Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Friendship, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
True Friendship
Change and the Laws of Nature
Solitude vs. Society
Summary
Analysis
Emerson’s essay begins with a long poem. The speaker of the poem contrasts a “ruddy drop of manly blood” with the “surging sea,” and elaborates on this image by explaining that, while the “world uncertain” always changes, the “lover rooted stays.” The speaker, using the first person, says that he thought his friend had gone, but in reality the “kindliness” remained “unexhausted”. The effect of rediscovering this kindness is that the speaker’s heart was “free again.” The speaker addresses the friend directly, telling him how “the sky is arched” and “the rose is red” by virtue of his friendship. The friend has the effect of giving reality a “nobler form,” and the speaker compares the worth of the friend to that of the “sun-path.” He says that he has learned to “master despair” from the friend, and in general that the “fountains of my hidden life” come from the friendship.
Emerson frequently prefaces his essays with epigraphs. The poem here serves as a summary of the essay to come, compressing into rich images the ideas that he will discuss in the prose that follows. A philosophical essay—as opposed to more formal writing with strict conventions—can incorporate all a variety of evidence to make its arguments, including poetry. This poem’s imagery of the social world as a kind of water, in which an individual is like a drop, recalls imagery from Eastern philosophy, in which the community of souls is sometimes figured as a kind of ocean.
Themes
The essay proper begins by stating that there is much unspoken “kindness” in human relations. Despite the selfishness that one finds everywhere, “the whole human family” is “bathed” with love. One encounters many people—in church, in the street, and so on—with whom one has an instant connection, and whose presence is comforting. “Read the language of these wandering eye-beams,” Emerson urges. Even though one may have never met another person before, “the heart knoweth” that there is some link.
Transcendentalists insist on the importance of intuition, and here Emerson praises the purely intuitive, affective connection that people often feel with one another. Here he also exhibits egalitarian views, insisting that he often feels sympathy for random people around him. His metaphor of eye contact as a kind of “language” embodies the way Emerson seeks to combine the intuitive and the philosophical: Emerson’s own prose is a “language” of this kind.
Themes
The result of these chance connections is a “certain cordial exhilaration.” Emerson notes that in both poetry and common language, people use the metaphor of fire to describe the effect of these encounters. These connections, whether resulting in passionate love or mere “good-will,” constitute the “sweetness of life.”
Emerson frequently makes points through imagery and metaphor: he is interested in the ways in which poetry and poetic language communicate philosophical truths. It is striking here that, although he famously insists on the importance of solitude (most notably in “Self-Reliance”), here he describes human interaction as the source of life’s “sweetness.” There is perhaps something condescending in this word, “sweetness” being pleasant but ultimately fleeting and less important than the weightier, more meaningful elements of true friendship.
Themes
Emerson states that “our intellectual and active powers” are improved through the “affection” felt for others. The scholar, who works in isolation, is only able to begin writing when he writes a letter to a friend. The act of writing the letter brings forth thoughts and ways of expressing them. Emerson describes the sense of excitement that comes with the visit of any stranger in one’s home. The visit encourages the hosts to clean their house and to behave well, because the visitor “stands to us for humanity.” People perform for the unknown stranger. But as soon as the stranger becomes known in all of his “partialities, his definitions, his defects”—as soon as the stranger is no longer a stranger—the interaction is normal again. There is no more “communication of the soul,” just regular human interaction.
Here, Emerson makes the interesting argument that solitary intellectual work—the work of a writer and philosopher like himself, and of his acolytes, most notably Henry David Thoreau—is enhanced through friendship. As he will argue throughout the essay, friendship is as much about one’s imagination of a friend as actual interaction, and here Emerson describes the value of writing for a friend as a way of stimulating creativity. Emerson’s own essay style is a closely related to the letter form. Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay genre and a major inspiration for Emerson, famously wrote in his essay “On Friendship” that he would have written letters if his best friend was not dead. The essay, according to Montaigne, was the next best thing. Emerson suggests, therefore, that his own writing style is partially a product of friendship. Here is one of Emerson’s central paradoxes: an advocate of solitude is also an advocate of deep connection with other people.
Themes
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Emerson asks what could be as pleasant as “these jets of affection” which “make a young world” for him. When one feels affection for another, “the earth is metamorphosed”: bad things like winter, night, tragedy, boredom, and even obligations seem to disappear. Instead, one is overcome with “the forms all radiant of beloved persons.” One’s soul tolerate a thousand years of solitude, Emerson says, if it knew that it would rejoin its friend someday.
As mentioned in the epigraph, Emerson argues that one’s perspective of the world is affected by one’s friendships. Emerson believes that each person experiences his or her own subjective version of the world (a philosophy articulated in his essay “Experience”), and accordingly the feelings generated through particular friendships affect the way the world seems to each individual.
Themes
Emerson tells the reader that he “awoke this morning” with gratitude for his friends. This is a cause for thanking God, who presents these “gifts” to Emerson. In general, Emerson disapproves of society and prefers solitude, but he declares that he is nonetheless sensitive to “the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded” when he encounters them.
Emerson repeatedly insists on the pleasure derived from friendship and the gratitude he has for his friends. Because he thinks that friends cannot be made, only encountered, Emerson ultimately credits God for his friendships.
Themes
Whoever of these chance people who “hears me, who understands me,” becomes Emerson’s “possession for all time.” Using these different people, one weaves “social threads of our own, a new web of relations.” A person ends up creating a “world of our own creation,” instead of inhabiting the “traditionary globe.”
Emerson believes that each person experiences his or her subjective version of the world—a “world of our own creation.” Friends influence this subjective perspective and are influenced by it in turn. Emerson “possesses” his friends insofar as his friends are an essential part of him and his worldview, woven into his “web of social relations.”
Themes
Emerson has found his friends through chance. God gave them, he writes. The “Deity” in Emerson finds the Deity in others, and in this encounter the “thick walls” of each person break down and a unity emerges. Emerson thanks his “excellent lovers” who “carry out the world,” making Emerson’s world and thoughts larger and deeper. He compares these expansive thoughts to the “new poetry of the first Bard,—poetry without stop, [...] poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still.” He states that he is not afraid that this expanded mental and spiritual life will go away, since his relation to his friends is “pure” and because “the Genius of my life” is “thus social” that the “affinity” that binds Emerson to his friends will attach him to “whomsoever is as noble as these men and women.”
Friendship is determined, according to Emerson, by an objective and inherent compatibility between people, determined not by will or choice, but by fate. If two people both carry some aspect of the “Deity”—by which Emerson presumably means the divine forces that animate nature and human beings—they experience a kind of fusing of souls. Emerson experiences this oneness with others in the expansion of his thoughts, which are inspired by a “Genius” that is “social.”
Themes
Emerson admits that he is very sensitive to the “affections” that he feels for others. Every new person is “a great event” that excites him so much that he loses sleep. He has often been mistaken about who will actually become a friend, getting worked up about a relationship that “yields no fruit” in the form of thought or action. He states that he must feel as much pride in his friend’s achievements and virtues as if they were his own. People overestimate their friends; everything that belongs to a friend, one’s “fancy enhances.” Even “our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.”
While Emerson is a great advocate of solitude and praises the advantages of isolation, he also preaches an openness to others, any of whom could become a friend. At the same time as he insists on his openness and excitement for new friendships, however, Emerson admits one’s perception of a friend is at least partially constructed by oneself: people tend to enhance their friends’ good qualities while ignoring their bad qualities.
Themes
But friendship, like the heart, has expansions and compressions. Even though Emerson feels so strongly about his friends, he is simultaneously aware that much of friendship is “too good to be believed.” The lover knows that his beloved is partially a product of his imagination, and even in the “golden hour of friendship” Emerson feels traces of suspicion about the qualities he admires in his friends, questioning whether he himself endows them with these qualities. In general, “the soul” does not respect others as much as it respects itself, and Emerson insists that there is an “infinite remoteness” that separates all people.
Emerson’s comparison of the dynamics of friendship to the movement of the heart—expressed here in scientific terms—is an effective metaphor on multiple levels. The heart is a symbol of friendship, as well as a symbol of perpetual movement and change. Emerson’s movement from singing the praises of friendship at the beginning of the essay to now questioning whether friendship is a construct of his imagination suggests that friendship is something fluid that ebbs and flows, rather than a constant state.
Themes
Emerson asks whether, through considering the way in which friends are partially constructed, he should be afraid of undermining the “metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple” of friendship. He responds by writing that he is not afraid “to know them [his friends] for what they are.” According to Emerson, “their essence is no less appealing than their appearance,” even if it requires “finer organs for its apprehension.” He draws a comparison to the roots and stems of a plant, which though most people do not attend to, are “not unsightly to science.”
In his essay “Experience” Emerson laments the fact that true human connection is impossible: an individual can only ever experience their subjective impressions of another person. In “Friendship,” however, Emerson is not disturbed by the way in which others are partially constructed, largely because true friendship, to him, is about unifying spiritual truths that exist above and beyond each individual subject. The difficulty of perceiving and imagining the autonomy of the friend—truly understanding that one’s friend is as complex as oneself—is precisely what makes friendship so interesting and philosophically stimulating.
Themes
Apologizing for bringing forth an “Egyptian skull at our banquet”—an unpleasant fact in the midst of these pleasant reflections—Emerson states that a “man who stands united with his thought” has a high opinion of himself. He has achieved a “universal success,” since his consciousness will always be more valuable to him than any worldly riches; he will always have something worth more than anyone else. “I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine,” he admits. He compares his consciousness to a dazzling star, and that of another to a planet with its “faint, moon-like ray.” A person can be rich with “purple cloaks,” but Emerson will not like him unless he is “a poor Greek like me.”
Here Emerson describes the essential challenge of social interaction: it is almost impossible, he argues, really to treat another person as an equal. Other people are always the objects of one’s perception, never really subjects who can be fully understood. Trying to grasp that another person is as independent as oneself is like trying to imagine infinity: it is simply an impossible feat for a human mind.
Themes
Emerson addresses the reader, telling him or her that the “vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted immensity.” The reader is not a “Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,” not a soul like Emerson’s, but rather “a picture and effigy of that.” The other has come recently and will soon depart. Emerson suggests that a friend should be thought of as a leaf that grows from the tree that is his soul. Through the natural process of “germination of new buds,” the tree “extrudes the old leaf” so that a new one will grow.
Addressing the reader as if he or she were there with him as a peer, Emerson states that other people will always be part of the world Emerson perceives, but never part of the metaphysical realm in which Emerson’s soul moves. They are “a picture and effigy” of a soul like Emerson’s. This language recalls the discussion of imitation in Plato’s Republic, in which the things of this world are described as mere shadows, or imitations, of the perfect truths that exist in the metaphysical realm. Emerson’s metaphor of friends as leaves that grow from his soul—not essentially part of his soul, but projections of it—also has classical resonance: specifically, the famous metaphor of human lives as leaves that cyclically grow and then fall, made by Glaukos in the Iliad. The image not only resonates with one of the most famous epic poems in Western literature, but also with scientific discourse, signaling that Emerson views friendship as governed by the laws of nature, rather than individual will.
Themes
The law of nature is “alternation for evermore.” Just as an electrical charge attracts the opposite charge, the soul “environs itself with friends” so that it may experience a “grander self-acquaintance or solitude,” and then isolates itself so that it may better “exalt its conversation or society.” Emerson observes that this alternation can be found in all human relations, as affection draws people to others and then a sense of “isolation” recalls them back to solitude.
Again, Emerson invokes a scientific principle—in this case, the alternation of electric charge—to describe the dynamics of friendship. This serves further to emphasize that friendship is out of one’s control, subject to forces that are beyond the scope of human will. Emerson also emphasizes that, just as different stages are necessary in nature’s cycles, movement from social life to solitude is necessary for the human soul to flourish.
Themes
Hence, everyone spends his or her life in search of friendship. Emerson writes a fictional letter that might be addressed to a potential friend, in which he writes that he would not mind the friend’s “comings or going” if he knew that the friend was really his equal. He is not wise, and it would not be difficult to be his equal, Emerson continues in the letter, but he would not presume a “perfect intelligence of me,” and so the friend will be “a delicious torment.”
Emerson’s fictional letter recalls his earlier discussion of the scholar writing a letter to think through a problem. Emerson does not simply describe the letter he might write, but goes so far as to address and format it, as if he were providing the reader with a practical model to follow.
Themes
The letter concluded, Emerson writes that these “uneasy pleasures and fine pains” are not real friendship and should be avoided. They can be used to weave “cobweb, and not cloth.” Most friendships are short-lived and unproductive because they are woven of “a texture of wine and dreams,” instead of the “tough fiber of the human heart.” The “laws of friendship” are “austere and eternal,” like the eternal laws of nature.
“Friendship” is partially a polemic (a rhetorical argument), since Emerson consistently argues that what most people regard as friendship is not really worthy of the name, but instead a superficial kind of interaction. His imagery of weaving here suggests that friendship is something complex, and with many parts. It also implies a link between friendship and writing, which since antiquity has been compared to weaving, furthering Emerson’s point that deep connections with other helps to foster an individual’s intellectual and creative development.
Themes
Humans tend to search for the “petty benefit” and “sudden sweetness” of an easy friendship, picking “the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God.” Most people search for friends out of an “adulterate passion,” and as a result most people “descend to meet.” Association is a compromise, and cancels out what is interesting about each of the individuals (what Emerson compares to the “aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures”) rather than adding up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. “Actual society,” as opposed to ideal friendship, is a disappointment, unpredictable and unreliable. In such an imperfect relation, both parties are relieved to be alone again.
Although Emerson praised the “sweetness” he experienced through human connection at the beginning of the essay, here he suggests that people who are motivated by the search for pleasure alone will not form true friendships. The imagery of the “fruit” in the “garden of God” recalls the Garden of Eden, and suggests that false friendships have something sinful about them. The imagery of the garden is closely related to Emerson’s metaphor of the individual as a “flower,” a feature of God’s garden. The flower imagery is also reminiscent of the leaves metaphor Emerson employs to describes the natural transitions and passages of friendships.
Themes
Emerson states that he should be able to be open to any real friendship, no matter how many friends he already has. He will be unable to be happy in any friendship, he writes, if he is not “equal” to any of his friends, because the happiness he finds in his successful friendships will be a cowardly relief, his other friends not his equals but his “asylum.” Emerson slightly misquotes Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 25,” about a valiant knight who, after a single defeat, is “from the book of honor razed quite,” to illustrate his point.
Because Emerson conceives of friendship as fitting into the broader structure of nature, all of his friendships are connected. If one of Emerson’s friendships is imperfect, it will damage the rest of them. Using the political language of “asylum,” and invoking chivalry through his quotation of Shakespeare, Emerson suggests that genuine friendship is predicated on moral principles like honor and fairness.
Themes
The importance of being “equal” to all of one’s friends justifies “bashfulness and apathy,” which act as a “tough husk” against the “premature ripening” that is an imperfect friendship. “Any of the best souls” must be ripe in order to engage in friendship, respecting the slow pace of natural processes (Emerson uses the German word naturlangsamkeit) such as the hardening of span class="inline-symbol">gemstones. Real love, the “essence of God,” is for nothing less than the “total worth of man.” One should consider the “austerest worth” of someone, and trust in the “truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations,” rather than anything fleeting or superficial. Emerson notes that in discussing friendship, he is treating “that select and sacred relation” that, because it is “a kind of absolute,” almost defies expression in traditional language.
Friendship unfolds at the pace of nature, and cannot be rushed. Emerson encodes this idea in the image of the “husk” which protects a ripening seed. (The metaphor of the leaves also has embedded within it the idea of a natural cycle.) Emerson’s employment of a German biological term once again invokes science to insist on the fact that friendship is a natural force that is not governed by human will and does not occur within normal human timeframes. The imagery of the gems recalls Emerson’s comparison elsewhere of friends to gemstones who must be held at a distance in order to be appreciated properly.
Themes
True friendships should not be treated “daintily, but with roughest courage” because they are the “solidest thing” in life. This is because humans know relatively little about themselves or their fates, but they have found a certain “sincerity of joy and peace” in “this alliance with my brother’s soul” that is something true and real, the “nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell.” Friendship is such a serious matter than whoever proposes himself as a “candidate” for the “covenant” is like an “Olympian” who will compete against the greatest champions in the world, about to enter into contest with life’s great eternal antagonists, such as “Time, Want, [and] Danger.” The true friend will be able to preserve his or her “beauty” against all of these forces as a result of his or her “intrinsic nobleness “ and “contempt of trifles.”
Emerson once again figures friendship as a “nut” or seed, which ripens according to forces beyond human control. It is a “covenant,” an agreement with divine forces; to enter friendship is to enter a relationship with what is real, with the forces that govern the world that humans can never really perceive. Emerson figures friendship, somewhat unexpectedly, as a competition, not against the friend but against “Time, Want, Danger,” and other destructive forces.
Themes
Emerson states that there are two equally important elements in friendship. The first is truth: a friend is a person with whom one can be “sincere,” and think aloud. One abandons all manners and politeness, is totally honest, and deals with a friend “with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.” Sincerity is a luxury, Emerson writes, allowed only to those who do not have any superiors to impress or flatter. Every individual is sincere individually, but starts to become hypocritical when interacting with another person, concealing his or her real thoughts with gossip, flattery, and other forms of dishonesty.
Emerson argues that friendship is characterized by being able to think and speak as honestly with another person as one would with oneself. Two “atoms” are joined through friendship, entirely independent entities that retain their integrity even when bonded to one another. In his praise of sincerity, Emerson voices a familiar contempt for the general tendency of shallow social interactions, a theme that runs throughout his work and that of other Transcendentalist writers.
Themes
Emerson recalls an acquaintance who was entirely sincere with everyone. This person was at first thought to be crazy, but was able to achieve “true relations” with everyone he knew. No one lied to him or engaged in small talk. This is not the case with most people, however, particularly in “a false age” like the present. One must adapt one’s behavior to suit almost everyone. A friend, however, is a “sane man” who “exercises not my ingenuity, but me.” A friend is a “paradox in nature” because he or she is a complete equal to the individual that does not need to be carefully handled, what Emerson calls “a semblance of my being [...] reiterated in a foreign form.” Interacting with a friend is so different from normal interaction that the friend seems to be “the masterpiece of nature.”
Here Emerson voices a contempt for society that he describes in greater detail in his essay “Self-Reliance.” He contrasts the falseness of typical social interactions with the solidity and usefulness of friendship. He emphasizes that a friend is something “paradoxical,” almost impossible to truly imagine or understand: an individual as complex and independent as Emerson himself.
Themes
The second element necessary for true friendship is “tenderness,” a sentiment much rarer than the normal admiration, fear, pride, hope, hatred, lust, and so on that normally bind people together. Tenderness requires that the other be pure, and is a sign that the friend is truly dear. Friendship must be based on something simple and solid, Emerson writes; it must “have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence.” It must “be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.” People normally regard the actions of the citizen as mundane, and the virtues of citizenship (justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity) as lowly. But Emerson prefers the “company of plowboys and tin-peddlers” to the false friendship of “silken and perfumed amity.”
Throughout the essay, Emerson emphasizes that true friendship is based on simple but profound human connection. Although friendship does put one in connection with the divine forces that govern nature, it is also something humble and mundane in addition to being sublime. Emerson, a member of New England high society, here invokes an egalitarian viewpoint when he says that he prefers genuine human connection with members of all social status to the fancy but vapid world of the elite.
Themes
Friendship is a “strict and homely” relationship, one that is meant to persist throughout all the trials and tribulations of life, not just the nice times. Indeed, friendship should dignify one’s daily life, and “add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.”
Friendship can dignify the mundane through the opportunities for philosophical reflection and conversation it offers. A true friendship, then, has the ability to meaningfully enrich the lives of both individuals.
Themes
True friendship is uncommon because it requires “natures so rare and costly,” perfectly suited for one another. Emerson believes that friendship cannot really exist between more than two people at once. There may be a circle of “godlike men and women” who are all friends with one another, but conversation, which is the “practice and consummation of friendship,” must be one-to-one, no matter how excellent the third person may be. This conversation must happen in private, where there is no risk for “egotism,” no “partialities,” and no other relationships that might compromise the interaction. In a social setting, one may only speak when joining the common conversation, rather than being free to speak however one may wish. This destroys the “high freedom” of good conversation, in which there is “an absolute running of two souls into one.”
Not only does friendship require compatibility between two people, it also requires specific external conditions, namely isolation from large groups. Emerson thus argues that friendship only exists between two people when they are alone together. When a third person gets involved, somebody is always watching or being watched—the total freedom of friendship disappears and true conversation becomes mere talk. Conversation is the ideal activity of friendship, the activity in which the barriers between individuals cease to exist.
Themes
An “affinity” will not spring up between any two people who are alone with each other. There must be some sort of relationship. This is why some people who are reputed to be very interesting seem quite dull when one meets them. Conversation is “an evanescent relation” that springs up between the right people at the right time. Someone who has a reputation for eloquence, but is unable to say a word to “his uncle or cousin” when called upon, is like a sundial in the shade. In the sunlight that radiates from friends, the person will become eloquent once again.
Conversation, like friendship, cannot be forced. Elsewhere in the essay, Emerson compares a friend to a gemstone that must be held at a distance in order for its “luster” to be appreciated. The image of the sundial communicates something similar: only in certain conditions will the sundial function, when light shines upon it in the right way. Friendship is much the same—it can only function properly if must be given the respect and distance it deserves.
Themes
Friendship requires a “rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness” of the people involved. Emerson does not want his friend to act according to anything other than his “real sympathy.” “Let him not cease an instant to be himself,” he writes. Indeed, the joy of friendship comes from the fact that “the not mine is mine.” Emerson hates the “mush of concession,” and believes that it is better to be an annoyance to a friend than to entirely yield to the friend. “High friendship” requires that each friend is able to live without the other. The “high office” of friendship demands independent people, each capable of standing alone: “there must be very two, before there can be very one,” Emerson writes. The two “large, formidable natures” must nonetheless recognize “the deep identity” that unites them, in spite of their differences.
Friendship is only possible when each friend is entirely independent of the other, and behave with the friend as he or she would alone. It is precisely this mutual independence that gives friendship its substance: it is the relationship between two fundamentally equal parties, rather than a relationship in which one person dominates or objectifies another. As such, one should always think for oneself, even if it is an annoyance to one’s friends. This insistence on honesty and remaining independently-minded recalls Emerson’s essay on “Self-Reliance.”
Themes
Friendship requires a “magnanimous” person who lets nature take its course and does not meddle with fate. Friendship requires a “religious treatment.” Friends are “self-elected,” and must be respected. Emerson urges the reader to treat a friend “as a spectacle,” allowing enough room and distance for the friend to exist independently, and to be fully appreciated. Friends should not be overly intimate: one should befriend someone’s heart, not his or her “buttons.” One may be very close to a “great heart” while still being “a stranger in a thousand particulars.” Only children are overly close to their friends, seeking after pleasure rather than the higher benefits of true friendship.
Emerson urges the reader to treat friendship as something religious and sacred, worthy of special effort and attention. Just as in religious matters, friendship has its own rules of propriety. Intimate knowledge—knowing a friend’s “buttons,” the trivial details of his or her life—is a distraction from the more important intellectual and philosophical dimensions of friendship.
Themes
The “guild” of true friendship takes time to join. Personal relations with a friend should not be “rash.” There is no real reason to go to a friend’s house and meet his or her family. Instead, “let him [the friend] be to me a spirit,” Emerson writes. Emerson wants “a message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance” from a friend, but not such mundane things as news, politics, chat, or the “neighborly conveniences” that one can get from “cheaper companions.” The company of a friend should be “poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself.” One should even “worship” the “superiorities” of one’s friend, and allow him to be “forever a sort of beautiful enemy” that is never tamed and always just a bit feared.
Friendship is spiritual, intellectual, and philosophical, Emerson writes, not mundane or shallow. This is in tension with his insistence throughout the essay that friendship is made of the durable stuff of everyday life, and can occur at any time and at any place. The figure of the friend as the “beautiful enemy” is the most paradoxical expression yet of Emerson’s ideal of friendship as the productive union of opposing forces.
Themes
Just like the colors of an opal are not visible when the eye is too close, so do the qualities of a friend require a bit of distance to be apparent. This is why letters are so meaningful, for in a letter the heart “will trust itself” in a way that does not occur in speech, and will communicate the “prophecy of a godlier existence” than has ever been recorded.
Emerson compares a friend to a gemstone, an image that communicates the total integrity of the friend as a complex individual who needs distance and respect in order to be fully appreciated. The gemstone metaphor also continues the series of images drawn from nature and science, which associate friendship with the forces beyond individual humans that structure the natural world.
Themes
One must respect the “holy laws of this fellowship,” allowing the “perfect flower” to ripen instead of impatiently forcing it. This means that “we must be our own before we can be another’s,” so that one can speak to a friend as a self-possessed equal. In a friendship, each individual must be entirely independent and equal, “stand[ing] for the whole world.”
Emerson repeats the image of the flower, modifying it slightly: earlier in the essay, an individual was compared to a flower with a particular aroma; here the friendship is compared to a flower that blooms only when it is right for it to do so. The flower of friendship only blooms once each individual is fully autonomous and self-possessed, and sees his or her friend as a “whole world,” a subject rather than merely an object.
Themes
Emerson urges the reader to have “grandeur of spirit” when it comes to friendship, not saying anything to “select souls” that is foolish or thoughtless. One should “wait, and thy heart shall speak,” and wait until “the necessary and everlasting” compels a certain action or statement. Friendship cannot be forced or manufactured, and “the only way to have a friend is to be one.” Friendship must simply happen, and cannot be brought about through social maneuvering. A friend will elicit “the uprise of nature” in another, and the two will “meet as water with water.” If this does not happen, the friendship is not meant to be. Love between friends is a “reflection of a man’s own worthiness” in the eyes of the other. This is why, in history, some friends have traded names, demonstrating that each loved his or her own soul in the other.
Emerson’s insistence on the “grandeur” of friendship appears to be in tension with his earlier statements on the humility of friendship. But part of his argument is that friendship enables one to find grandeur even in the humble and the mundane, to see the “necessary and everlasting” even in the aspects of life that seem fleeting. The imagery of water Emerson uses to describe the encounter between two compatible souls recalls the ocean imagery from the essay’s epigraph.
Themes
Emerson acknowledges that, the higher one’s expectations for friendship, the more difficult it is to actually find it in the real world. Friends are therefore “dreams and gables,” but one hopes that they exist someplace in the universe. One is solitary until one meets a true friend, but this may be a good thing, since it is during this period of loneliness that one passes “the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of shame.” Once one has become “finished,” one “shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands.” Impatience makes people enter false friendships, but by spurning these, one makes oneself available for true friendships, demonstrating that one is one of “those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once,” to whom most people seem like “specters and shadows.”
Although Emerson has been optimistic throughout the essay, here he admits that the ideal friendship he has established is only rarely found. It is, after all, an ideal. But even the rarity of true friendship has benefits in Emerson’s view, because it allows one to mature and develop before the encounter that might lead to friendship. Emerson’s statement that friends seem isolated in nature, walking among “specters and shadows,” has both Platonic and Christian overtones. Like Plato’s philosophy of ideals, true friends will perceive the material world to be a kind of insubstantial shadow. And, like Christians, friends will form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, a spiritual community more real than the social or political communities most people inhabit.
Themes
Lest one worry that such an intense focus on spiritual connections will result in the loss of “genuine love,” Emerson assures the reader that nature will repay whatever seems to have been lost with something greater and more valuable. Emerson encourages the reader to feel the “absolute isolation of man.” People believe that “we have all in us.” People travel and read only to reveal aspects of themselves. Emerson urges us to “give over this mendicancy,” forswearing this search for self in others. One should even part with one’s friends, in order to meet with them again on a higher level. A friend is therefore “Janus-faced,” since he or she simultaneously looks backward, to the past when each individual was independent, and forward, to the coming of a “greater friend.”
Emerson effectively admits that a kind of love between people will be lost in his model o of friendship, but he implies that this love is not in fact “genuine.” Emerson seems to be suggesting that only after one comes to terms with the isolation of each individual will one be able to reap the benefits of true friendship. A friend is therefore “Janus-faced”—that is, simultaneously looking forward and looking backward, like the Roman god Janus—because he or she is both separate and unified with the other friend.
Themes
Emerson treats his friends like his books: he knows where they are but does not often “use” them. One must regulate one’s social life based entirely on one’s own feelings, rather than any external obligations. Emerson cannot stand speaking too much to a great friend, since he runs the risk of losing his own sense of self if he spends too much time with them. It would be more comfortable to abandon “this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars,” and spend more time with others. But then Emerson’s “mighty gods” will vanish. Emerson admits that he may feel lonely in the future, but is wary of inviting his friend to see him because he may not be able to truly connect with the friend. He has an “evanescent intercourse” with his friends, in which they “meet as though we met not and part as though we parted not.”
Emerson’s comparison of friends to books is striking, and conflates his ideal of friendship with his literary activity. The essay, closely related to the letter from a stylistic and formal perspective, may be the expression of a kind of friendship. If friends are like books, reading is like conversation, and so the reader of the essay is engaged in a kind of dialogue with Emerson. The metaphor of the book also communicates the fact that friends remain themselves throughout the friendship, as fixed as a text on the page.
Themes
Emerson remarks that it seems possible for a friendship to be largely one-sided. Like the sun, he can radiate his friendship without all of it having to be reflected back. Indeed, one can even educate one’s friend. If the friend is “unequal,” he or she will fade away, but one will still gain something from the process. True love cannot be unrequited, and “transcends the unworthy object” in order to live with “the eternal.” When the unworthy friend disappears, it is as if a mask crumbles. Liberated from the false friendship, the soul’s newfound independence is something to celebrate.
Because the friend is partially constructed in the mind, friendship may be largely one-sided. This would be most true for a someone writing to an imaginary friend—or writing an essay for an imagined reader, as Emerson is doing. Emerson’s statement that true love “transcends” its object (that is, the friend who is beloved) in order to be with “the eternal” strongly recalls the theory of love articulated by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, in which love becomes the means by which someone ascends to the realm of ideas.
Themes
But, Emerson writes, one cannot reflect on friendship as he has been doing without “a sort of treachery to the relation.” For, in the end, “entireness, a total magnanimity and trust” is the essence of friendship. A person treats his or her “object,” or friend, as a god, in order that friendship “may deify both” friends.
Earlier in the essay, Emerson wrote that friendship occurs when two individuals possess the “Deity” within them. Here, he states that friendship itself has the effect of deifying the people between whom it occurs because it reaffirms their “entireness,” the fact that each individual is has something of the divine within his or herself and is thus perfectly complete.
Themes
