The Journey and the Mirror: Emerson and the American Arts

Abstract

In 1924 van wyck brooks suffered a nervous breakdown while trying to finish a book about Emerson. For four terrifying years Brooks moved in and out of mental hospitals in Europe and America while the Emerson manuscript lay unfinished in his study, “a kind of symbol of his failure to resolve … the dialectical crisis of his own personality — so much like that of Emerson himself.” There were “manic” moments when he thought his depression had left him. In May 1925 he wrote to his good friend Lewis Mumford, “You may know I had a breakdown last spring — it really lasted about two years; and when it came to a head and burst — on May 20th, when I woke up — I felt as if I had expelled from my system the gathering poisons of years. … Everything I have done so far has been a kind of exploration of the dark side of our moon, and this blessed Emerson has led me right out into the midst of the sunny side.” Emerson had become for him a healing agent, a subject that, he told his wife Eleanor, would make him “sane again,” serving as an example of a successful American writer to contrast to his books about failures.