{"id":228894,"date":"2023-03-13T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=228894"},"modified":"2023-02-06T05:00:10","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T05:00:10","slug":"against-the-cult-of-originality-emerson-on-the-true-nature-of-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/03\/against-the-cult-of-originality-emerson-on-the-true-nature-of-genius\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGreat genial power\u2026 consists\u2026 in being altogether receptive.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The best things in life we don\u2019t choose \u2014 they choose us. A great love, a great calling, a great illumination \u2014 they happen unto us, like light falling upon that which is lit. We have given a name to these unbidden greatnesses \u2014 genius<\/em>, from the Latin for \u201cspirit,\u201d denoting the spirit of a universe we can only submit to but cannot govern.<\/p>\n

A generation after Wordsworth defined the proof of genius as \u201cthe act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before,\u201d<\/a> Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/strong> (May 25, 1803\u2013April 27, 1882) took up the mystery of genius \u2014 where it comes from, how it shapes the lives it befalls, and what it demands of them \u2014 in a wonderful essay on another great poet \u2014 Shakespeare \u2014 found in his indispensable Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a resounding answer to the abiding question of whether genius is born or made<\/a>, Emerson writes:<\/p>\n

There is no choice to genius. A great man<\/a> does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, \u201cI am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:\u201d no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo in his own superb meditation on Shakespeare<\/a>, in which he observed that \u201cthe greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people,\u201d Emerson adds:<\/p>\n

Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he wrought in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This recognition that art works with the raw materials of life undermines the cult of originality, which is itself the great hubris of the creative spirit \u2014 as Mark Twain wrote to Helen Keller<\/a>, \u201call ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.\u201d Stripping true creativity of this fetish for originality, Emerson anticipates Oscar Wilde\u2019s insistence that creativity is the product of \u201cthe temperament of receptivity\u201d<\/a> and observes:<\/p>\n

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Couple with Schopenhauer on the crucial difference between genius and talent<\/a>, then revisit Emerson on becoming your most authentic self<\/a> and the key to living with presence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> My name is Maria Popova<\/a> \u2014 a reader, a wonderer, and a lover of reality who makes sense of the world and herself through the essential inner dialogue that is the act of writing. <\/em>The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings<\/a> for its first 15 years) is my one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a decent, inspired, substantive life of purpose and gladness. Founded in 2006 as a weekly email to seven friends, eventually brought online and now included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive, it is a record of my own becoming as a person \u2014 intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically \u2014 drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling. A private inquiry irradiated by the ultimate question, the great quickening of wonderment that binds us all: What <\/em>is<\/em> all this? (More<\/a>\u2026) <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 themarginalian.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best things in life we don\u2019t choose \u2014 they choose us. A great love, a great calling, a great illumination \u2014 they happen unto us, like light falling upon that which is lit. We have given a name to these unbidden greatnesses \u2014 genius, from the Latin for \u201cspirit,\u201d denoting the spirit of a universe we can only submit to but cannot govern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":228895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1177,308,1919,2237],"class_list":["post-228894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-inspirational","tag-philosophy","tag-ralph-waldo-emerson","tag-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}