Thoughts on Books and Emerson

I have been trying to get my hands on some good creative nonfiction in hopes that by spending time immersed in greatness some of it might rub off.  However part of me is worried more about drowning in it.  As inspiring and fruitful as it is to read awesome prose, it is also incredibly intimidating.  The seeming effortlessness of some of the really great work out there gnaws at my insides, telling me I have no place trying to write in their world, that at best I will only imitate and follow, and at worst I will pilfer and plagiarize, never really finding my own voice, but rather spending a life time trying to live up to a literary construct I have created out of the untouchable work I have read.  I constantly wonder if I have the courage required to find my own voice, to stand on my own through my writing, and not merely pay homage to what is out there.  In “The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Because I feel currently that I am in a satellite state, I wonder how it is possible to free yourself from the gravity of great authors, allow myself to float free in space, to gather my own voice, to produce gravity of my own.  I find myself ever imitating what sounds real to me, the quirky word choice of a favorite instructor, the narrative approach of an impressive author, the jocular voice of favorite humorist.

Emerson continues:

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,--let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his;--cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair.

Perhaps like the tiny unborn child turning summersaults in my wife’s uterus that is just now beginning to be noticed,  my soul is just beginning the slow twitchings of a creativity, perhaps the world that will give birth to that original part of me is just beginning to feel that I exist.  If Emerson is correct, then this creativity is the only way I can come close to Godliness, the Character of the ultimate Creator.  If Emerson is right, then all the books in the world are only as good as the inspiration they offer my creativity.  If Emerson is right, Books can provide so much, and then one day our creativity must be born, we must cut ourselves loose from the placental life line of the past, and learn to stand on our own as a ‘soul active,’ not only seeing but uttering truth.  The process is slow, and may never be fully complete, but one thing is true, either we do it, or we die trying.