...the truth of the matter is this: Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the moment of repose; it resides in the moment of transition...fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint...

...Emerson suggests that such a stasis would be death: "Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the...the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim" (1983, p. 271). What helps create the sense of movement here, aside from the present participles "shooting,"...

..."transitions" in "Self-Reliance": "Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the movement of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim" (89). By writing Lives full of transitions, these women lay claim not only to cultural and physical...

...work. For Emerson transition represents a site of power: "power ceases," he remarks in "Self-Reliance." "in the instant of repose: it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state" (Essays 271). an idea which he later, in his essay "Plato." interweaves with the notion of traveling....

...to above, ends as follows: 'This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame' (1981: 152-3). And this does seem true; when it comes to that cluster of concepts which have been identified...

...Emerson's statement concerning the power of movement and progression, alluded to above, ends as follows: 'This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame' (1981: 152-3). And...

...Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985), 116. Bloom's position is itself Emersonian: "Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the...the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim" (Emerson, 158). 26. Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in Classical Essays on the Culture...

...completed act by commencing new acts: "Power," he insists in a famous passage from "SelfReliance," "ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the...the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim" (271). This ethos of abandonment and transition can open our perception to aspects of experience that...

...controlled by figures of ascension. In "Self- Reliance" we read that "the soul becomes," that 46 power "resides in the moment of transition from a past to...the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim." The inchoate metaphor develops in "Compensation," where Emerson affirms that "the soul refuses limits,"...

...since its power derives from its own internal movements. To repeat Emerson in "Self-Reliance," "power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state." James's pragmatism looks back to the two American writers he most admired — Emerson with his transitions,...