The World Idealized

Abstract Dwight’s friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and the emergence of New England Transcendentalism deeply affected his thinking and writing. Other forces contributed as well, including William Gardiner, whose The Music of Nature (1837) gave Dwight a usable analytical language. According to Dwight, Gardiner opened the door “to a new branch of literature, musical  criticism.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Thomas Carlyle also offered powerful aesthetic stances that Dwight could emulate. Dwight’s friendship with George Ripley, a pivotal figure in Transcendentalism, also intensified. During several scandalous religious skirmishes, Dwight was at Ripley’s side, and Ripley taught Dwight how to take (and throw) a punch. As Dwight made his first forays into music journalism, his own masterful volume, Select Minor Poems Translated from the German of Goethe and Schiller (1839) appeared. Carlyle wrote, “No Englishman, to my knowledge, has uttered as much sense about Goethe and German things” as had Dwight.