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In an essay written in 1861, the discerning German writer, Herman Grimm, says of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “He is a perfect swimmer on the ocean of modern existence. He dreads no tempest, for he is sure that calm will follow it,…”1 More recently, in 1966, Kenneth Burke, speculating on the symbolic action of Emerson's essays and focusing on Nature in particular, describes the essay as being very “buoyant.”2 It is interesting, though not surprising, that these two writers respond similarly to Emerson's essays; i. e. each shows a sense of security or trust in Emerson's ideas. If we take Nature as representative of Emerson's ideas and examine the essay on the literal level, it is not hard to see why Emerson's beliefs inspired such security and trust. In Nature, Emerson asserts that man's mind contains spiritual laws, and that nature is the symbol of spirit. Since nature corresponds intrinsically to mind,3 it can serve as the source from which man, through his intellect, can draw the spiritual qualities necessary for his happy existence. In other words, in nature, man finds a readily accessible source for the spiritual nourishment so necessary for his well-being.
There is another interpretation that accounts for similar, though unconscious, reader responses. Developed by Norman Holland, the idea is that a literary work contains disguised childhood fantasies. “The reader,” says Holland, “unconsciously elaborates the fantasy content of the literary work with his own versions of these fantasies… And it is the management of these fantasies, both his own and the work's, that permits their partial gratification, and gives literary pleasure.” * Basic to Nature is an oral merger fantasy involving the return to the original at-oneness with the nurturing mother-nature.