Henry Miller, Emerson, and the Divided Self

Abstract

N HENRY MILLER'S Tropic of Cancer an Emersonian epigraph announces the romanticized autobiography that would become the staple of Miller's art. These novels, Emerson asserts, will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies-captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experiences, and how to record truth truly.l Along with Whitman-In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death-Emerson stands as a clear, if surprising, link to those traditions of American writing that produced the prophetic autobiographer that Miller became.2 Moreover, the extent of his early interest in Emerson is indicated by the selection of an epigraph, not from one of the standard Emerson essays, but from the journals themselves, suggesting a familiarity with the New England transcendentalist somewhat at odds with Miller's reputation as shouting, American vulgarian. Indeed Miller's preoccupation with Emerson in Tropic of Cancer is attested by a second quotation from the Journals, this one a comic appropriation of an I847 entry. 'Life,' said Emerson, 'consists in what a man is thinking all day.' If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night (p. 69).' While Whitman has remained a perennial constant in Miller's literary enthusiasms, Emerson recurs only as a supportive figure in the Americanism that marks the volumes of a writing career that spans at least three decades and that binds the literary expatriate to the artistic roots of his own country. Yet Miller returns to Emerson often enough to suggest an attachment more significant than one would at first suppose. As late as I957 in The Books in My Life,