Abstract

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson described a self composed of two parts: an eternal, timeless consciousness, and a separate identity existing within the constraints of the space/time continuum, inhabiting the body. Emerson and other American poets tried to locate the kernel of individual identity within the soul/body Complex---a process I refer to as self-location. Among writers who subscribe to a belief in a bifurcated self, relevance of human existence is determined by the self's relation to the universe as a whole. ;In the century between Emerson and the Beat Generation, however, the concept of the self was dramatically altered by new concepts of the not-me. Nineteenth century American writers, such as Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson, used the natural sciences, or what Emerson refers to as "the landscape," for their model. The "natural world" Emerson describes is not "out there." It consists, rather, of his own internal understanding of the world he saw---or perhaps, more accurately, the world he saw as a result of his internal understanding of the data of perception. A century later, Jack Kerouac, architect of the Beat philosophy, reaffirmed Emerson's belief in the primacy of soul. However, his system of correspondences and symbolism is based not on observations of nature, but rather on a mixture of memory, imagination, and popular culture. Yet Kerouac thought he could study this personal landscape and achieve a cosmic consciousness similar to what Emerson had obtained. His assumptions became subsumed into the works of Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka, with results that those writers found similarly frustrating. ;But, even given that many changes have occurred between Emerson's era and the Beat Generation that alter the conditions of self-location, such changes nevertheless do not fundamentally alter the process by which that self-location is achieved. By becoming conscious of the surrounding landscape the poet makes a judgment about his or her place in the universe---and not coincidentally determines what aspects of life give meaning to human existence