Margaret Fuller, Jane Kenyon, talking and walking etc.

The American Transcendentalists were, on my reading, in the "enlightened" wing of the romantic movement. The conclusion of Thoreau's Walden is a ringing declaration of enlightenment: "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

But the historical slight of women intellectuals is anything but enlightened. 

Being in Margaret Fuller’s company, Emerson once said, “is like being set in a large place. You stretch your limbs & dilate to your utmost size.”

So Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's tweet is a helpful corrective.

Unlike the other American transcendentalists--Emerson & Thoreau--the brilliant Margaret Fuller is relatively unknown. (Whatever could be the difference?) For correction, may I recommend: https://t.co/jYnYRuZYQp
(https://twitter.com/platobooktour/status/1396503566102274051?s=02)

Goldstein, btw, is married to our author Steven Pinker.

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Another enlightened woman, of the 20th century, was the late poet Jane Kenyon. Her great advice to writers:

“Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”

She also said “a poet’s job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.” In other words, find words for things most of us have a hard time expressing. This is a theme that challenges honest thinkers like William James, who said:

"What an awful trade that of professor is—paid to talk, talk, talk! . . . It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted into words, words, words." He also talked, ironically, about the "insufficiencies of talk," about how we must "fire our volleys of vocables from our conceptual shotguns but secretly know the irrelevancy" etc. So to me, truly enlightened thinking makes room for poetry.

And since Jane Kenyon advises walking, allow me to recommend Gymnasiums of the Mind, on peripatetic philosophy. (That phrase is Emerson's, it means walking.)

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"In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine..." --Divinity School Address https://t.co/WzZJIQGlNy

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) May 25, 2021

"Walk and think: Sometimes Hrach gives students a prompt and has them take a 20-minute walk to think it over before returning to her online class." Good, but it works so much better when they have an on-ground class to return to. Looking forward to doing it again in the Fall. https://t.co/oGYAsqzvdM

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) May 24, 2021