Telemachy

In 1830, Emerson was frustrated with sermons, with their “cold, mechanical preparations for a delivery most decorous—fine things, pretty things, wise things—but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling.” He wanted to find what he called “a new literature.”

A German con artist, Johann Maelzel, visited America with a “panharmonicon,” an organ without keys. He would crank its heavy silver lever three times and step off to the side, and the machine would spit out an entire orchestra’s worth of sound: flutes, drums, trumpets, cymbals, trombones, a triangle, clarinets, violins. After seeing Maelzel’s machine perform, Emerson called the new literature he’d been looking for “a panharmonicon. Here everything is admissible—philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdote, jokes, ventriloquism—all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversation, highest and lowest personal topics: all are permitted, and all may be combined into one speech.”