Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, poet and philosopher whose essays had a profound effect on 19th and early 20th century American poets including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost. Each of these poets were influenced by Emerson’s ideas about nature and the individual’s intimate relationship with the physical world.
Today, he is mostly remembered for his essays Nature, Self-Reliance, The American Scholar and The Over-Soul. In the essays Self-Reliance and The American Scholar, Emerson stresses the necessity for American authors to assert their independence from their British predecessors and establish their unique “American” philosophy and voice. In his essay Nature, he espouses his belief that God circulates through every particle of nature and that human beings can achieve a spiritual oneness with nature and thus the universe.
Next to Emerson’s essays, his poems are thought by most critics to be undistinguished. But according to Harold Bloom, “Emerson, after Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, is the most considerable poet of the nineteenth century in the United States. Consequently, his poems should be read alongside his great essays. Among his best poems is Uriel, written in 1845.
The simplest way to start with this poem is by identifying Uriel. Uriel is one the seven archangels and although he is not in the canonical text of the Bible, he appears in the Apocrypha in 2 Esdras 4.1, 36. His name comes from the Hebrew, meaning “God is my flame” or God is my light.” He is also found in Milton’s Paradise Lost as a guide:
“Uriel, for thou of those sev’n spirits that stand In sight of God's high throne, gloriously bright, The first art wont his great authentic will Interpreter through highest Heav'n to bring, Where all his sons thy embassy attend...
Emerson was strongly influenced by Paradise Lost, and Milton’s characterization of Uriel in that great poem. As the passage from Milton demonstrates, Uriel is an “Interpreter of God’s “authentic will” and an angel who brings that will to other angels. Emerson selects Uriel for his protagonist, since Uriel’s traditional role was that of a prophet and divine teacher. And in Emerson’s poem, it is clear that Uriel is attempting to correct the other angels’ misconceptions regarding the universe. (In the poem, Emerson renames the archangels “young gods.”)
Uriel
It fell in the ancient periods,
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Sayd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discuss'd
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirr'd the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads;
The seraphs frown'd from myrtle-beds;
Seem'd to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all;
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.
A sad self-knowledge withering fell
On the beauty of Uriel;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew that hour into his cloud;
Whether doom'd to long gyration
In the sea of generation,
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight.
Straightway a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But, now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why.
The impetus of Emerson’s poem might have come from a speech to Harvard Divinity School in 1838, which he had attended in 1825. In that address, Emerson incorporated concepts from his essay The Over-Soul, in which he argues that there is a spiritual unity that transcends individuality and a divine presence inherent in all living beings that binds all in unity with the universe. These ideas, in addition to Emerson’s shocking assertion that Jesus is not divine, but a moral prophet, enraged some of the Divinity School professors and other members of the community. As a result of the reaction against his speech, Emerson was not invited to speak at Harvard again until 1869. Perhaps the character Uriel can be read as a Metaphor for Emerson himself and his reaction to those who castigated Emerson for his speech.
As the poem Uriel begins, Emerson establishes the setting. The time is “in the ancient periods,” that is, before time has begun. The place is “Paradise,” simply put, Heaven. There, a certain being, Sayd, (The name for Emerson symbolizes moral and spiritual insight.) is walking about and “overheard the young gods talking”. The young gods are discussing the nature of the universe:
The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsiseth, and what seems.
The young gods express confidence in their knowledge. That they “know” and can measure precisely the universe as a foregone conclusion is articulated by the words they use. The past tense of the verb “discussed” denotes conclusively as a matter of fact the entire scope of the universe. They believe they comprehend fully the “Laws of form,” “metre just” “Orbs,” “quintessence,” “sunbeams,” “What subsiseth,” and “What seems.” Then, Uriel enters the discussion “With a look that solved the sphere,” and contradicts the young gods’ assertions, and exposes the mirage of their limited linear thinking and overconfidence by positing that the universe is not so easily summarized. Instead, he submits that what the mind believes it knows is at best a metaphor that can only render the infinite universe as paradox:
Line is nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn
Uriel’s words argue that the universe is ultimately beyond the knowledge of gods and that truth sends “a shudder [that] ran around the sky.” Despite their celestial status, the gods can never fathom the scope of the universe and therefore they are repelled by the limitation Uriel reveals to them. By giving “his sentiment divine / Against the being of a line” Uriel violates the traditionally accepted measurable “formular” that offers solidity and comfort. To the other gods and seraphs, his “word[s]” are “rash,” and they cannot accept them as true, but his truth nevertheless buckles the foundation of the universe:
A shudder ran around the sky; The stern old war-gods shook their heads; The seraphs frowned from mytle-beds; Seemed to the holy festival The rash word boded ill to all; The balance-beam of Fate was bent; The bounds of good and ill were rent; Strong Hades could not keep his own, But all slid to confusion.
Uriel’s truth angers the “stern old gods…and seraphs,” but he himself suffers “A sad self-knowledge” and a “withering.” The poem then enacts the archetypal pattern of the prophet whose truth telling only engenders fearful and bitter reaction. The effect of what Uriel knows and reveals forces him to withdraw into his cloud, forever alienated from the community of other gods. But truth does not wither and withdraw. At first, it is willfully forgotten by the gods:
Straightway, a forgetting wind Stole over the celestial kind, And their lips the secret kept, If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But no matter what the old gods do, the “piercing eye” (insight) of Uriel’s words cannot be suppressed, and their truth will emerge:
But, now and then, truth-speaking things Shamed the angels' veiling wings; And, shrilling from the solar course, Or from fruit of chemic force, Procession of a soul in matter, Or the speeding change of water, Or out of the good of evil born, Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And the gods shook, they knew not why.
Uriel’s words threatened the other gods because secure in their linear understanding they could not endure “Knowledge grown too bright” for their “feebler sight.” Or put another way, the young gods had become mired in unquestioning, doctrinal conformity.
Postscript:
Emerson’s poem grapples with the universe until he subdues and possesses it in his imagination. That creative struggle that unfolded in Emerson’s mind germinated into the poem. Regardless of what one believes, Emerson’s poem is a creative force for our imaginations to reckon with.
Today, we have a contemporary creative force evolving in the form of A. I. Its unique power is being touted as “transformational technology,” and “promises to reshape our current society through breakthroughs in medicine, productivity, and convenience.” In an area such as medicine, this rapidly burgeoning technology should be welcomed. But it is apparent that its rapid growth needs serious and sensible regulation by our government. Yet, the government (Trump) fears oversight would cede to China the A. I. tech race.
In his recent piece in The New Times, Thoman Friedman discussed how humans have become akin to the biblical God by creating an intelligent and sentient life—A. I. That omniscient God “created” beings with intelligence that is finite; humans have endowed A. I. with an intelligence that may be infinite, or infinitely greater than theirs. In creating artificial intelligence, have we transgressed foolishly as when Adam and Eve did when they too tried to become like gods, tasting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
That ye should be as Gods, since I as Man, Internal Man, is but proportion meet, I of brute human, yee of human Gods. So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off Human, to put on Gods, death to be wisht, Though threat'nd, which no worse then this can bring. And what are Gods that Man may not become As they, participating God-like food? PL Book 9, 710-716
Later in Milton’s epic, Adam and Eve are told by the archangel Gabriel that their sin will one day be forgiven and their progeny, on whom their sin brought death, will be redeemed. Out of their transgression will come good through the sacrifice of God’s son. Emerson had Milton’s poem in mind when he wrote the paradox of Uriel’s words, “Evil will bless, and ice will burn.” That a blessing will rise from evil echoes Milton’s Paradise Lost and the New Testament’s promise. A. I. makes no such promise; instead, it augurs dangerous, faceless “intelligence” that will view us as indifferently and we do ants.