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= Ralph_Waldo_Emerson =
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Introduction
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his
middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher,
minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist
movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of
individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of
the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich
Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt
Whitman called Emerson his "master".
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of
his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of
Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, 'Nature'. His speech "The
American Scholar," given in 1837, was called America's "intellectual
Declaration of Independence" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures and then
revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, 'Essays:
First Series' (1841) and 'Essays: Second Series' (1844), represent the
core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays
"Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "The Poet," and
"Experience." Together with "Nature," these essays made the mid-1830s
to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a
number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets. He
instead developed ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability
for mankind to achieve almost anything, and the relationship between
the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more
philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the
universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of
several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach, by
rejecting views of God as separate from the world."
He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and
his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers, and poets that
followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one
doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also
well-known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow
Transcendentalist.
Early life, family, and education
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Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, to Ruth
Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister. He was
named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's
great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five
sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward,
Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children--Phoebe, John
Clarke, and Mary Caroline--died in childhood. Emerson was of English
ancestry, and his family had been in New England since the early
colonial period, with Emerson being a seventh-generation descendant of
'Mayflower' voyagers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through their
daughter Hope.
Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than
two weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday. Emerson was raised by his
mother, with the help of the other women in the family; his aunt Mary
Moody Emerson in particular had a profound effect on him. She lived
with the family off and on and maintained a constant correspondence
with Emerson until her death in 1863.
Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812,
when he was nine. In October 1817, at age 14, Emerson went to Harvard
College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president,
requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to
faculty. Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping a list
of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks
that would be called "Wide World." He took outside jobs to cover his
school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as
an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel and aunt Sarah
Ripley in Waltham, Massachusetts. By his senior year, Emerson decided
to go by his middle name, Waldo. Emerson served as Class Poet; as was
custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month
before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18. He
did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of
his class of 59 people. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at
the School for Young Ladies (which was run by his brother William). He
next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of
Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he wrote and studied nature. In his
honor, this area is now called Schoolmaster Hill in Boston's Franklin
Park.
In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer
climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the
weather was still too cold. He then went farther south to St.
Augustine, Florida, where he took long walks on the beach and began
writing poetry. While in St. Augustine he made the acquaintance of
Achille Murat, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Murat was two years
his senior; they became good friends and enjoyed each other's company.
The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society,
philosophy, and government. Emerson considered Murat an important
figure in his intellectual education.
While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first encounter with slavery.
At one point, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave
auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, "One ear
therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was
regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going!
Early career
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After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for
young women established in their mother's house, after he had
established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his
brother William went to Göttingen to study law in mid-1824, Ralph
Waldo closed the school but continued to teach in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, until early 1825. Emerson was accepted into the Harvard
Divinity School in late 1824, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in
1828. Emerson's brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the
office of the lawyer Daniel Webster, after graduating from Harvard
first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate, and
he soon suffered a mental collapse as well; he was taken to McLean
Asylum in June 1828 at age 25. Although he recovered his mental
equilibrium, he died in 1834, apparently from long-standing
tuberculosis. Another of Emerson's bright and promising younger
brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis,
making him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die
in a period of a few years.
Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New
Hampshire, on Christmas Day, 1827, and married her two years later
when she was 18. The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother,
Ruth, moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already ill
with tuberculosis. Less than two years after that, on February 8,
1831, Ellen died, at age 20, after uttering her last words, "I have
not forgotten the peace and joy." Emerson was strongly affected by her
death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. In a journal entry dated
March 29, 1832, he wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the
coffin."
Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor,
and he was ordained on January 11, 1829. His initial salary was $1,200
per year (), increasing to $1,400 in July, but with his church role he
took on other responsibilities: he was the chaplain of the
Massachusetts Legislature and a member of the Boston School Committee.
His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, and
facing the imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own
beliefs.
After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's
methods, writing in his journal in June 1832, "I have sometimes
thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to
leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age,
we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." His disagreements
with church officials over the administration of the Communion service
and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation
in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not
suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it." As one
Emerson scholar has pointed out, "Doffing the decent black of the
pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of
the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a
tradition."
Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in
'English Traits' (1856). He left aboard the brig 'Jasper' on Christmas
Day, 1832, sailing first to Malta. During his European trip, he spent
several months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, among
other cities. When in Rome, he met with John Stuart Mill, who gave him
a letter of recommendation to meet Thomas Carlyle. He went to
Switzerland and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit
Voltaire's home in Ferney, "protesting all the way upon the
unworthiness of his memory". He then went on to Paris, a "loud modern
New York of a place", where he visited the Jardin des Plantes. He was
greatly moved by the organization of plants according to Jussieu's
system of classification, and the way all such objects were related
and connected. As Robert D. Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of
insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des
Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him
away from theology and toward science."
Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle in particular was a strong
influence on him; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary
agent in the United States for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to
persuade Carlyle to come to America to lecture. The two maintained a
correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881.
Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived
with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts. In October 1834, he moved to
Concord, Massachusetts, to live with his step-grandfather, Dr. Ezra
Ripley, at what was later named The Old Manse. Given the budding
Lyceum movement, which provided lectures on all sorts of topics,
Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer. On November 5, 1833, he
made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500 lectures, "The
Uses of Natural History," in Boston. This was an expanded account of
his experience in Paris. In this lecture, he set out some of his
important beliefs and the ideas he would later develop in his first
published essay, 'Nature':
On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lydia Jackson proposing
marriage. Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th. In July
1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in
Concord, Massachusetts, which he named Bush; it is now open to the
public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House. Emerson quickly became one of
the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to commemorate the
200th anniversary of the town of Concord on September 12, 1835. Two
days later, he married Jackson in her hometown of Plymouth,
Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in Concord together with
Emerson's mother on September 15.
Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call her
Queenie, and sometimes Asia, and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their
children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Edward
Waldo Emerson was the father of Raymond Emerson. Ellen was named for
his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion. He hired Sophia Foord to
educate his children.
Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, but was later able to support
his family for much of his life. He inherited a fair amount of money
after his first wife's death, though he had to file a lawsuit against
the Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He received $11,600 in May 1834
(), and a further $11,674.49 in July 1837 (). In 1834, he considered
that he had an income of $1,200 a year from the initial payment of the
estate, equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor.
Literary career and Transcendentalism
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On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of 'Nature',
Emerson met with Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam, and George
Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals.
This was the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a
center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on
September 19, 1836. On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of
the Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret
Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar, and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his home before
the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening
get-together. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in
Transcendentalism.
Emerson anonymously sent his first essay, "Nature", to James Munroe
and Company to be published on September 9, 1836. A year later, on
August 31, 1837, he delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address,
"The American Scholar," then entitled "An Oration, Delivered before
the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a
collection of essays (which included the first general publication of
"Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did
so at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in
a month. In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the
United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their
own, free from Europe. James Russell Lowell, who was a student at
Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on
our literary annals". Another member of the audience, Reverend John
Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible
address".
In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. Though they had
likely met as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked
Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to be a
lifelong inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson's own journal was published
in 16 large volumes, in the definitive Harvard University Press
edition issued between 1960 and 1982. Some scholars consider the
journal to be Emerson's key literary work.
In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of
history at the Masonic Temple in Boston. This was the first time he
managed a lecture series on his own, and it was the beginning of his
career as a lecturer. The profits from this series of lectures were
much larger than when he was paid by an organization to talk, and he
continued to manage his own lectures often throughout his lifetime. He
eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the
northern United States as far as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis,
and California.
On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard
Divinity School, to deliver the school's graduation address, which
came to be known as the "Divinity School Address". Emerson discounted
biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he
was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a
"demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or
Apollo". His comments outraged the establishment and the general
Protestant community. He was denounced as an atheist and a poisoner of
young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply,
leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to
speak at Harvard for another thirty years.
The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, 'The
Dial', in July 1840. They planned the journal as early as October
1839, but did not begin work on it until the first week of 1840.
Unitarian minister George Ripley was the managing editor. Margaret
Fuller was the first editor, having been approached by Emerson after
several others had declined the role. Fuller stayed on for about two
years, when Emerson took over, using the journal to promote talented
young writers including Ellery Channing and Thoreau.
In 1841, Emerson published 'Essays', his second book, which included
the famous essay "Self-Reliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley
of atheism and false independence", but it gained favorable reviews in
London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any
of Emerson's contributions to date laid the groundwork for his
international fame.
In January 1842, Emerson's first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever.
Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is
true dying"), and the essay "Experience". In the same month, William
James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of
a hundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good
orchard and grounds". Charles Lane purchased a 90 acre farm in
Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands,
a community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by
Transcendentalism. The farm would run based on a communal effort,
using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use
no wool or leather. Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not
engaging in the experiment himself. Even so, he did not think
Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he
wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us much land and money".
Even Alcott admitted he was not prepared for the difficulty in
operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize
practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he
wrote. After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's
family in Concord which Alcott named "Hillside".
'The Dial' ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported
it as an end to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever
published in this country".
In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, 'Essays:
Second Series'. This collection included "The Poet", "Experience",
"Gifts", and an essay entitled "Nature", a different work from the
1836 essay of the same name.
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of
the rest of the country. He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s
he was giving as many as 80 lectures per year. He addressed the Boston
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester
Lyceum, among others. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects, and
many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $10
and $50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $2,000 in a
typical winter lecture season. This was more than his earnings from
other sources. In some years, he earned as much as $900 for a series
of six lectures, and in another, for a winter series of talks in
Boston, he netted $1,600. He eventually gave some 1,500 lectures in
his lifetime. His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying
11 acre of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring
pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and water lord of 14 acres,
more or less".
Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy through the works of the
French philosopher Victor Cousin. In 1845, Emerson's journals show he
was reading the 'Bhagavad Gita' and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's 'Essays
on the Vedas'. He was strongly influenced by Vedanta, and much of his
writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples
of this can be found in his essay "The Over-soul":
The central message Emerson drew from his Asian studies was that "the
purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of
divine power, here and now on earth."
In 1847-48, he toured the British Isles. He also visited Paris between
the French Revolution of 1848 and the bloody June Days. When he
arrived, he saw the stumps of trees that had been cut down to form
barricades in the February riots. On May 21, he stood on the Champ de
Mars in the midst of mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor.
He wrote in his journal, "At the end of the year we shall take
account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees." The trip
left an important imprint on Emerson's later work. His 1856 book
'English Traits' is based largely on observations recorded in his
travel journals and notebooks. Emerson later came to see the American
Civil War as a "revolution" that shared common ground with the
European revolutions of 1848.
In a speech in Concord, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1851, Emerson
denounced the Fugitive Slave Act:
That summer, he wrote in his diary:
In February 1852, Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry
Channing edited an edition of the works and letters of Margaret
Fuller, who had died in 1850. Within a week of her death, her New York
editor, Horace Greeley, suggested to Emerson that a biography of
Fuller, to be called 'Margaret and Her Friends', be prepared quickly
"before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away".
Published under the title 'The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli',
Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten. The three editors
were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in
Fuller was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical
figure. Even so, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and
went through thirteen editions before the end of the century.
Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection 'Leaves of
Grass' in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson for his opinion. Emerson
responded positively, sending Whitman a flattering five-page letter in
response. Emerson's approval helped the first edition of 'Leaves of
Grass' stir up significant interest and convinced Whitman to issue a
second edition shortly thereafter. This edition quoted a phrase from
Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at
the Beginning of a Great Career". Emerson took offense that this
letter was made public and later was more critical of the work.
Philosophers Camp
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In summer 1858, Emerson camped at Follensbee Pond in the Adirondack
Mountains in upstate New York with nine others: Louis Agassiz, James
Russell Lowell, John Holmes, Horatio Woodman, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar,
Jeffries Wyman, Estes Howe, Amos Binney, and William James Stillman.
Invited, but unable to make the trip, were Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Charles Eliot Norton, all members of
the Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts).
This social club was mostly a literary membership that met the last
Saturday of the month at the Boston Parker House Hotel (Omni Parker
House). William James Stillman was a painter and founding editor of an
art journal called the Crayon. Stillman was born and grew up in
Schenectady which was just south of the Adirondack mountains. He later
traveled there to paint the wilderness landscape and to fish and hunt.
He shared his experiences in this wilderness to the members of the
Saturday Club, raising their interest in this unknown region.
James Russell Lowell and William Stillman led the effort to organize a
trip to the Adirondacks. They began their journey on August 2, 1858,
traveling by train, steamboat, stagecoach, and canoe guide boats. News
that these cultured men were living like "Sacs and Sioux" in the
wilderness appeared in newspapers across the nation. This became known
as the "'Philosophers Camp'".
This event was a landmark in the nineteenth-century intellectual
movement, linking nature with art and literature.
Although much has been written over many years by scholars and
biographers of Emerson's life, little has been written of what has
become known as the "Philosophers Camp" at Follensbee Pond. Yet, his
epic poem "Adirondac" reads like a journal of his day-to-day detailed
description of adventures in the wilderness with his fellow members of
the Saturday Club. This two-week camping excursion (1858 in the
Adirondacks) brought him face to face with a true wilderness,
something he spoke of in his essay "Nature", published in 1836. He
said, "in the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than
in streets or villages".
Civil War years
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Emerson was staunchly opposed to slavery, but he did not appreciate
being in the public limelight and was hesitant about lecturing on the
subject. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he did give a
number of lectures, however, beginning as early as November 1837. A
number of his friends and family members were more active
abolitionists than he, at first, but from 1844 on he more actively
opposed slavery. He gave a number of speeches and lectures, and
welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown's visits to Concord. He
voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but was disappointed that Lincoln
was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery
outright. Once the American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear
that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves.
Around this time, in 1860, Emerson published 'The Conduct of Life',
his seventh collection of essays. It "grappled with some of the
thorniest issues of the moment," and "his experience in the abolition
ranks is a telling influence in his conclusions." In these essays
Emerson strongly embraced the idea of war as a means of national
rebirth: "Civil war, national bankruptcy, or revolution, [are] more
rich in the central tones than languid years of prosperity."
Emerson visited Washington, D.C., at the end of January 1862. He gave
a public lecture at the Smithsonian on January 31, 1862, and declared,
"The South calls slavery an institution ... I call it destitution ...
Emancipation is the demand of civilization". The next day, February 1,
his friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln at the White House.
Lincoln was familiar with Emerson's work, having previously seen him
lecture. Emerson's misgivings about Lincoln began to soften after this
meeting. In 1865, he spoke at a memorial service held for Lincoln in
Concord: "Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I
doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused, or will
have caused, on its announcement." Emerson also met a number of
high-ranking government officials, including Salmon P. Chase, the
secretary of the treasury; Edward Bates, the attorney general; Edwin
M. Stanton, the secretary of war; Gideon Welles, the secretary of the
navy; and William Seward, the secretary of state.
On May 6, 1862, Emerson's protégé Henry David Thoreau died of
tuberculosis at the age of 44. Emerson delivered his eulogy. He often
referred to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a falling-out that
began in 1849 after Thoreau published 'A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers'. Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years
after Thoreau, in 1864. Emerson served as a pallbearer when Hawthorne
was buried in Concord, as Emerson wrote, "in a pomp of sunshine and
verdure".
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1864. In 1867, he was elected as a member to the American
Philosophical Society.
Final years and death
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Starting in 1867, Emerson's health began declining; he wrote much less
in his journals. Beginning as early as the summer of 1871 or in the
spring of 1872, he started experiencing memory problems and suffered
from aphasia. By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at
times and, if asked how he felt, would respond "Quite well; I have
lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well".
In the spring of 1871, Emerson took a trip on the transcontinental
railroad, barely two years after its completion. Along the way and in
California he met a number of dignitaries, including Brigham Young
during a stopover in Salt Lake City. Part of his California visit
included a trip to Yosemite, and while there he met a young and
unknown John Muir, a signature event in Muir's career.
Emerson's Concord home caught fire on July 24, 1872. He called for
help from neighbors and, giving up on putting out the flames, all
tried to save as many objects as possible. The fire was put out by
Ephraim Bull Jr., the one-armed son of Ephraim Wales Bull. Donations
were collected by friends to help the Emersons rebuild, including
$5,000 gathered by Francis Cabot Lowell, another $10,000 collected by
LeBaron Russell Briggs, and a personal donation of $1,000 from George
Bancroft. Support for shelter was offered as well; though the Emersons
ended up staying with family at the Old Manse, invitations came from
Anne Lynch Botta, James Elliot Cabot, James T. Fields and Annie Adams
Fields. The fire marked an end to Emerson's serious lecturing career;
from then on, he would lecture only on special occasions and only in
front of familiar audiences.
While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England,
continental Europe, and Egypt. He left on October 23, 1872, along with
his daughter Ellen, while his wife Lidian spent time at the Old Manse
and with friends. Emerson and his daughter Ellen returned to the
United States on the ship 'Olympus' along with friend Charles Eliot
Norton on April 15, 1873. Emerson's return to Concord was celebrated
by the town, and school was canceled that day.
In late 1874, Emerson published an anthology of poetry entitled
'Parnassus', which included poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Julia
Caroline Dorr, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom, Jones Very, as well as
Thoreau and several others. Originally, the anthology had been
prepared as early as the fall of 1871, but it was delayed when the
publishers asked for revisions.
The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he
ceased his public appearances by 1879. In reply to an invitation to a
retirement celebration for Octavius B. Frothingham, he wrote, '"I am
not in condition to make visits, or take any part in conversation. Old
age has rushed on me in the last year, and tied my tongue, and hid my
memory, and thus made it a duty to stay at home."' The 'New York
Times' quoted his reply and noted that his regrets were read aloud at
the celebration. Holmes wrote of the problem saying, "Emerson is
afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of
his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he
wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times".
On April 21, 1882, Emerson was found to be suffering from pneumonia.
He died six days later. Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,
Concord, Massachusetts. He was placed in his coffin wearing a white
robe given by the American sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Lifestyle and beliefs
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Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time.
He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all
things are divine. Critics believed that Emerson was removing the
central God figure; as Henry Ware Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of
taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of
children in an orphan asylum". Emerson was partly influenced by German
philosophy and Biblical criticism. His views, the basis of
Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the
truth, but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly
from nature. When asked his religious belief, Emerson stated, "I am
more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in the 'still, small
voice', and that voice is Christ within us."
Emerson was a supporter of the spread of community libraries in the
19th century, having this to say of them: "Consider what you have in
the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men
that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years,
have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom."
Emerson had romantic interest in various women throughout his life,
including Anna Barker and Caroline Sturgis.
Race and slavery
==================
Emerson did not become an ardent abolitionist until 1844, though his
journals show he was concerned with slavery beginning in his youth,
even dreaming about helping to free slaves. In June 1856, shortly
after Charles Sumner, a United States Senator, was beaten for his
staunch abolitionist views, Emerson lamented that he himself was not
as committed to the cause. He wrote, "There are men who as soon as
they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor. ...
Wonderful the way in which we are saved by this unfailing supply of
the moral element". After Sumner's attack, Emerson began to speak out
about slavery. "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid
of freedom", he said at a meeting at Concord that summer. Emerson used
slavery as an example of a human injustice, especially in his role as
a minister. In early 1838, provoked by the murder of an abolitionist
publisher from Alton, Illinois, named Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Emerson
gave his first public antislavery address. As he said, "It is but the
other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a
mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was
better not to live". John Quincy Adams said the mob-murder of Lovejoy
"sent a shock as of any earthquake throughout this continent".
However, Emerson maintained that reform would be achieved through
moral agreement rather than by militant action. By August 1, 1844, at
a lecture in Concord, he stated more clearly his support for the
abolitionist movement: "We are indebted mainly to this movement, and
to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of
practical ethics".
Emerson is often known as one of the most liberal democratic thinkers
of his time who believed that through the democratic process, slavery
should be abolished. While being an avid abolitionist who was known
for his criticism of the legality of slavery, Emerson struggled with
the implications of race. His usual liberal leanings did not clearly
translate when it came to believing that all races had equal
capability or function, which was a common conception for the period
in which he lived. Many critics believe that it was his views on race
that inhibited him from becoming an abolitionist earlier in his life
and also inhibited him from being more active in the antislavery
movement. Much of his early life, he was silent on the topic of race
and slavery. Not until he was well into his 30s did Emerson begin to
publish writings on race and slavery, and not until he was in his late
40s and 50s did he become known as an antislavery activist.
During his early life, Emerson seemed to develop a hierarchy of races
based on faculty to reason or rather, whether African slaves were
distinguishably equal to white men based on their ability to reason.
In a journal entry written in 1822, Emerson wrote about a personal
observation: "It can hardly be true that the difference lies in the
attribute of reason. I saw ten, twenty, a hundred large lipped,
lowbrowed black men in the streets who, except in the mere matter of
language, did not exceed the sagacity of the elephant. Now is it true
that these were created superior to this wise animal, and designed to
control it? And in comparison with the highest orders of men, the
Africans will stand so low as to make the difference which subsists
between themselves & the sagacious beasts inconsiderable."
As with many supporters of slavery, during his early years, Emerson
seems to have thought that the faculties of African slaves were not
equal to those of white slave-owners. But this belief in racial
inferiority did not make Emerson a supporter of slavery. Emerson wrote
later that year that "No ingenious sophistry can ever reconcile the
unperverted mind to the pardon of Slavery; nothing but tremendous
familiarity, and the bias of private interest". Emerson saw the
removal of people from their homeland, the treatment of slaves, and
the self-seeking benefactors of slaves as gross injustices. For
Emerson, slavery was a moral issue, while superiority of the races was
an issue he tried to analyze from a scientific perspective based on
what he believed to be inherited traits.
Emerson saw himself as a man of "Saxon descent". In a speech given in
1835 titled "Permanent Traits of the English National Genius", he
said, "The inhabitants of the United States, especially of the
Northern portion, are descended from the people of England and have
inherited the traits of their national character". He saw direct ties
between race based on national identity and the inherent nature of the
human being. White Americans who were native-born in the United States
and of English ancestry were categorized by him as a separate "race",
which he thought had a position of being superior to other nations.
His idea of race was based on a shared culture, environment, and
history. He believed that native-born Americans of English descent
were superior to European immigrants, including the Irish, French, and
Germans, and also as being superior to English people from England,
whom he considered a close second and the only really comparable
group.
Later in his life, Emerson's ideas on race changed when he became more
involved in the abolitionist movement while at the same time, he began
to more thoroughly analyze the philosophical implications of race and
racial hierarchies. His beliefs shifted focus to the potential
outcomes of racial conflicts. Emerson's racial views were closely
related to his views on nationalism and national superiority, which
was a common view in the United States at that time. Emerson used
contemporary theories of race and natural science to support a theory
of race development. He believed that the current political battle and
the current enslavement of other races was an inevitable racial
struggle, one that would result in the inevitable union of the United
States. Such conflicts were necessary for the dialectic of change that
would eventually allow the progress of the nation. In much of his
later work, Emerson seems to allow the notion that different European
races will eventually mix in America. This hybridization process would
lead to a superior race that would be to the advantage of the
superiority of the United States.
Legacy
======================================================================
As a lecturer and orator, Emerson--nicknamed the Sage of
Concord--became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the
United States. James Russell Lowell, editor of the 'Atlantic Monthly'
and the 'North American Review', commented in his book 'My Study
Windows' (1871), that Emerson was not only the "most steadily
attractive lecturer in America," but also "one of the pioneers of the
lecturing system." Herman Melville, who had met Emerson in 1849,
originally thought he had "a defect in the region of the heart" and a
"self-conceit so intensely intellectual that at first one hesitates to
call it by its right name", though he later admitted Emerson was "a
great man". Theodore Parker, a minister and Transcendentalist, noted
Emerson's ability to influence and inspire others: "the brilliant
genius of Emerson rose in the winter nights, and hung over Boston,
drawing the eyes of ingenuous young people to look up to that great
new star, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for the moment, while
it gave also perennial inspiration, as it led them forward along new
paths, and towards new hopes".
Emerson's work not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt
Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, but would continue to influence
thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to
the present. Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson's influence
include Nietzsche and William James, Emerson's godson. There is little
disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of
19th-century America, though these days he is largely the concern of
scholars. Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and William James were all
positive Emersonians, while Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Henry James were Emersonians in denial--while they set themselves in
opposition to the sage, there was no escaping his influence. To T. S.
Eliot, Emerson's essays were an "encumbrance". Waldo the Sage was
eclipsed from 1914 until 1965, when he returned to shine, after
surviving in the work of major American poets like Robert Frost,
Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane.
In his book 'The American Religion', Harold Bloom repeatedly refers to
Emerson as "The prophet of the American Religion", which in the
context of the book refers to indigenously American religions such as
Mormonism and Christian Science, which arose largely in Emerson's
lifetime, but also to mainline Protestant churches that Bloom says
have become in the United States more gnostic than their European
counterparts. In 'The Western Canon', Bloom compares Emerson to Michel
de Montaigne: "The only equivalent reading experience that I know is
to reread endlessly in the notebooks and journals of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, the American version of Montaigne." Several of Emerson's
poems were included in Bloom's 'The Best Poems of the English
Language', although he wrote that none of the poems are as outstanding
as the best of Emerson's essays, which Bloom listed as
"Self-Reliance", "Circles", "Experience", and "nearly all of 'Conduct
of Life'". In his belief that line lengths, rhythms, and phrases are
determined by breath, Emerson's poetry foreshadowed the theories of
Charles Olson.
Namesakes
======================================================================
The following were named after or in honor of Emerson:
* Harvard's philosophy department is housed in Emerson Hall (1900).
* In May 2006, 168 years after Emerson delivered his "Divinity School
Address", Harvard Divinity School announced the establishment of the
Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Professorship.
* Author Ralph Waldo Ellison
* The Emerson String Quartet, formed in 1976
* The Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize is awarded annually by The Concord
Review to high school students for essays on historical subjects.
* The Emerson Collective, a company devoted to social change
* Emerson Street in Napier, New Zealand
* The town of Emerson, New Jersey
Selected works
======================================================================
Collections
* 'Essays: First Series' (1841)
* 'Essays: Second Series' (1844)
* [
https://archive.org/details/poems02emergoog 'Poems'] (1847)
* 'Nature, Addresses and Lectures' (1849)
* 'Representative Men' (1850)
* [
https://archive.org/details/englishtraits04emergoog 'English
Traits'] (1856)
* 'The Conduct of Life' (1860)
* [
https://archive.org/details/maydayandotherp01emergoog 'May-Day and
Other Pieces'] (1867)
* [
https://archive.org/details/societyandsolit09emergoog 'Society and
Solitude'] (1870)
*
[
https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/articles/gabriel_emerson.pdf
'Natural History of the Intellect: the last lectures of Ralph Waldo
Emerson'] (1871)
* [
https://archive.org/details/lettersandsocia06emergoog 'Letters and
Social Aims'] (1875)
Individual essays
* "Nature" (1836)
* "Self-Reliance" ('Essays: First Series')
* "Compensation" ('First Series')
* "The Over-Soul" ('First Series')
* "Circles" ('First Series')
* "The Poet" ('Essays: Second Series')
* "Experience" ('Essays: Second Series')
* "Politics" ('Second Series')
* "Saadi" in the Atlantic Monthly (1864)
* "The American Scholar"
* "New England Reformers"
* "History"
* "Fate"
Poems
* "Concord Hymn"
* "The Rhodora"
* "Brahma"
* "Uriel"
* "Merlin"
Letters
* Letter to Martin Van Buren
* 'The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1834-72'
Musical settings
======================================================================
* Emerson's "Concord Hymn", written for Concord's Independence Day
celebration on July 4, 1837, was on this occasion both read and sung
as a hymn by a local choir, using the then-familiar tune "Old
Hundredth".
* Charles Ives has set a fragment from Emerson's poem "Voluntaries" (a
tribute to the soldiers fighting for the Union) as a song entitled
'Duty', included in his collection for voice and piano '114 Songs'
(1919-24).
* Ernst Toch has set Emerson's poem "Good-Bye" as the sixth and final
movement of his work 'The Inner Circle', for mixed chorus a cappella
(1945, revised 1953).
* Three fragments from Emerson's essay 'Spiritual Laws' (in 'Essays:
First Series', 1841) form the backbone of Kaija Saariaho's 'True Fire'
for baritone and orchestra (2014), a work that collages texts from
various sources. The work's title is taken from the essay's final
sentence, that concludes also the setting: "We know the authentic
effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises."
See also
======================================================================
* American philosophy
* Fireside poets
* List of American philosophers
References
======================================================================
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* Mudge, Jean McClure (ed.) (2015). 'Mr. Emerson's Revolution.'
Cambridge, MA: Open Book.
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* Slater, Joseph (ed.) (1964). 'The Correspondence of Emerson and
Carlyle'. New York: Columbia University Press.
*
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Further reading
======================================================================
*
* Sacks, Kenneth S. (2003). 'Understanding Emerson: "The American
Scholar" and His Struggle for Self-Reliance'. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Archival sources
==================
* [
https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078735
Ralph Waldo Emerson papers, 1814-1867] (25 boxes) are housed at the
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University
* [
https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078734
Finding aid to Ralph Waldo Emerson letters at Columbia University.
Rare Book & Manuscript Library.]
* Ralph Waldo Emerson additional papers, 1852-1898 (.5 linear feet)
are housed at Houghton Library at Harvard University.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson lectures and sermons, c. 1831-1882 (10 linear
feet) are housed at Houghton Library at Harvard University.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson letters to Charles King Newcomb, 1842 March 18 -
1, 858 July 25 (22 items) are housed at the Concord Public Library.
External links
======================================================================
* [
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/results-list.php?collection=1163 The
Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harvard University Press,
Ronald A. Bosco, General Editor; Joel Myerson, Textual Editor]
*
*
*
*
*
*
[
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/cambridge-harvard/enduring-significance-divinity-school-address/
The Enduring Significance of Emerson's Divinity School Address]" - by
John Haynes Holmes
* [
http://www.hti.umich.edu/e/emerson/ Ralph Waldo Emerson] complete
Works at the University of Michigan
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"[
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/ Ralph Waldo Emerson]" -
by Russell Goodman
* Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"[
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/emerson.htm Ralph Waldo Emerson]" - by
Vince Brewton
*
[
https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/09/15/garden/0916emerson-slideshow.html?ref=multimedia
Life in the Ralph Waldo Emerson House] - slideshow by 'The New York
Times'
* [
http://www.c-span.org/video/?164015-1/writings-emerson-thoreau
"Writings of Emerson and Thoreau"] from C-SPAN's 'American Writers: A
Journey Through History'
*
[
http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/remain/search.php?CISOSTART=6&searchletters=Ralph%20Waldo%20Emerson;0;0;0
Ralph Waldo Emerson letters and manuscript] . Available online through
Lehigh University's [
http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/remain/index.html I
Remain: A Digital Archive of Letters, Manuscripts, and Ephemera] .
License
=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
