| Sumario: | The article focuses on the literary work of essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In spite of himself, Emerson has become the great American chiffonier: an essayist remembered more for aphoristic morsels than for larger structures of thought. His work witnesses more, however, than artistic self-reproach. Like the "cord" he envisages, Emerson's passage weaves manifold strands of reference. The "scraps," "ends" and "tufts" figure a derided partiality, which he yearns to synthesize into something nourishingly self-complete. Into this oppositional framework, Emerson introduces the topic of vocation, juxtaposing the proverbially mercantile "Jew" against the "helpful" produce of manual labour.
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