Loading Likes... It is known that Emerson found himself traveling across Europe and engaging with the ideas of the great European thinkers. This influence appears in his writing style that reads as a poetic, philosophical text. He utilizes occasional verses to emphasize his points and relies on descriptions of natural scenery to bring out the wisdom he attributes to it. In this eloquently designed lecture, Emerson argues that the poet functions as the sayer or the son of the holy trinity. He is immersed in nature that he patiently observes allowing for him to participate in art which he defines as the creation of beauty.

Emerson writes, “And this hidden truth, that the foundation whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of nature and functions of the poet, or the man of beauty” (255). He believes that art is created by man as he stands still and observes nature and its movement as it changes or as the river flows, that beauty is found in the successful imitation of nature, and that only the poet is truly capable of this unity with nature. This ideology seems to draw heavily from the philosophical rhetoric of Germany, particularly the works of Heidegger and Winckelman.

Johannes Winckelman, the father of art history argues that true beauty comes from the successful imitation of nature after a careful study and examination of it, a feat that was only ever accomplished by the ancient Greeks in his view. This idea became the basis of the future philosophical cannon that was uptaken by Lessing, Hegel, Goethe, Heidegger and so forth. It is also apparent in the writing of Emerson who views nature as the source of wisdom and ideal beauty. In addition, his work seems to overlap with the ideas generated later on by Heidegger in his university lectures in which he claimed a river flowed in all directions in time and space to the acutely observational eyes of a poet. Only the poet was capable of seeing the true beauty and art in the world, similarly to how Emerson depicts the poet in his own work.