Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Rhodora
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Rhodora”
Emerson’s poem became a favorite during high school. Oft would I repeat the line, “Then beauty is its own excuse for being.” In this poem of Over-Soul, the speaking poet-spirit offers an insight into the humble self, a soul that counters and connects worlds of rivalry and contradiction. With this poem I could chart my ambition earthward when flights of ego took me to an adolescent realm of self-importance. And when I read – not too many years later – the early writings of Robert Venturi who countered Modernism’s monumentality with a sweeter, community-centered vision, I knew I had found in the built world a way-of-creating parallel to that found in “The Rhodora.” Whereas the poet notes his “simple ignorance,” the architect says:
In general, the world cannot wait for the architect to build his or her utopia, and in the main the architect’s concern should belong not with what ought to be but with what is – and with how to help improve it now. This is a humbler role for architects than the Modern movement has wanted to accept; however, it is artistically a more promising one.
After several years of national disgrace, after the murder of George Floyd, and after Covid-19, who knows what the next step will be, but let’s get together and take it. Together and equal. For the self-same power that takes me there, takes you.