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Paradox
Definition of Personification
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the... read full definition
Personification
Explanation and Analysis—Lords of Life:
Toward the end of the essay, Emerson repeats his epigraph's personification of "the lords of life": Use, Surprise, Surface, Dream, Succession, spectral Wrong, Temperament, and "the inventor of the game." This time, Emerson calls some of them by slightly different names and also uses a metaphor comparing them to "threads on the loom of time:"
Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,—these are threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life. I dare not assume to give their order, but I name them as I find them in my way.
Now, after writing through many of his thoughts, Emerson has substituted "Illusion" for what he once called "spectral Wrong." Temperament, Succession, and Surface remain the same. What he first called "Use" and "Surprise" seem now to just be "Surprise." "Dream" and "the inventor of the game" (i.e. some sort of God or objective power) have become "Subjectiveness" and "Reality." Emerson is not being sloppy in his terms—or, rather, any sloppiness is deliberate. The essay form allows him to present not a pre-formed argument, but rather a dynamic thought process to arrive at a conclusion. Through that process, Emerson has discovered that we are all living in a kind of subjective "dream" that gestures at a greater objective "reality" that some might consider divine.
Emerson is also deliberately imprecise in the way he first calls all these forces "threads on the loom of time" and then calls them "the lords of life." He cannot quite settle on the figure of speech that most clearly captures what he means. On the one hand, as metaphorical "threads on the loom of time," the forces represent the instrument the Fates of polytheistic theology are often said to use to create the fabric of people's lives. Emerson's phrasing suggests that these are the threads that are stretched across the loom at the start of a project, forming the warp of the woven fabric; each "string of beads" making up subjective experience would then be woven into the warp as time passes, creating the fabric of time. In this sense, these "threads" are the omnipresent forces holding the fabric of all human experience together.
The idea that these forces are living "lords" of life similarly imbues them with governing power. Like lords, these forces determine the lives of those over whom they rule. By repeating this bit of personification from the epigraph, Emerson also draws his readers' attention back to the beginning of the essay and conveys the sense that even if his writing has been winding and meditative, it has nonetheless come full circle.
Related Themes:
