For Bloom, Emerson’s voice is the voice of American “knowing.” Emerson’s voice did not speak a language of debunking, demystifying, or de-idealizing, but one of circles, ever moving outward from the striving self. Emerson wrote of circles knowing that they have no center. In a world without a center, the only source of authority, of meaning, is the self-begotten self. Emerson showed that this is no easy task, but a heavy “American burden.”77 But Emerson, like Nietzsche, instructed all latecomers that “nothing is got for nothing.”
