Emerson's "Nature"

I know we read "The Poet" and "The American Scholar" a school of literary criticism ago, but I kind of like Emerson, and I found his essay Nature quite interesting, though I do believe his writing is a little opaque sometimes because he tries to reason the abstract. Sometimes I'm with him, other times I say, "Huh?"

Either way, he presents some interesting thoughts on humans' relationship to nature. On pg. 28 of his essay he writes, "Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode." Surely, he believes Man is higher than nature; Man can overcome nature or at least use nature for his own ultimate understanding of existence. And I think it is interesting, too, that, in drawing out this analogy, Emerson is essentially equating Man with the Messiah. We can be like God. We can fully comprehend God and we use nature to do this. At one point, on pg. 10 in his famous edict about being a "transparent eyeball," Emerson states that he is "a particle of God," which I love, and then he says later, among other things, on pg. 45 that "man is a god in ruins." He seems to believe that we have the potential to be great though we are flawed at present. He writes on pg. 42 that "we are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God." There is potential, though. That potential.

In reading "The Poet" I thought Emerson to be extremely arrogant and stuffy like lots of intellectuals are, but I want to think that he believes all men to have this potential to comprehend the unity of the universe and our connection to it and all that. He does, however, mention the figure of the poet in this particular essay and this essay was written before "The Poet" so I may have to admit that he places so much stock in the figure of the poet. I keep wondering about this? Why one exalted poet? Where are the concrete examples of what the poet does and how he helps humanity's enlightenment? Emerson writes in Nature that the poet conforms things to his thoughts, things like "the sun, the mountain, the camp, the city, the maiden." He writes that the poet's power is to "dwarf the great, to magnify the small." He brings everything into unity. Ok. But how? I constantly wonder this. What experience will bring this kind of enlightenment, and then what do you do with it once you possess it? It's all fine and wonderful that Emerson is writing all this philosophy and reason about what should be, but when is it going to happen?

Should I not be asking these questions? Is the important part of comprehending this essay to dissect what he is saying and ponder the philosophy in and of itself? Please tell me, I'd like to know! Am I being too pragmatic in my thinking? Can I truly read a piece of criticism or philosophical work with a pragmatic, practical lense? Is there a school of criticism for that? Can I align my lense with that of the Marxists and Feminists and Formalists? Should we read literature as an isolated text where we study its structure, not its content, kind of like what Wimsatt and Beardsley might say? Is all this--all this blogging that I'm doing-- just some linguistic, structural study? I have taken Eliot's criticism on tradition to mean that tradition is living and breathing. It can be manipulated and reformed with works of the present. If you could call this blog entry a present work (let's just stretch our imaginations on this one), then could I say that my personal thoughts on Emerson's Nature are, in fact, valid to the meaning of Nature as a living work in tradition?