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Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April
27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of America's most
influential thinkers and writers.
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Life
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
to the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister in a famous line of
ministers; Emerson was later to become a Unitarian minister himself. He
gradually drifted from the doctrines of his peers, then formulated and
first expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature.
When he was three years old, Emerson's
father complained that the child could not read well enough. Then in
1810, when Emerson was eight years old, his father died. In October of
1817, at the age of 14, Emerson went to Harvard University and was
appointed President's Freshman, a position which gave him a room free of
charge. He waited at Commons, which reduced the cost of his board to one
quarter, and he received a scholarship. He added to his slender means by
tutoring and by teaching during the winter vacations at his Uncle
Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard in
1821, he assisted his brother in a school for young ladies established
in their mother's house; when his brother went to Göttingen to study
divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several
years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard
Divinity School, and emerged as a Unitaritan minister in 1829. A dispute
with church officials over the administration of the Communion service,
and a reticence for public prayer led to his resignation in 1832. A year
earlier his young wife and reputed one true love, Miss Elena Louisa
Tucker, died in April of 1831.
In 1832–33, Emerson toured Europe, a trip
that he would later write about in English Traits (1856). During this
trip, he met Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas
Carlyle. Emerson maintained a correspondence with Carlyle until
Carlyle's death in 1882.
In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the
Cambridge Turnpike, in Concord, Massachusetts. He quickly became one of
the leading citizens in the town. He also married his second wife Lydia
Jackson here.
In September of 1836, Emerson and other
like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served
as a center for the movement, but didn't publish its journal The Dial,
until July of 1840. Emerson published his first essay, Nature,
anonymously in September of 1836. While it became the foundation for
Transcendentalism, many people at the time assumed it to be a work of
Swedenborgianism.
In 1838 he was invited back to Divinity
Hall, Harvard Divinity School, for the school's graduation address. His
remarks managed to outrage the establishment and shock the whole
Protestant community at the time, as he proclaimed Jesus Christ a great
man, but not God. For this, he was denounced as an atheist, and a
poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of his critics, he made
no reply, leaving it to others for his defense. He was not invited back
to speak at Harvard for another 40 years, but by the mid 1880s his
position had become standard Unitarian doctrine.
Early in 1842, Emerson lost his first son,
Waldo, to scarlet fever. Emerson wrote about his grief in two major
works: the poem "Threnody", and the essay "Experience".
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer
in New England and the rest of the country outside of the south. During
several scheduled appearances that he was not able to make, Frederick
Douglass took his place. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects.
Many of his essays grew out of his lectures.
Emerson associated closely with Nathaniel
Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau and often took walks with them in
Concord.
Emerson was noted as being a very abstract
and difficult writer who nevertheless drew large crowds for his
speeches. A common joke heard from his audiences was that they had no
idea what he was saying, but that it was beautiful. He was considered
one of the great orators of the time, a man who could enrapture crowds
with his own enthusiasm. His outspoken, uncompromising support for
abolitionism later in life caused protest and jeers from crowds when he
spoke on the subject. He continued to speak on abolition without concern
for his popularity and with increasing radicalism. He attempted, with
difficulty, not to join the public arena as a member of any group or
movement, and always retained a stringent independence that reflected
his individualism. He always insisted that he wanted no followers, but
sought to give man back to himself, as a self-reliant individual. Asked
to sum up his work late in life, he said it was his doctrine of "the
infinitude of the private man" that remained central.
Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery, Concord.
The town of Emerson, Manitoba is named
after him.
Works
Emerson's prose works include:
Nature (1836)
"The American Scholar" (1837, an address to
Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard)
"The Divinity School Address" (1838)
Essays: First Series (1841; includes
"Compensation", "Self-Reliance", and "Circles")
"The Transcendentalist" (1841)
Essays: Second Series (1844; includes "The
Poet (Ralph Waldo Emerson)", "Experience", and "Politics")
Representative Men (1850; features essays
on Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe)
English Traits (1856)
The Conduct of Life (1860; includes "Fate"
and "Power")
"Thoreau" (1862; a eulogy for Henry David
Thoreau)
Although he is more generally recognized as
an essayist, Emerson also wrote and translated poetry. Emerson's poetry
includes:
Collections:
Poems (1847)
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Selected Poems (1876)
Poems:
"Threnody"
"Uriel"
"Works and Days"
"Concord Hymn" (origin of the phrase "Shot
heard 'round the world")
[edit]
Quotations
"I had better never see a book, than to be
warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite
instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active
soul." ("The American Scholar", 1837)
"Whoso would be a man must be a
nonconformist." ("Self-Reliance", 1841)
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well
concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in
hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words
again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you
shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus,
and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and
wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
("Self-Reliance", 1841)
"Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of your own mind." ("Self-Reliance", 1841)
"Our moods do not believe in each other."
("Circles", 1841)
"There are moods in which we court
suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp
peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and
counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow
it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never
introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even
pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out
that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their
objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the
things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In
the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a
beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me." ("Experience",
1844)
"It is very unhappy, but too late to be
helped, the discovery that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall
of Man." ("Experience", 1844)
"Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag
in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and
steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other
way: Every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the
divinities honor and promote – justice, love, freedom, knowledge,
utility." American Civilization, The Atlantic Monthly (1862)
****
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