Ralph Waldo Emerson

   

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of America's most influential thinkers and writers.

Life

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a Unitarian minister and would later become a Unitarian minister himself. Emerson eventually, however, broke away from the doctrine of his superiors and formulated and expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay Nature.

In 1810, when Emerson was eight years old, his father died. His father complained that Emerson couldn't read well enough when he was 3 years old. 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, 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, eventually studying divinity himself, and emerging as a Unitaritan minister. A dispute with church officials over the administration of the Communion service led to his resignation. About the same time, his young wife and 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 1881.

In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the Cambridge Turnpike, in Concord, Massachusetts. He quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town.

In 1836, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded The Dial, a periodical which served as a vehicle for the Transcendental movement, although the first issue did not appear until July of 1840. Meanwhile, Emerson published his first book, Nature, in September of 1836.

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 was a popular lecturer in New England and the rest of the country outside of the south. During several scheduled apperances that he was not able to make, Frederick Douglass took his place. Emerson was noted as being a very abstract and difficult writer who never the less drew large crowds for his speeches. A common joke heard from his audiences, was they had no idea what he was saying, but 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 the subject without concern for popularity and with increasing radicalism. As a young man he had outraged the establishment with his Harvard Divinity Address proclaiming Jesus Christ a great man but not god. For this he was denounced as an atheist, and a poisoner of young mens minds. Despite the roar of his critics he made no reply leaving it to others for his defense. He was not invited back to Harvard, to speak, for another forty years. He tried very hard to not join the public arena as a member of any group or movement, and always kept a strong 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.

Works

Emerson's most important prose works are:

Although he is more generally recognized as an essayist, Emerson also wrote poetry. His poems include "Threnody", "Uriel", "Works and Days", and the well-known "Concord Hymn" (origin of the phrase "The shot heard round the world").

Quotations

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist" ("Self-Reliance," 1841)

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" ("Self-Reliance," 1841)

"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)

"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)

"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." ("Self-Reliance," 1841)

"In all nations there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one Being. This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavat Geeta and the Vishnu Purana. These writings contain little else than this idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it."(Essays, X, p. 120)

"That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name" (To a friend at the funeral of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, after senility had robbed his memory, 1882)

Further reading

  • Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Geldard, introduction by Robert Richardson, Anthroposophic Press (http://www.steinerbooks.org/), Lindisfarne Books (http://www.lindisfarne.org/), 2001, paperback, 196 pages, ISBN 0970109733
  • The Esoteric Emerson: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard G. Geldard, Lindisfarne Books, 2000, paperback, 224 pages, ISBN 0940262592

External links

 Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Wikisource has original works written by or about Ralph Waldo Emerson.</div>






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