building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

of continual reflections by Wright, or which interpreted the other side of the
relationship between city and countryside.
After all, Emerson’s interest towards the religious, socialist or transcendentalist
communities had its limit. Emerson, as were Thoreau and Whitman, was essentially
an individualist to such an extent that he never decided to embark personally on
experiences of collective life. His personal spiritual dimension found its fulfilment
not in the community, but in nature. “His interest in the Fruitlands community of
Bronson Alcott was solely intellectual; it was more probable that he would have
joined Brook Farm when it was established in 1840, due to its greater popularity
among the Transcendentalists. After refusing George Ripley's invitation, Emerson
explained, "To join this body would be to traverse all my long trumpeted theory...
that one man is a counterpoise to a city, that his solitude is more prevalent and
beneficent than the concert of crowds" (JMN, 7:408). Emerson's devotion to
solitude frustrated those Transcendentalists, like Charles Lane, who were devoted
to communal progress” 129 .
Among the other communities active in the same years, we find the Icarians,
followers of Cabet who rallied to the cry “Allons en Amérique – Allons en Icarie”.
The disagreements appeared at the first meeting in New Orleans in 1848, in the
Texan experiment of Denton County (1848) and when in 1850 they transferred to
Nauvoo (1840), Illinois, a town founded by the Mormons and abandoned by them
that same year.
A similar situation of disagreements among the inhabitants (from various European
nations, but mainly French) took place in the settlements of Corning, Iowa (1852),
and Cheltenham, Missouri (1858), founded after the death of Cabet (1856) by the
last of his supporters who had followed him to St. Louis. William Alfred Hinds
analysed the phenomena with a utopian matrix in his 1878 book American
Communities and said “No existing Community has had a sadder history than
Icaria” 130 .
129 BREWER, Priscilla J., “ Emerson, Lane, and the Shakers: A Case of Converging Ideologies”,
published in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Jun., 1982), pp. 254‐275; p. 262
130 HINDS, William Alfred, American Communies: brief skecthes of Economy, Zoar, Bethel, Aurora,
Amana, Icaria, The Shakers, Oneida, Wallingford, and The Brotherhood of the New Life, Oneida, NY,
Office of the American Socialist, 1878, p. 62
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