness in Concord. Boston; Houghton Miflin and Company, 1958 . ______. Margaret Fuller: American Romantic. New York; Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1963. The Raven and the '//hale. New York; Harcourt. Brace and Company, 1956. Moorhead, J.K. (e d .). Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann. London; J.k. Dent and Sons, Ttd,, 1 9 3 0 . Mott, Frank L. A '-istory of American Magazines. 174-1-1850. Cambridge: 193^1 Ostrom, John Ward (ed.). The Letters of E.A. Poe. 2 vols. Cambridge; Harvard U n iversity Press, 194-8. 97 Farrington, V.L. Main Currents in Ameri can Thought. I I , New York: Harcourt. Brace and World, In c ., 1 9 2 7 . Perry, Bliss (ed.). The Heart of Emerson*s Journals. Cambridge: Houghton RiflTn“5'ompany, 1923% Pritchard, John Paul. Criticism in America. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1956. Rostenberg, Leona, "Margaret Puller's Roman Diary," Journal of Modern History. XII, 209-220. Schrell, Darwin, "Nationalism and Aesthetics in the North American Review: 1815-1850," Studies in American Literature. VIII, (I960;, 11-21. S later, John (e d ,). The Correspondence of Emerson and C arlyle. New ï'orîc: Columbia U niversity Press, 1 9 6 4 . Spencer, Benjamin T. The Quest for Nationality. Syracuse; Syracuse tïniversity Press, 1957. Spiller, Robert E. The Cycle of American Literature. New York: New American Library, (Wentor Books), 1956. Spingarn, Joel S. (ed.), Goethe's Literary Essays. New York: Harcourt. Brace and Company, 1921. Wade, Mason (ed .). The VTritings of Margaret F u lle r. New York; Viking P ress, 194-1. Wellek, Rene, "The Minor T ranscendentalists and Ger­ man Philosophy," New England Quarterly. X7, 652- 6 8 0 . Wellek, Rene, and Xferren, A ustin. Theory of L itera- ture. New York; Har court. Brace and ÎTorld, Ï n c ., ï ^ . Wilson, Edmund. The Shock of Recognition. I, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 195 d. Wilson, R.M. Madame De Stael High Priestess of Love. New York: Ro‘bert”HcBride and Company, 193^. Young, Louise M. Carlyle and Art of History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 9 3 9 . 98 2. Histories of Literary Criticism Abrams, Meyer The Mirror and the Lamp* Hew York: Oxford University Press, 19^3• Bate, Walter Jackson. Criticism; %e Major Texts. New York; Harcourt, Brace and CJompany, Inc., 1952. Charvat, William. The Origins of American Critical Thought. New York: A.S.Barnes Company, 1936. Smith, Bernard. Forces In American Criticism. New York; Harcourt, brace and Company, In c ., 1939» Splller. Robert, et al. Literary History of the United States. ÏTëw York; îfecMlllan Company, 1 9 5 ? : ------