The Emerson Museum Author(s): Lee Rust Brown Source: Representations, No.

40, Special Issue: Seeing Science (Autumn, 1992), pp. 57-80 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928740 . Accessed: 06/08/2013 19:47
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LEE

RUST

BROWN

The Emerson Museum

-Ralph WaldoEmerson, on Nature and Life" "Fragments

AFTER

EMERSON'S

VISIT

firstobservationthat appears in his journal is, "How much finerthingsare in composition than alone. 'Tis wise in man to make Cabinets."' There was truly of the Museum d'histoirenatunothingout of place in the many"compositions" The massive displays of mineral, named. was institution as the relle, formally of Natural in the Cabinet Historyillustratedthe plant, and animal specimens Outside the monumentalcabinet models of individualnaturalists.2 classificatory demonstratedagain on a larger these classifications found Emerson building, of scale in the menagerie and the botanicalgardens,wherelivingrepresentatives of and ranks illustrate the out to were laid order, systematic genus,family, species class. The entiredisplayliteralizedthe commonplace of nature as God's book: it offeredthe viewera synopsisof the originaltextwhose charactersAdam named had since falleninto the apparent babble and understood,a textwhose integrity that Emerson In contrastto the evanescence and partiality of natural diversity. oftenlamentedin his experienceof nature,the Museum was a spectacleof reconstitutedfullness-as Georges Cuvier described it,"the grandestand most beautifultemple ever consecratedto nature."3 wasjust Clearlythiswas the sortof place where an American,whose country would to be natural its own institutions, impressed.4But expect history starting what Emerson found there seemed no less than providential.The Museum's consistedin its assignmentof huge varietiesof natural particspectacular effect structuresof a few ulars, brought from all parts of the earth, to the unifying and ideational systems.Faced with this startlingcombination of multiplicity "reduction to a few laws," Emerson found the occasion of his visitto be, in a for a bereaved husband (Ellen He noted, strikingly strange way,sacramental.5 Tucker Emerson had died two years earlier), that looking at the ornithological collection"makes the visitoras calm & genial as a bridegroom"(JMN, 4:199).
REPRESENTATIONS 40 *

TO THE Jardin des plantes in 1833, the

Fall1992?

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

57

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withthemarriageceremony This associationof naturalhistory persistedin Emerson's reflections on nature. It appeared in his first "The Uses of lecture, lyceum Natural History," when he toldhisaudience at the Boston Natural HistorySociety that the naturalist"marries the visible to the invisibleby uniting thought to Animal Organization"(EL, 1:24). And again, in 1837, Emerson spoke of the naturalist'sencounter withfactsas a sortof automaticconjugation: "He cannot see a star, but instantly thismarriagebeginsof objectand subject,of Nature and man, is power" (EL, 2:221). whose offspring Emerson was not alone in conceivingthe naturalist to be the new minister of the nineteenthcentury;Cuvier had made much the same claim in his introduction to TheAnimalKingdom. While social orders shiftedand collapsed, the great united theiraudiences before prospectsof a consolinaturalists pre-Darwinian dated natural order. In Paris,Emerson found this"marriage"formalizedin the systematic compositionsof the gardens,the menagerie,and the various cabinets. of visiblethingsrevealed the higherforms-family, The Museum's arrangement and class-that contained wereinvisible but presumably order, them;theseforms real the natural as just as thingsthemselves.In fact, history suggested thatsuch formsmightbe presupposed by both nature and intellect;thus the exhibitions unveiled an "occult,"or invisible,relationbetweenthe viewerand each element withinthe viewer'snatural prospect: is a moreamazingpuzzlethaneveras youglancealongthisbewildering The Universe thecarved series ofanimated thebirds, forms,-the shells, beasts, fishes, hazybutterflies, of lifeeverywhere in thevery rock insects, snakes,-& theupheaving principle incipient so savage,nor so beautiful but is an Not a form so grotesque, apingorganizedforms. in mantheobserver,-an inherent of someproperty occult relation between expression and man.I feelthecentipede in me-cayman, thevery carp,eagle,& fox.I am scorpions moved I saycontinually, be a naturalist.' 'I will (JMN,4:199-200)6 bystrange sympathies, Reading thispassage, one is almost remindedof Thoreau's sudden urge, in to seize a woodchuckand devour itraw,as "thewildestscenes had become Walden, But the "strangesympathies" excitedin Emerson bythe unaccountablyfamiliar."7 Parisian displays were hardlysigns of the rousing of his bestial nature; rather, theyheralded new prospectsforhis "glance,"his criticalabilitiesof discernment true for Thoreau, who cooked his and composition. (The same was ultimately relation-these are the woodchuck before tastingit.) Series, form,organization, of the visual Emerson describes. terms They pertainto the intelexperience key Confrontedwiththe lectual practices,actual and possible,of "man the observer." find his eye caught up in Emerson was amazed to cabinets and multiple gardens, a kind of universal reading. We begin to understand his "strange sympathies" when we see that what he was reading was a version of preciselythe kind of diverse collectionof writingto which he had long aspired. In fact,a similarly corpus of hisjournals. specimenswas already"in"him,or at least in the maturing had been filling Emerson had manytermsfortheentriesthat, 1833, by upjournal
58 REPRESENTATIONS

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volumes for eight years: he referred to them variouslyas facts,individuals, They representedthe lumberof inteldeposits, pictures,materials,or fractions. lectual life: musingsof all sorts,criticaldefinitions, quotations,draftsof poems and sermons.And indeed, among these specimenswere manywithqualities not unlike those of scorpions,centipedes,or otheranimals in the Museum: rhetoricallyspeaking, some had a backwardsting,some soared, some fed on the words of thedead, some movedon a hundred legs. In the period of hisvisitto theJardin des plantes,however,Emerson was anxiouslyaware thathe lacked the abilityto withthe universalfocus he had alwayslonged for. present himself,as a writer, Two monthsbeforedepartingfor Europe, soon afterresigninghis pastoratefor a wide-open future,he noted his need foran effective compositionalalembic: wecan't that know what todo with butwedon't Wehavethoughts materials, them, manage Wecannot in reason. order to see their them above ordispose.Wecannot enough gethigh into themselves & throw get warmenough to have themexerttheirnaturalaffinities
(JMN, 4:49) crystal.

Emerson wished for a compositional method that would bring out relations already inherentin the textualmaterial;the pathwayshidden withinthe miscelwould make up the outlineof a new,more necessarydisposition. laneous writing For thisto be possible,Emerson needed not onlyguiding principlesbut also effiin he needed to mastera pragmaticframework cient techniques. More precisely, the other.Such was his whichprincipleand techniquewere bound up one within revelation in Paris. In the cabinets and gardens of the Museum, he had the uncanny experience of beholding his own writing-the Emersonian project of writingthat he had not yetclearlyenvisioned-augustly prescribedfor him. If he feltlike a bridegroom,itwas because, at thatmoment,he began to wed himself and experience, as well as to a particularmethod of to a new model of identity and composition. collection,preservation, Emerson'srevelationin theJardindes planteswas a crucialeventin his Euroas his first meetingwithThomas Carlyle pean tourof 1833-at least as important in the six weeks later.The vow he made to himself zoological cabinet-"I willbe and emoa naturalist"-signaled a decisiveturnin thehard processof intellectual thathad begun in 1831, withthe death of his first tional reorientation wife,and he started lectures with the thatwould come to issue thefollowing October, public one of the America.8 to consequences of this Already, givingaftercrossingback the finalresultwould be his long crisishad been his renunciationof the ministry; and maturevocationasjournalizer, lecturer, poet. Emerson'sexperience essayist, on the topic of "natural in theJardindes plantes and his subsequent reflections of the intellectual ideas about set of lead to a would technology working history" whichthe of possibility within thatestablisheda framework a technology writing, noteand from of Emersonian journals "up" writing practice characteristically books could take place. Emerson would repeat his vow-"I willbe a naturalist"Museum The Emerson 59

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in his first later thatyear.At the lyceumlecture,"The Uses of Natural History," end of his life, when his power of memorysurvivedonly withinthe technical in his way,be holding to it. apparatus of thejournals, he would still,

I Whereverwe focus,in examiningtheJardin des plantes'simpact on Emerson, we will never findourselves far fromthe waysit devised to strikethe eye. The effectwas always one of systematicintegrity, beginning from the moment the visitorentered the grounds throughthe eastern gate by the Seine. Coming through the gateway,"one gathers in at a glance [d'un coup d'ceil]the whole of the establishment,"noted J.-P. Deleuze, the Museum's historian. Deleuze's plan of the Jardin des plantes afterits reorganizationin 1821 (fig. 1) divided and subdishows how its flat,rectangulargrounds were geometrically wide the and smallerwalkwith vided, large squares (carres) walkways separating the individual beds The plant (parterres). ways defining building of the Cabinet of Natural Historystretchedalong the entirewesternborder of the formalgara hillyzone covered dens. To the northof the formalgardens was the labyrinthe, of serpentinepaths.The labyrinthe was a romanticsupwithan irregularnetwork du it neoclassical Parisians with a stylized to the roi; provided Jardin plement version of the forestbeside the gridworkof the gardens. As its name suggests, was a place to play at gettinglost in nature, though its uneven the labyrinthe ground also offeredthe visitora prospect of the entirelayoutof the Museum's one beheld a more venerable paraformalgrounds.9From such a Pisgah-view, the was that preconditionfor wandering through romantic digm (a paradigm in the architectonics of reason and mazes) in whichnature regained itsintegrity commodity.It is instructivethat, in his journals and lectures, Emerson had nothingto sayabout the picturesqueside of theJardindes plantes.His sensibility inclined toward a contrary aesthetic-in Emerson's terms, "the sublime of in the sequences of glass-doored armoires analysis"-a severe aestheticfulfilled liningthe cabinet'sgalleriesand, withcorrespondentpower,in the subordinated, pagelike surfacesof the formalgardens. All nature, in the Museum, yielded itselfto the conceptual graphics of outwith its line, series, and hierarchy.Not only did the spectacular institution, and information dramatize retrieval, emphasis on technologiesof classification what Emerson would latercelebrateas "the radical correspondencebetweenvisdemonstratedthe way that ible thingsand human thought";its entirestructure became ingredientsof once convertedinto ideational currency, "visiblethings," Deleuze's plan showsthat,on thelargestscale-the propaedic ever largerforms.'0 formalgardens resembled scale visiblefromthe elevationsof the labyrinthe-the it of books. Then much as a so again, evoked the outlines of a library nothing
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REPRESENTATIONS

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acea~f^^i351 --'wa3^]" ^^^^.i^'^.r^--d

SII
; ..... ? ,.......................;,; .. ,~ .... ~,~
a

... . ..... ?........

FIGURE 1.

du Museum etdescription J.-P.-F. Deleuze, Histoire vol. 2 (Paris, 1823). d'histoire naturelle, royal

in 1821.From PlanoftheJardin des plantes

classifiedtable of contents.Indeed, unmistakableresemblancesto modes of textual organization were implicitall throughthe Museum. In just the way that a "cabinetcyclopedia"(such as Emerson'sbelovedEncyclopedia Americana) soughtto contents of the the and the useful all world's Museum books, classify epitomize selected, abridged, and arranged the useful contentsof nature's hieroglyphic of the Museum, itscarefuldivisionand subplenitude. The encyclopedicformat division,was not arbitrary-notmerelyalphabetical,forexample-but mirrored both the latentanatomyof itssubjectand the patenttechniquesof the naturalists. As Cuvier's giftedand belated disciple,Louis Agassiz,would explain in his Essay on Classification the order (1857), the naturalist's compositionssought to clarify so thatthe intelligent "inherentin the objectsthemselves, studentof Natural Histo theseconbythe studyof the animal kingdomitself, toryis led unconsciously, the divisions under which the he animals clusions, arranges being indeed great but the headings to the chaptersof the greatbook whichhe is reading."" unfoldspointsthatAgassiz,likeEmerson,had seen The Essayon Classification presented with great force in the visual compositionsof the Museum. Chief of organizational among these was the notion that each layer in the hierarchy formswas equally real and necessary;thus each stage of classification combined The chapters,sections, and paragraphsin nature's the actual withthe provisional. book-even the book as a whole-repeated the same representationalform found in seeminglyelemental unitslike sentencesand words: thiswas the form of the classification. The lesson of the Museum was thatall particularsstood for
The Emerson Museum 61

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On the smallestscale-the micropaedic scale the propositionsof classifications. even the heart of the singlelivinganimal or plant,the mineralsample, the fossil, or skull shown in the ComparativeAnatomycabinet-the representative aspect of the thing superseded the thingitself.So instead of particularcreatures the of species; and just as "species" visitorbeheld "specimens,"the representatives were the conceptual containersof specimens,a shiftupward in the conceptual resultedin species themselves being treatedas "specimens"placed within register the order,and the more abstractcontainerof the genus; and so on to the family, in the or the class. Whether it was stuffed, dried, cultivated, caged, everything because the aim of naturalhistory Museum was haunted byitsown referentiality; to its place in a was to make the livingindividual point beyond its idiosyncrasies within like wheels wheels.'2 within classes nested classes of system With the hermeneutictraditionsof New England Puritanismbehind him, Emerson was well prepared for the Museum's preoccupation with the hieroin the Museum, however, was that aspect of nature.The strongdifference glyphic referenceto the dicta nature'semblematicsense derived not fromretrospective of scriptureor sacred history (as ithad forPuritanreaders of nature like Cotton withwhichvisiblethings and Mather JonathanEdwards) but fromthe efficiency The Museum's clasyielded themselvesto the criticaldevices of natural history. nature'smeanings:in a surwere not onlyvehiclesforcommunicating sifications literalsense, theymade up the formand contentof meaning itself.A prisingly kind of iconoclasmworkedwithinsuch reference-opaque images were concepassumed thatthe meaningsindituallybrokenand dissolved-for naturalhistory more like nature were visible cated by practicesthan staticessences. In the light all objects in the Museum satisfiedthe fundaof the practice of classification, in Nature as "the greatdoctrineof Use, mental principlethatEmerson identified as it serves" far so is a that (CW, 1:26). thing good only namely, This was a differenceEmerson was ready to appreciate. While the largest reason for Emerson's renunciationof his pastorate,one year earlier,had been his ambia vehicleto fit and subservient thatthe pulpitofferedfartoo constricted the old to was he chose which over issue the tions, problem of the publicly resign no could Emerson of function longer countereligious representation. proper because it nance a venerable symbolicform,the eucharist, sought to produce meaning by referenceto historicalantitype.Emerson was always severe in his not repetitionof insistencethatmeaning could onlybe found in presentactivity, authoritativemoments in history.He brought this semiotic insistence to the Jardindes plantes. Seizing meaningsfromvisiblenature,like seizingthem from would have to involve the repossession or the canons of literatureand history, of moments of effective action, whethersuch action pertained to resumption This meant overcomingthe literal deeds of naturalcreationor deeds of writing. in its situationin an irreversible and in initial its surface textual which, opacity The historicalframework, appeared merelyas visibleevidence of prior activity.
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Museum demonstratedthat,once objectswere representedas "specimens"within the process of overcominghad alreadybegun to take place. Thus a classification, as the first and funclassification AmericanScholar,"identified in "The Emerson, damental stage in the scholar'seducation: "The ambitioussoul sitsdown before all new each refractory fact;one afteranother,reduces all strangeconstitutions, fibre the last on forever to animate their and class and to their law, goes powers, Museum For the of nature,byinsight" of organization,the outskirts (CW, 1:54). spectator, classificationbelonged to the contemporaryrealm of intellectual it recovereda divine plan thatwas immanentin nature ratherthan one activity; We mightsay that,in the Museum, the sigdictatedat the beginningof history. nificanceof natural factsshone forthin the semioticmode Samuel Taylor Coleridge had called "symbol"as opposed to "allegory":once displayedas specimens world invisible of theirclasses,natural factsintroducedthe eye intoan otherwise of referentialand compositionalpractice.That invisibleworld was revealed as of nature and to the intellectual prospects belongingequally to the latentreality of the spectator.It was by virtueof this revelationthat natural historyoffered answerto thequestionof originality Emerson the means fora constructive posed at the opening of Nature:"Why cannot we also enjoy an original relationto the universe?"(CW, 1:7). The Museum demonstratedthatnature'smeaningscould as whatone be reclaimed in no other sense than as one'sown-or, more properly, do. and practically mightintellectually A kind of pragmatic imperative, then, came into view along with the of ideal forms.It addressed whatforEmerson was the Museum's representations immediate problem of writing:how to get "high enough above" his own fragmentarymaterialto see its "order in reason." The titlesof Emerson'searlyjournals-"Wide World,""Universe,""Encyclopedia"-had expressed his ambitious the grand scale aim thattheywould lead to a finalhighertextwhichwould reflect As he wrotein ajournal of 1839, of nature itself. a manuscript WhenI was quiteyoungI fancied bykeeping journalbyme,overwhose & c in of humanstudy, a listof thegreattopics as, Religion, Politics, Poetry, pages I wrote a sort ofEncyclopaedia thecourseofa fewyearsI shouldbe able tocomplete containing had yet arrived. at which theworld thenetvalueofall thedefinitions (JMN,7:302) aim ratherstunningly Emerson found thisrepresentational accomplishedin the What the natural des history distinguished displaysfroman encyJardin plantes. of compositionaltechnology clopedia, however,was the dramaticconfrontation witha subject mattercomprisingthe immediately visible,fullypresentaspect of the world. In regard to the presentworld,the Museum mostassuredlyrealized and reuniting its goal of totalrepresentation; yetit was the dissolving, diffusing, of in of that the center focus the Museum's provided encyactivity composition activity clopedic text.This made foranotherkindof presence,an ongoingcritical at workin the spectatoras it was at workin the Museum. thatwas as powerfully Museum The Emerson 63

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or at least a technicalcapacity,that could consume any text It was an activity, present to the eye, even the Museum itselfwithall its claims of total inclusion. of thiscritical Later in thisessaywe willconsiderthe concreteeffects principleon For it will be now to to enough point the paradox Emerson'sjournalizingpractice. that Emerson's assumption of criticalpracticeslike those demonstratedin the Museum coincided withhis abandonmentof the aim of literalencyclopedicrepforhis career,theworkshopwould overresentation.In a sense thatwas defining come all itsproducts. II Natural history taughtEmerson to treatthe "facts"of his own writing as as natural objects and to see them as constituted by the same sortof "history" to America,he wrote Soon afterreturning thatexposed in naturalsubjectmatter. in hisjournal a declarationof purpose in regard to both reading and writing: isoutwhenyousee the butthewonder thebookare superhuman, The poem,theoration, a juggler's an astronomical an ofcards, result, sleight, manuscript.... It is all one,a trick the formula, cheap whenwe are shown amazingwhenwe see onlytheresult, algebraic to throw intotheobjectso thatits of actsand works, means.This itis to conceive myself me. Wellso does theUniverse, Time History, evolveitself before shallnaturally history Mind.(JMN,4:285) theAllPerceiving from so unmiraculously so simply, evolve itself, ratherthan genealogy,though the "History"in thiscase is a matterof possibility to outlines of device discernable in any textual termsof possibility correspond it object. But device itselfis invisible;special techniquesare needed to illustrate in the Museum. Its zeal for to the reading eye. Emerson found these everywhere thenaturalorder,was in proportionto thedegree forexposing visual presentation, involved in the whole structureof nature. As opposed to the of invisibility splendid multitude of colors, textures, shapes, and sizes presented in the fromthe species all the wayto the order, themselves, Museum, the classifications were imaginable only as outlines or conceptual boxes. This created a practical the whosejob entailed"showing"as well as "finding" challenge forthe naturalist, or without truthabout nature. Herbaria, naturalhistory engravcatalogues (with ings), botanical gardens, zoological cabinets,and menagerieswere all technical was and showing.The Museum itself solutionsto thisdouble problemof finding such a solution,as a whole and in everypart. Through the techniquesof itsvarattained democraticvisiious exhibitionmedia, invisibleformsof classifications Wall cases, displaytables,plantbeds, groups of zoo cages, the verybooks in bility. the library-these devices framed particularcollocationsof specimens, and so could "see" families, windowsthroughwhichthe visitor worked like transparent and classes.'3 orders, mostresponsible Cuvier and Antoine-Laurent deJussieu, the twonaturalists
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interin 1833, had been primarily forthe overalllook of the Museum exhibitions rather than in genera, species, and varieties. ested in higher classifications, legible in single Though these higherclasses were presentand, to the naturalist, naturalorganisms,theycould mostclearlybe shownbyjuxtaposing a numberof a textbook members.For example,in Cuvier'sTheAnimal Kingdom, representative in and the Museum's zoowere illustrated whose classificatory repeated sequences logical cabinets,one findsthree familiesof livingand fossilgenera included in definedorder of Edentata (Order VI of the class Mamthe rathersmall,sketchily these three familiesseem quite different: first On malia). Tardigrada glance Ordinaria Edentata (armadillos, anteaters,pangolins); and Monotre(sloths); thatunitethesefammata (echidnas and platipuses).Cuvieroutlinestheaffinities ilies into the common order: will form ourlastorder ofunguiculated front without orquadrupeds The Edentata, teeth, united animals. or nails] claws have, negative, they Although bya character purely [having which embrace and particularly mutual somepositive relations, nevertheless, largenails, ofhoofs: a slowness, a moreor lessto thenature ofthetoes,approaching theextremities oftheir from thepeculiar limbs.'4 want ofagility, organization arising obviously if not impossible, to imagine directlythe obscure type Cuvier It is difficult, since the chief"character"markingthe order is the lack of describes,particularly an anatomical feature present in other orders; but the Museum's methods of in two ways. Preserved specimens exhibitionsolved the problem of invisibility that from the order were juxtaposed, in families,in the glass-doored armoires lined the walls of the Cabinet; thus the visitorcould see the obvious affinities between,say,an armadillo and a pangolin. But theCabinet also broughtthe invisible natural order into conceptual visibility byanother,higherjuxtaposition: this themselves. A proper consisted in the arrangement of the labeled armoires of a a kind as vivid armoires served of emblem, enactment, scriptive arrangement Emerson was speaking as a reader of such composite of the higherclassification. "as you glance along thisbewilto the sublime effect emblems when he testified to dering series of animated forms"(JMN, 4:199). Glancing fromone armoire another meant passing throughthe genera and families;entireorders could be of perspective, the specgathered up in a coupd'oeil.In successiveheightenings tator'seye traced a passage analogous to the intellectualprocedure bywhichthe higher categories had been discovered. What bewildered Emerson's glance was but ratheran excess nota lack of order but ratheritsserialprofusion;notopacity, of clarity. The Museum did not stop with the exteriorformsof animals in demonits techniques of analysisand comparison. In Cuvier's Cabinet of Comstrating on the ground floorof the main building,the spectatorcould parativeAnatomy, "find" be characters even in the normally hidden (or shown)classificatory visually interiorsof animals. Arrangementsof skeletonsand of pickled organs let the The Emerson Museum 65

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the leap fromthe visibleto the invisible, visitorfollowthe process of abstraction, which his natural classes. The skeletons, Emerson Cuvier had composed by reported to a lyceumaudience, made "a perfectseries fromthe skeletonof the balaenawhichremindseveryone of the frameof a schooner,to the uprightform and highlydeveloped skullof the Caucasian race of man" (EL, 1:9). Comparing dissimilaras a sloth and a the gap-toothed skulls of animals as superficially featuresof an order such as Edenplatypus,one could see how the characteristic tata had been derived; how the naturalisthad begun by methodically choosing thenhow to forma higherclassification; and abstracting such invariableaffinities the naturalisthad repeated the operation of selectionand abstractionto form even higherclassifications. A crucial lesson lies in the way these means of exhibition,especially the aim ofjuxtaposing specimade one "see." Let us recall thatthe primary armoires, to the viewer-the mere theirclassification mens behind the glass was to clarify curiousness of the exotic specimens was tangentialto this aim.'5 The spectator not simplybylookingat the specimensthemmanaged to "see" the classification themto the higheridea that"contained" selves but bylooking,as it were,through them.There was always,in otherwords,an elementof conceptual "depth"to the was the point: it lay on an pagelike exhibitionarrangements.The classification or of "before" its elements. The clearestvisual invisibleplane "behind" examples consistednot in the contentson displaybut in the analogue to the classification Thus the armoire's medium of display-the glass-coveredcasket of the armoire. in fact a of of the wayclaswas the complex image zoological family presentation of the visible: the container out the invisible sification displayeditseleproduces held them the visitor what elements "showed" the but then ments; together-the thatthe (now re-hollowed)rectangularbox "stood for."The visitor classification was required, in a sense, to imagine the box emptyin order to grasp the reality revealed transparent orders nesting of its perceptiblefullness.Cuvier's armoires notjust betweenthe human eye and the animal body; theywere materializations of the of natural historycatalogues but recursive,depth-making compositional itself. They charteda naturalworld whose apparent principleof natural history surfaceswere onlyan index to whatcould be "seen." The Museum showed how visiblethingscould be put together; just as imporwith taken the same results. how could be it showed apart they precisely tantly, As Emerson frequently noted, the relationshipof compositionand analysiswas one principlethatitselfcould not be dissected: "To separate & to knitup are two or inseparable acts of life; it is forbiddento go out of the All into the particular, of the spirit these functions out of the particularinto the All & the more strictly like inspiring& expiringbreath"(JMN, 7: 118). Emerson'sinspectionof internal was no less a revelation animal features,in the Cabinet of ComparativeAnatomy, of the his tour and of classificatory than zoological mineralogicalcabinets. depth of Cuvier's expoof was the nucleus the Cabinet Indeed, Comparative Anatomy
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sitionof the animal kingdom.As Deleuze's guidebook pointed out, "the exterior formsare but a developmentof interiororganization";hence "it is in anatomy thatone must search for principles"(2:663). The catalogue of anatomical preparations at the time of Cuvier's death in 1832 gives us a sense of the prodigious range of the spectacle: 2625 entireskeletons;2150 skulls; 249 myologicalpreparations; 1867 sets of viscera; 1437 sense organs; 479 genital organs; 878 foetuses; 197 monsters.'6An array of wax models of organs supplemented the formsshowed thatyetanotherrealm pickledspecimens.Display of theseinterior The deeper had been mined by the intellectualtechnologiesof natural history. into the organismone was permittedto see, the more evidentbecame the specimen's membershipin largerclassifications. A crucial question arises here in regard to the place of organic "life"in the Museum. After all, the organism itself(unless it was fortunateenough to be selected for the menagerie or botanical gardens) had to be dissected,preserved throughtaxidermicalor herbariumtechnique,and encased fordisplay.Emerson suggested thatany intellectualobject,insofaras it served the practiceof writing, and memorialization: had to undergo a similarprocess of purification ofdestiny. Webeholditas a god a subject is no longer A truth, bytheintellect, separated or ofour fancies in our life, or anyrecord And so anyfact abovecareand fear. upraised becomes an object thewebofourunconsciousness, from reflections, imperdisentangled ofEgypt A better artthanthat butembalmed. It is thepastrestored, sonaland immortal. forscience. ofcare.It is offered outof it.It is eviscerated has takenfearand corruption
(CW, 2:194)

of hisjournal speciHere Emerson gives us a view of part of the naturalhistory mens. As it passes into thejournal, the object sheds the pathos of mortality, yetit does so forthe sake of a model of textualwholenessthatis notdiscontinuouswith the object's initial appearance among the surfaces of experience. Life, or the is clarified ratherthan lost.To see how thisis aspect of the only lifethatmatters, classification and itsrole in the Cabinet of to think about we have harder possible ComparativeAnatomy. Michel Foucault has argued thatCuvier'sanatomicalmethodled naturalhisthat a point of undifferentiated vitality toryto confronta centralorganic reality, unclassifiable. This is Foucault but thatwas itself was thebasis forall classifications expounding Cuvier: and resemble eachother at their differ at their Animal centers; they peripheries, species the liesin and Their the are connected inaccessible, by apparent. generality by separated in that is mostaccessory to it. which is essential to their thatwhich life;their singularity intothe tofind, thedeeperone must thegroups one wishes The moreextensive penetrate into that dimension that eludes towards thelessandlessvisible, inner darkness, organism's to the of the the further the more one wishes isolate individuality organism, perception; to shinein all their visiitssurface, and allowtheperceptible forms one mustgo towards is hidden.7 is apparent and unity formultiplicity bility; The Emerson Museum 67

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Foucault'sidea thatcomparativeanatomyestablished"life"as a centralprinciple linksCuvier withfamiliarcurrentsin in contrastto all "exterior"classifications withDarwin. But Foucault'sPlotinianreading overand ultimately romanticism, looks somethingimportantabout the displaysat the Museum, and about preDarwinian biology in general. The classificatory "depths" revealed by looking the classifications that could also be shown by inside the animal duplicated grouping the animal withotheranimals,and thenbygroupingthe highergroup with other higher groups. (Agassiz would argue that a like duplication of the was evidentin thesuccessivestagesof itsembryonic animal'sclassificatory identity of The surface the animal body was not,as Foucault would have development.) it,simplya degree on the scale of unityand individuation (withthe transcendent zero degree hidden in the body's vitalcore): ratherthe body's surface was the could take itsdeparturein twodirections point fromwhichclassification starting withidentical results.One of these correspondentlines of departure was illusin the Zoological Cabinet; it proceeded trated by the arrangementsof armoires outward,disclosinga hierarchyof classes byjuxtaposing one animal body with others.The other way was made plain in the Cabinet of ComparativeAnatomy; that it proceeded into the animal's interior, uncoveringorganic characteristics the animal's hence functions and membershipin general signifiedincreasingly increasinglygeneral classes. In either direction,expanding outward or penehierarchy.The ultimate tratinginward, the naturalistscaled the classificatory of in was indeed that the hierarchy biological or biotextualunity, landing place the "book of nature" itself.Far from being an unresolvable essence, however, In "Circles,"Emerson "unity"was nothingother than the highestclassification. nominalism would later push such realisminto a skeptical bysuggestingthatthe is, afterall, only"the mostrecent." highestclassification carries us into the realm of immediate practice. Once again classification of classification an alternativeto the authority Instead of displacing or offering into of theclassifiable extended the frontiers in naturalhistory, I'anatomie comparee what had seemed alien and exotic regions. The Museum showed its public that the outlinesof intellectual technologiescould be tracedbeneath the body'svisible if had as surface, they alwaysbeen hidden there.This extensionof compositional not of reducing the formsand devices into the recesses of nature had the effect to a of organic life to a staticmap, nor of subordinatingclassification mystery within the of the terrific that of but lay exhibiting power principle organicvitality, a to naturalist. This was the of that, power technologies organizationbelonging of organic lifeitself. in its mostextremedemonstrations, challenged the priority We can understand,then,how Emerson managed to be overwhelmedbya sense in spite of the factthat most of of "the upheaving principleof life everywhere" entombed behind what was "natural" in the Museum was desiccated, stuffed, "Life" not departed but or a had in onto page. glass,suspended vinegar, pressed into the wheels of classes into its "principle," had been magnifiedby translation
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Emerson realized in the Museum thatnaturewas natural illustrated everywhere. It was then,thathe should come upon the "upheaving principle fitting, history. in sophisof life"not in the woods or at Walden Pond but in a foreignmetropolis, and display. ticateddevices of classification, preservation,

III The Jardin des plantes offeredEmerson a spectacular view of how "unconscious nature" could be taken up into the registerof conceptual transit and set forthlegiblyon public surfaces.The factthat compositional"method" was advertised even more emphaticallythan its results was nowhere more apparent than in the landscapingof the famousbotanicalgardens (Ecole de botanique). Emerson'sdescriptionof thispartof the Museum emphasizesitsbooklike structure: an enclosed cabinet, walks, garden youcometothebotanical pleasant alongthese Moving itsorder, eachin itsclass, theplants ofbotany-where a grammar wheregrows rise, plot, to soilswillpermit,) in reference as their habits and itsgenus,(as nearly arranged bythe with a hortus or If you haveread Decandollewith himself. hand ofJussieu engravings, this isthis natural and intelligible howmuchmoreexciting conceive siccus, alphabet, green blow. and thewinds on which thesunshines, and crimson and yellow (EL, 1:7). dictionary of livingspecimensto While makingan obvious pointabout the greatervividness those preserved in herbaria or outlined in engravings,Emerson nevertheless insistson the botanical garden'sresemblanceto devices (grammar, alphabet, dicfor of rules elements and that prescribe writing.The classify speech tionary) than an botanical garden, in other words, reorganizes nature more effectively between the garden and the book is a matter ordinarybook, but the difference or intention.Faced withthe complex lines of of degree ratherthan of structure of the axes abstractaffinity, displayed in the botanical multiple organization, was in no waya matterof garden, Emerson perceivedthatthe garden'ssublimity it consistedin the completenature's transcendenceof intellect;on the contrary, thosedevicesof organess withwhichthe device of the book-or, more precisely, nization and informationretrieval that help us to use books-managed to the gorgeousdiversity and magsubordinate(and hence transcendbyclassifying) nitude of nature as it met the eye. The botanicalgarden read like a proto-book, a book of scriptiveelements and rules, analyzed and classifiedfor the uses of provoked original writing.It was the prospect of such a book that ultimately Emerson'sown prospectusof the reorganizedtextualgarden,Nature. A closer examination of the botanical gardens shows how thoroughlythe The visitor retrieval. Museum mixed theaims of analytic displayand information into that divided the area sixteen (allees) paced throughwalkways compartiments; The Emerson Museum 69

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withinthe compartiments, narroweralleesestablisheda gridof 154 plantbeds (para were impressed, terres). Following prescribedroute throughthe allees,visitors one each beside the which mostresembles Deleuze writes, "byseeing plantplaced and lacunae, one maypass bydegrees from it,so that,save fora fewinterruptions to the conifers, likethe fir-tree the Liliaceae, like the tulipand the hyacinthe, and of color-coded clasthe Lebanon cedar" (1:233). A uniform system placards gave and uses, for cultivation, breakdowns,along withdetailsabout habitat, sificatory in the botanical be carAll the information could each plant. displayed gardens whichreproduced ried away in Rene Desfontaines'sTableaude l'Ecolede botanique, in both Latin and the detailsof the classificatory French.'8 Desfontaines, sequence who had laid out the botanical gardens under Jussieu'ssupervision,was careful to manage not only the proper sequence of plants but also the total volume of visible vegetation,in order to present the spectator'seye with a ratio corresponding to thatexistingin naturebetweenthe largestplant classes.'9 As one can see in Deleuze's plan (fig. 1), the alleesdejardin were technical devices of particularimportance;fortheyprovidedboth physical"access" to the plant groupings and conceptual "access" (through the "map" of the plant and kingdom theyestablishedin the mind's eye) to the systemof classification which retrieval information at workin theEcole de botanique. The serialparterres, function as theinterior held cultivated spaces specimens,had thesame expository in the Cabinet.Justas important as the parterres, howof the zoological armoires allees These were media for both and intellectual the were ever, dejardin. physical transit:theythemselveswere "clear,"emptyof visibleforms;by means of them one walked through the plant kingdomjust as one would "thinkthrough the Of course, the entireproarrangementof information. steps"of a classificatory after the modeled was cess of "thinking reading of a catalogue or encythrough" the the allees marginsof the plantbeds, passing along through clopedia. Strolling the pages of Desfontaines's to the next,was liketurning fromone parterre Tableau; to family, order to order,class to class. The colored the spectatorread fromfamily placards-quite literallyblocks of informationfrom Desfontaines-reminded the spectatorthata multileveled conceptualedificewas being erectedin the mind natural classes. Indeed, the whole as he or she took note of each of the fifteen of the tour dramatizeda process of hierarchical conceptualizing.Even the clarity in itsown was significant of the glass-dooredarmoires, allees,like the transparency act of mind that "saw through"one formof conright:it figuredthe transitive ceptual organization to a lower formcontained by it or to a higher formcontainingit. As withother aspects of the Museum, the pedestrianfunctionof the alleesas media for exhibitionconverged withthe way the whole networkof the gardens managed to represent,in pictographiclanguage, the epistemological skeleton of natural historyitself.Hence the spectator'sdirect experience as a reader of nature'stextwas alwayscomplemented,even intensified, by depiction of the means bywhichthatreading experience became possible. The totalevent
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would and critical:it was a process whichEmerson,in Nature, was both visionary most of most in his terms famous, complex metaphor-transbegin expounding parency: "If the Reason be stimulatedto more earnestvision,outlines and surand are no longer seen; causes and spiritsare seen faces become transparent, throughthem" (CW, 1:30). as he would laterdevelop it,was a geneticand epistemological Transparency, to Emerson as the metaphor of repression was to fundamental as metaphor Freud. Whereas Freud's figuredrawscomparisonsbetweenmentallifeand politrefersevents to the ical or institutional domination,Emersonian transparency in whichone manages to see "through" of reading and interpretation, activities (both by means of and in spite of) figuredsurfacesin order to clarifyinitially Emerson had found the metaphorin Coleridge, who used invisiblemeanings.20 it in much the same way.But the Museum, whichtrainedspectatorsto identify of visual focus, carries us beyond Coleridge in illuswith efforts classification In cabinetsand botanical of Emersoniantransparency. virtue the trating peculiar focus saw of critical the "through"natural surfaces spectator'spractice gardens, that were themselvesnothingother than means to to meanings (classifications) only revealed more transparentconceptual higher meanings: so transparency a or memorializing or alleeeitherinviting outline circumscribed with each space, criticaldeed of seeing through.The real subjectmatterof the Museum was not both praga form, raw naturebut ratherwas the specimenformof classification, media of display.Clasmaticand ideal, most clearlyrepresentedin transparent as it appeared in the Museum, was a technicalform that converted sification, not only biological individuals but also the texts that represented everything, them,into new instancesof itself. nested withinthe compositional Emerson beheld the figureof transparency des the corpus of his plantes. Reviewingthe fragmentary Jardin paradigm at journals, he saw transparencycould be nested there as well. Alfred Ferguson observes "a new patternof order" in thejournals Emerson began on his return to America: "He began to letterthem in alphabeticalorder, to buy ratherthan uniformsize for his records, and to make them, to choose books of relatively increase his somewhatsporadic indexing into a major activity" (JMN, 4:249).21 The journals before thistimewere more fullydevoted to extended meditations on specifictopics; but one notices,afterOctober 1833, a decided turnto the aphorism, a less limited range of subjects,a far greaterwillingnessto experiment thatcould notbe completed.Emersoncould and thoughts withradical statements abandon the demands of closure in particularentriesbecause he feltthe whole page of thejournal (A) startedupon his project to be fullymethodical.The first returncharacterizeshis stance towardthe new undertaking: to depositmy becauseI havesomewhere Bank. I growricher This Book is mySavings fractions arewaiting more to me because fractions are worth and corresponding earnings; addition. shallbe madeintegers herethat bytheir (JMN,4:250-51) The Emerson Museum 71

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it comes not as a It is importantto note that thispassage is purelyprescriptive; conclusionbut as Emerson embarksupon a project.Only bythe priorlightof the vision of the whole, a light shiningback, as it were, from the prospect of the future,can the fractionalnature of his new entriesappear in theirquantitative aspect. of classification Emerson'sdiscovery providedthislight.The 167 manuscript into Emerson's indexing A are classified of 82 index topics.22 Journal pages increased in laterjournals, and soon he was composing grand indices activity (these were actuallyindices of indices) thatclassifiedthe materialof numerous journals. These compositionaltopoi did more than provideaccess to information buried in thejournals, which served Emerson as herbaria had served Linnaeus each index topic repeated in largercipher the same deeds and Jussieu: in effect, attestedto byindividualentries.Emerson understood,in commencing of writing Journal A, that "there is no need to fear thatthe immenseaccumulationof scientificfactsshould ever incumberus since as fastas theymultiply theyresolve in common the world a which carries themselvesin a formula place phial. Every we utteris a formulain whichis packed up an uncounted listof particularobservations"(JMN, 4:287). Thus even beforebeingindexed, thejournal entrieswere or promising themselvestopics, specimens either signifying past classifications futureones. Like the allees dejardin, the indices defined groups of specimens, fromone to another.There was of course no need pathways opening transparent to stop withthejournals. By thissame compositionallogic,the Emersonianessay, a highercircleor classificaexistedas a majorjournal topic,was itself whichfirst tion; and each volume of essayswas yeta higherone: "The extentto which this wheel,willgo, depends on the forceor truth generationof circles,wheel without soul" of the individual (CW, 2:180). Afterthe Jardin des plantes, the natural could be traced onlyin itstransitions. of Emerson'swriting history IV that passed It remains for us to consider the special vision of history fromthe Museum exhibitionsinto Emerson'spractice.We learn fromthe exhibition techniques employed in the Museum that classificationserved preclasses themselves and techne: as both logos Darwinian natural history were,quite of that the naturalist forms relation the the transparent meanings, literally, recovered from a dispersed, fragmentednature; but they also comprised the for the intellectualtechnologythat made access to those meanings a possibility techof and naturalist.Cuvier explained this pragmaticconvergence meaning to TheAnimal Kingdom: nique in the introduction butare basedon thetruefundahavenotbeenestablished If thesubdivisions arbitrarily, ofbeings, resemblances on the essential relations mental [veritables rapportsfondamentaux],
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of of beings to general theproperties meansof reducing themethod is thesurest rules, of them on the in and memory.23 the fewest them words, stamping expressing of betweenthe essentialconstitution In order to achieve thisrelationof identity nature and the technical requirements of systems (nomenclature, memory it was essentialthatthe hierarchicalclassifiretrieval), storage,and information format. It had to be a "method," be more thanjust a static cationof naturalhistory For these reain the constitution of the subjectmatter. a technique participating of the Museum's exhibitions sons, the validity depended on the "naturalness"of The naturalist had to findand expose, as themselves. the classifying procedures of intellecthat the a it were, the transcendental joined prioriintegrity ligament of theworld.Emerson called forthissame tual method withthe a prioriintegrity projectin Nature: in details, so longas thereis no hintto explainthe I cannotgreatly honorminuteness ofconchology, ofbotany, noray andthoughts; relation between uponthemetaphysics things tothe offlowers, oftheforms toshowtherelation ofthearts, shells, animals, architecture, a science ideas. and build mind, (CW,1:40) upon like those of Linnaeus and Georges Buffon,had While "artificial" classifications, for idenmade limitedclaims beyond theircapacityto serve as efficient systems the "natural"methodsofJussieuand Cuvier and information tification retrieval, in as many of naturebyinitially affinities finding soughtto map the truestructure In spiteof disputesas to whichparticular different organic featuresas possible.24 scientists shared characterswere in fact"essential," seekinga naturalclassification a common goal: the discovery of an intellectual technology that not only was homoldescribedthe hidden order of naturebutwhose methodicalstructure of as the root trees are with that order, just systems homologous withriver ogous and systems. systems respiratory If the order latentin naturewere fundamentally a textualorder; ifall natural were also signsthat"naturally" as partof being themselves, facts, signified higherlevel realities(thissignificance would inhere in the factregardlessof whetherit was interpreted);then,indeed, it would be conceivablethatsuch devices as catalogues, herbaria,cabinets,and botanical gardens could both representthe natcontinuous with that order in their own right. ural order and be structurally media in the period before Darwin. Hence the peculiar lusterof natural history Cuvier and Jussieusearched throughnatureas ifa ruined book layburied in itits sentences, paragraphs, and chapters broken up; the very charactersof its alphabet now opaque and dispersed. The Museum d'histoirenaturelle,itselfthe naturalhistory, neverlet itsvisitors lose great compositetextof pre-evolutionary of in the fact that even the smallest distinctions found visible sight nature-things only under a microscopeor throughdissection-served the ultimatepurpose of recoveringthe order of nature's book. And yet,however thoroughlythe techniques of the Museum managed to assimilatenature to the model of the book The Emerson Museum 73

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had also to change under model itwas inevitablethatthe and itstechnologies, itself of and magnitude.The old topos-the tradition the pressureof nature'sdiversity the "book of nature" as outlined for us by Ernst Robert Curtius and which Emerson found in Milton,Mather,and Edwards-became somethingdifferent showed Emerson the prospectof a new,more in the Museum.25Natural history and read by commodious kind of "book," a book thatwould have to be written unprecedented means. it has become difof the evolutionary Since the victory paradigm in biology, ficultto grasp the complex image of textual representationgenerated by preWe must face this difficulty, Darwinian natural history. however,if we hope to understand the influence of natural historyon romanticism's project of reinthe texts are written and about or at least way refreshing presumptions venting was the semioticand compositional read. Central to that project of reinvention model of the "organic,"a model thatlatecomingAmericanromantics-especially Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman-managed to warp into peculiar shared a foreshapes. Romantic organicismand the gardens of natural history of Dante's and Milton's use of book nature. of the in the commonplace ground from the same derived the leaf as a metaphor for the written topical tradipage of and Renaissance medieval tion as the discovery,by botanists, "signatures" in plants.26 As one could see in leafingthroughherbaria (innate hieroglyphics) and botanicalcatalogues,or walkingthougha botanicalgarden,plantshad always to the model of the book. Keeping thisin mind,we see thatromantic been fitted organicismwas not simplya matterof turningto naturalorganismsas new metaphors for writing.When FriedrichSchellingand Coleridge described a poem (or a poet) as being like a plant-whether thismeant thatthe poem was written in a common of the poem participated as a plant grows,or thatthevariousfigures wholeness-the force of the metaphor derived from the notions of textuality already associated with the plant. Rather than inventinga new metaphor for romanticorganicismtransumedan old metaphor, basing itsidea of what writing, a poem should be not on the model of the plant itselfbut on the model of texthe special "book,"to whichplantshad alwaysbeen fitted. tuality, And yet,as we say,the book itselfhad to change under the vast pressure of into it. Faced withthe massivequantitiesof strangespeciwhat was being fitted mens flowinginto Europe from the New World, the book of natural history Ceras natureitself. became, or at least promisedto become, as "transcendental" but we are strain in the transcendental is a there describing, project deep tainly handed down itis peculiar and noteasilyassimilatedto versionsof transcendence forus, of naturalhistory consists, by the philosophicaltradition.The peculiarity in the intimate degree to whichtechniqueinheredin thefinalnatureof thereality of a reality consistedin therecovery Nature's after. alreadybeing "history" sought maintainedas what we mightcall, forlack of a betterterm,a technicalinstance. The ultimatesubject matterof Cuvier's discipline was not raw nature but the
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of the natural. It was preciselywhat Emerson unrealized technicalpossibilities designated the "Not Me," the grand topic of Nature.In "The American Scholar" me" (CW, 1:59). For "thisshadow of the soul, or other he called it, more frankly, the natural historianno less than forEmerson,ordinarynature was a mask that "one's concealed and encryptedagencies and techniques that were intimately scientific were recoverable and own," discipline. onlythrough yet History,conceived as descriptionof such technicalinstance,was itselfthe an activity immanentin the textof term for a transcendentaltechnicalactivity, "books." immanentin thetextsof naturalhistory natureand at least prospectively missesthispoint in his Here it willbe useful to returnto Foucault,who entirely discussion of Cuvier's comparative anatomy. Foucault, we recall, argues that Cuvier's science subordinatedthe classifiable patternsof animal organizationto "life" within all organisms. Biology, in Foucault's a core of undifferentiated vitality reading,becomes a kindof emanationaldualism,a model of transcendent Dante's Paradiso.But thiswas not not unlike the Neoplatonic model thatinforms the transcendentalprospect Emerson beheld in the Museum. It is crucial to see elementexposed in the Museum was the elementof techthatthe transcendental a the itself, priori "device" throughwhich nature was identifiedas both nique and latent fact soughtnot merelyto understandthis power.The naturalist patent This is not to elementbut, as faras possible,to reassume itscapability. transitive that life was conceived as but as transcendent was that "life" reality, ignored say in who trained the identicalwitha kind of divine technology. Museum, Agassiz, transcendentalism when he the of this sense proposed that technological caught were classificatory systems oftheCreator. And ifthis ofthethoughts in truth intohumanlanguage buttranslations in this ofcreaofthehuman intellect to thefacts is indeedso,do we notfind adaptability of thetranslators and as I havesaid,unconsciously, webecome tion, instinctively, bywhich the Divine Mind?27 with of our ofGod,themost conclusive thethoughts affinity proof "Affinities" (as opposed to mere "analogies") were those relationsbetweenbeings For classification. built a natural ratherthan an artificial on which the scientist in the the divine intellect same class as that the human the affinity placed Agassiz, In spite of the apparent that is, the abilityto classify. mind was "adaptability," of the term translation, then,Agassiz's suggestionis no less daring than modesty are also his creationand his maintenance If "God's thoughts" Emerson'sin Nature. of the natural whole, and if classification (with all the techniques serving it) thenthe ideal naturalist doubles God, reassuminga lost recoversthose thoughts, not and nature just throughtechniquesbut, quite literally, "affinity" producing as technique itself.The Museum was the grand example of the kind of "book" that prospected for such recovery. Followingthis model, natural historybooks of nature; theymight, in a strangely not aim to the literal write only history might to which is their own. be its to sense, essay history, say, The Emerson Museum 75

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Of course Darwin wrotea new book of nature,and now the old book is hard to read. Followingevolutionarycriteria,we have become accustomed to classito theirdescentfromcommonancesrelationsbetweenspecies byreference fying of a phylumas the most recent thus we can schematize the members tors; living of a single "familytree." If there is a bookto be recovered from ramifications in the ordinarysense of the word: a Darwin's analysisof nature,it is a "history" chronicleof births, deaths,and changes. The "plot"of Darwiniannaturalhistory, like the plots of classic nineteenth-century novels, followsthe development of "characters"over time. But unlike the novel-unlike even the seriallypublished is unfinishable: novel-the chronicleof Darwinian naturalhistory giventhe endof number this chronicle's lessness of organic development,an infinitely greater be will remain to written than have been inscribed. An always already pages cannot fitted to the model of natural world be the finished book. evolving we usually picturenatLooking back fromthe perspectiveof evolutionism, ural historybefore Darwin as "nontemporal,"as the reduction of nature to a format.Such, at any rate, is Foucault's only two-dimensional, legible,but finally Foucault would exempt Cuvier as something of a protojudgment, though evolutionist.28 This conventionalview ignores the strikingfact,evident in the unitsof nature'sbook were not parthatthecompositional Museum's exhibitions, ticular creatures but were nestings of classifications. Though the Museum's models were indeed topographic, we would be mistaken to say they simply crushed nature into the cognitiveequivalentof a flatpage. They were mappings of technicalratherthan spatial relations.As we have seen, the exhibitionspaces in the Museum encouraged spectatorsto look "through"visible surfaces into telescopingdepths of reference.Even thoughspecieswere presumed immutable, even though organic nature was never more than the perpetual florescenceof did not lie natural history the same, the realitymapped out by pre-evolutionary of to the levels and on one conceptual plane. Its topographyconsisted multiple "stacked"game mind's eye looked less like a flatmap than like the transparent, chess. boards in three-dimensional This "book of nature," then, implied a kind of "history"that has become almost unrecoverablefor us.29Though it was entirely descriptiveof the present L'histoire instance,such historywas replete withits own version of temporality. as Emerson encountered it in the Museum and in his subsequent naturelle, and transparency, withclasses based on transition reading,was an architectonics of or a classes "breakingdown" into everywhere"opening up" prospect higher and significance was the classilower classes. The fundamentalunitof structure was always"beside itself"in a curious way,since fication;and yetthe classification while being itselfcontained and delivered by it contained inferiorclassifications The pre-evolutionary classification had an "ecstatic" struca higherclassification. both and relations ture: it achieved meaning through retrospective prospective were other versionsof itself.This was vividly to other classes, which technically 76
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apparent in the Museum. Deleuze's reticulatedground plan shows the way natwithin workedas both mortarand bricks, ural classifications markingdifferences unitswithpaths of conceptual structural and also joining different the structure of the ruined edificeof nature in that were the "history" access. Classifications and could perhaps be constructed constructed theyoutlined the way it was first enabled the Museum The spectatoractuallyto performthe historyof again. fromparterre to parterre ordinum naturalium theseries naturebyfollowing (or from and The colored over the in Desfontaines's to Tableau). placards plants page page "trees"in the guidebooks reminded the spectatorthata threethe classificatory dimensional hierarchywas being framed,in spite of the fact that the limitsof plane. perceptionmade it necessaryto followthe seriesalong a two-dimensional in theMuseum-processes reenacted The compositionalprocessesdemonstrated and genetic; wereat once analytic because they bythespectator-were "historical" As units these down and units involved such, up. processes building breaking they of nature in its double were identical,or at least homologous, withthe history the mysterious equation theyillustrated aspect of decompositionand restoration; of mind is comin "Circles": "The the Emerson defined which history energy by mensurate with the work to be done, withouttime" (CW, 2:188). Time in the time of Darwinian evolution; instead, it was a Museum was not the irreversible and by-productof the conceptual process, somethingthrownoffin splittings it in as natural described nature The differences. of "history" history bridgings fall and more nature's measured was-and so, (or, recovery predoing presently to theideal of a total and reintegration) nature'sdisintegration byreference cisely, in catalogues,cabinets, an ideal thatfound provisionalrepresentation structure, in element naturalhistory had and gardens. Thus the temporal pre-evolutionary succession; ratherit consistedin nothingto do withgenealogy and irreversible reversibleoperations that happened in both nature and intellect:processes of the analysisor synthesis, breakingdown wholes or building them up, scattering them. contentsof nature'sbook or else restoring

Notes
and Miscellaneous ed. WilliamGilman et 1. TheJournals Notebooks Emerson, ofRalph Waldo to thisedition references al., 16 vols. (Cambridge,Mass., 1960-82), 4:197. All further in the textasJMN, followedbyvolume and page numbers. willappear parenthetically 2. The Museum d'histoirenaturelle(commonlycalled theJardindes plantes) was forinstitutions: the mallycreated in 1793 as the combinationof threepre-Revolutionary Jardindu roi; the Cabinet du roi; and the Menagerie du roi. When Emerson visited laid out byRene-Just the Museum in 1833, he viewedmineralcollections Haiiy (17431822); the menagerie and zoological cabinetshad been arranged mainlyby Georges The Emerson Museum

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3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

Cuvier (1769-1832), though parts of the mammal collectionsfollowedthe classifications of Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire(1772-1844). The collectionof shells,which Emerson remembersin Nature,was set up byJean-BaptisteLamarck (1744-1829). the botanical gardens and herbaria exhibitswere organized according to the Finally, of offered system Antoine-Laurentde Jussieu (1748-1836). Because of the publicity by the displayed collections,there was strong competition(most notably between Cuvier and Geoffrey)for control over the various cabinets. See Dorinda Outram, in Post-Revolutionary and Authority Cuvier:Vocation, France(Manchester, Science, Georges 161-88. 1984), of the Cited in Outram, Cuvier,251, n. 84. Georges Buffon,in his role as intendant to itspremierplace as a research Jardindu Roi (1739-88), had guided the institution theJardinaimed to collectrepresentatives of center.In Cuvier's time,as in Buffon's, all natural species, whetherlivingor extinct.Those species for which no specimens were to be had were representedas gaps (lacunes)in the general composition;these gaps were to be "filled in" as new specimens were brought to the Jardin. J.-P.-F. of the Museum was publishedtenyearsbefore and description Deleuze, whose history Emerson's arrival,noted that,"As the method introducedinto theJardindu Roi has schoolsof the realm,and thenadopted in foreign come to be followedin the different countries,and as the expositionof the naturalfamilieshas coordinated the facts,the prodigious number of plants discoveredeveryday no longer present themselvesas isolated, rathertheycome to fillin the gaps stillfound in the general series";Histoire d'histoire du Museum etdescription 2 vols. (Paris, 1823), 1:60. Subsequent naturelle, royal in the text. All translations, unless otherwise references are cited parenthetically noted, are myown. museum in 1833, the Though the United States stilllacked a major natural history 1830s and 1840s were marked by widespread establishment of Lyceums of Natural intheUnited Societies.See Ralph S. Bates,Scientific Societies Historyand Natural History 2nd ed. (New York, 1958), 38-45. States, ed. Stephen Whicher et al., 3 vols. (CamThe EarlyLectures ofRalph WaldoEmerson, All further referencesto thiseditionwillappear par2:23. Mass., 1959-72), bridge, in the textas EL, followedbyvolume and page numbers. enthetically B. L. Packer findsin thejournal passage "thehint,here barelytouched upon, thatthe textof nature is not somethinggivento us but something emanatingfromus"; Emerthe son'sFall: A New Interpretation York, (New 1982), 42. One might Major Essays of in the qualify her point by adding that, for Emerson, the loci of identification Museum's "natural"compositionswere subdivisionsof textuality per se. Form, relabecome tion,series,organization-these are thecountersbywhichnature'sfragments Emerson's to the Hence of an as zoological response "amazing puzzle." legible pieces cabinet's "bewilderingseries of animated forms"had as much to do with the orgaafterall, was only nizingtermsof science as withthe animals,whose apparent vitality, skill. a measure of the taxidermist's ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton,N.J., 1971), 210. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, about a monthafterthe completion lectureseries,starting I consider Emerson's first as a writer. of his European tour,to be the beginningof his "maturity" Certainlythe events of 1834 and 1835-his assumptionof Ellen Tucker's legacy; his relationship with Carlyle; his remarriage; the death of his brother Charles-also contributed His response to these of his formof literary to the establishment productivity. strongly a stance toward to events served writingwhich first mainly crystallize important became apparent in thejournal (A) startedupon his returnto America.

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9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

and biographersnote the importanceof his expeAlmostall of Emerson'scritics rience in theJardindes plantes,and severalhave examined itsconsequences or intelin natural history in discusses Emerson'sinterest lectual content.B. L. Packer briefly her excellentstudyof the background to Nature;Emerson's Fall, 41-48. Leon Chai, in a genAmerican Renaissance TheRomantic Foundations (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987), offers ofthe between Emerson and Cuvier (141-50). Elizabeth A. eral discussion of similarities Dant, "Composing the World: Emerson and the Cabinet of Natural History," 44 (1989): 18-44, presentsthe "cabinet"as a model for Literature Nineteenth-Century and containencyclopedicsubjectmatter. Emerson'sefforts to miniaturize the bestviewof the grounds was to be Before the incorporationof the hillylabyrinthe, had at the lowestspot, as one entered throughthe frontgate near the Seine. From whichoccupies there,accordingto Deleuze, "one sees the Cabinet of Natural History, the widthof theJardin,and appears to rise above twoenclosures,one of whichis the and the otheris a broad square lake [bassin], dug at an inclineto the level seed-nursery of the riverand ringedwithshrubson itssides. To the rightand leftare the twogreat 1:193. avenues of lindens"; Deleuze, Histoire, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al., 4 vols. to date Waldo Works The Collected Emerson, ofRalph referencesto this edition will appear 1:19. All further Mass., 1971-), (Cambridge, in the textas CW followedbyvolume and page numbers. parenthetically Louis Agassiz, Essay on Classification (1859), ed. Edward Lurie (Cambridge, Mass., 9. 1962), of the Museum, concerned as it is withthe "look" of the whole place to My treatment theoriesof Cuvier the lay spectator,emphasizes the more Aristoteleanclassificatory classifiers like Lamarck and Saintesomewhat at the expense of proto-evolutionist Hilaire, whose work was also in evidence among the Museum displays. I stressthe of Cuvier not only because of his relativedominance of the paradigmaticcentrality Museum's public image, but also because his beliefin the essentialrealityof hierarwas accommodated in the representational chical classification techniquesof natural museums. On Cuvier'sfusionof exactcomparativeanatomywithAristotelean history see Ernst Mayer,TheGrowth hierarchicalclassification, Diversity, ofBiologicalThought: and Inheritance Education, (Cambridge,Mass., 1982), 182-84, 367-71. Debate:French in the Darwin DecadesBefore Toby A. Appel, in TheCuvier-Geoffrey Biology animalthrough (Oxford, 1987), notes that"Cuviercould expound the textof Le regne were arranged according to his clasthe veryhalls of the Museum, as the vertebrates scheme" (36). sificatory 4 vols., inConformity ItsOrganization, with Arranged Kingdom, Georges Cuvier,TheAnimal trans.H. M'Murtrie(New York, 1831), 1:159. I do not In stressing the more abstractaims of the Museum's strategies of exhibition, also consistedin the sheer curiosity wish to deny that the interestof the institution of its display of the exotic. The displaysincluded not only specimensbut many repand descriptionsof distantnatural environments. resentations Cuvier's emphasis on as a basis for subordination of characters meant that the enviclassificatory function ronmentof an animal group was of seriousinterest. Hence, a numberof the mammal of theirnativehabspecimensin the zoological cabinetwere displayedin simulations and the focalpointof itsexhibitions, the Museum's major interest, itats.Nevertheless, was the logico-technical classification. principleof hierarchical "Catalogue des preparationsanatomiques laissees dans le Cabinet d'anatomie comAnnalesdu Museum paree du Museum d'histoirenaturelle par G. Cuvier,"Nouvelles naturelle d'histoire 2 (1833): 417-508.

The Emerson Museum

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An Archaeology 17. Michel Foucault, TheOrderofThings: (New York, oftheHumanSciences 267-68. 1970), du roi,2nd ed. (Paris, 1815). 18. Rene Desfontaines,Tableaude l'Ecolede botanique duJardin "This little meantto facilitate book,"Desfontainesexplains,"is particularly correspondence withforeigners, to indicateto themthe plantswhichtheycan acquire and those withwhichtheycan enrichtheJardinthroughreciprocalexchange" (v). 19. Deleuze, Histoire, 1:232. see Packer,Emerson's 20. For detailed discussion of Emerson's concept of transparency, Raritan 9 (Winter Fall, 72-82; and Lee Rust Brown, "Emersonian Transparency," 1990): 127-44. Artofthe and the 21. Lawrence Rosenwald,Emerson Diary(Oxford, 1988), also discussesthe to his reconceptionof thejournalizing project relationof Emerson'sindexingactivity in 1833-34. the 144 pages ofJournalQ (10 March 1832-18 November 1833) are given 22. By contrast, located. Almostno index only 17 index topics,mostof whichcan onlybe uncertainly notebooksEmerson keptduringhis European topicswere givento thefivepocket-size tour. of divisions,"Cuvier also points out, 5. "This scaffolding 23. Cuvier, AnimalKingdom, in whichwe proceed fromthe propertiesof thingsto worksas "a sort of dictionary, arrive at theirnames; being the reverseof the common ones, in which we proceed Once the systemwas codified and made fromthe name to arrive at the property." or Jussieu'sGenera the amaavailable in textbookslike TheAnimal Plantarum, Kingdom teur,or the explorer,could "find"the natural locus of an unidentified specimen by register, recognizingfirstmore general working"down" through the classificatory charactersto locate family and charactersto locate class and order,thenmore specific genus. modelsbetweenJussieu'sand Cuvier'sclassificatory 24. In spite of obvious differences Jussieu organized the plants in a continuous series while Cuvier conceived his as discontinuous-the Museum publicized them as united advocates embranchements of the "natural method": "Cuvier did forzoology whatJussieu had done forbotany, a clasindicatedbyinvariablecharacters, in establishing, accordingto naturalrelations 1:145. See Foucault'sdiswhichwas universally sification adopted"; Deleuze, Histoire, cussion of the distinctionbetween "system"and "method" in eighteenth-century 138-45. Order naturalclassification; ofThings, and theLatinMiddleAges,trans.Willard R. 25. Ernst Robert Curtius,EuropeanLiterature Trask (New York, 1948), 319-26. Order 25-30. 26. See Foucault'sdiscussionof plant signatures, ofThings, 9. 27. Agassiz,Essayon Classification, 136. 28. Foucault,Order ofThings, of a fully in the sense of itsGreek root-that is,a systematic 29. History description present subject,ratherthan an account of past circumstances-survivedinto the nineteenth history. centuryonlyin the termnatural

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