Various views on friendship with reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson and other significant personalities
... Louise Cunningham The word “friendship” seems to be frequently used not only in English but in other world languages as well. Yet, is defining friendship as easy as uttering the word that stands for it? What is friendship then? To Ralph Waldo Emerson not the helping hand that is mentioned in Cunningham’s poem but “entireness, a total magnanimity and trust” is the essence of friendship (Emerson, 2000: 214). According to him friendship is the beating hearts of two who share their affection while about to encounter. ... “The earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, — all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons” (Emerson, 2000: 202). Emerson contrasts it with the reaction that the approach of an unknown guest causes. ... “Happy is the house that shelters a friend” (Emerson, 2000: 206). In Emerson’s heading quotation one finds that the glory of friendship is called “the spiritual inspiration”. ... Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray calls Emerson’s spiritual inspiration “the passions of friendship” and regards them as the fascinating things in life (Garcia, 2003). ... Shakespeare points out in Troilus and Cressida that such precious internal sensations which are motivated by friendship must bear jealousy: “Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time” Shakespeare (Kuchling, 2002).