Boston in the 1830s and 1840s.
Imagine a group of young intellectuals discussing esoteric subjects in a club
to eventually print them regularly (between 1840 and 1844) in a
magazine strangely named The Dial (it was meant to measure the progress
of thought!) and you are in the midst of what was the most popular
movement in 19th-century
America—Transcendentalism. If you do not feel disconcerted
or impatient, by the "undiscriminating eclecticism which merges
the Bhagavad-Gita, Robert Herrick, Saadi, Swedenborg, Plotinus, and
Confucius into one monotonous iteration", if
you are comfortable with a `Saturnalia of Faith', you may then consider
yourself in the right company. Whatever be your preference, there is no denying the
fact that this movement had tremendous and far-reaching influence in the
history of American life and thought.
|
