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Ralph Waldo Emerson






(1803–1882)

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

(“The American Scholar”)

Ralph Waldo Emerson is commonly regarded as one of the most signifi cant intellectual and literary figures in the whole history of the United States. A prolifi c essayist as well as a tireless and extremely popular public speaker, he literally gave voice to many of the key ideas of his era—ideas that at first were controversial but later became enormously infl uential. Early in his career, for instance, one of Emerson’s speeches so offended the sensibilities of opinion leaders at Harvard College that he was not invited to speak there again for another three decades; nevertheless, by the end of his life Harvard had given him an honorary degree and had made him a member of its Board of Overseers. Emerson was a major figure in the American transcendentalist movement, and his essentially romantic, optimistic emphasis on lofty emotions, the intimate bonds between man and nature, and the importance of individual self-reliance influenced many other signifi cant writers (especially Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman).

Many of the most important details of Emerson’s life are helpfully laid out in the comprehensive “Chronology” prepared by Harold Bloom and Paul Kane (in their edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson), which can be usefully supplemented by the “Illustrated Chronology” and biographical essay printed in Joel Myerson’s Historical Guide. Emerson was born in Boston on May 25, 1803—near the very beginning of the century he did so much to infl uence. His father, William Emerson, was a prominent minister who also edited a significant magazine, while Emerson’s mother was the daughter of successful merchants. Emerson, then—along with his fi ve brothers and two sisters—was born into circumstances that were economically and socially fortunate, but his life took an unlucky turn when his father died in 1811. The Emerson children, moreover, were affl icted with various forms of ill health: Emerson himself would later suffer from poor eyesight, rheumatism, and lung problems, and a number of his siblings would die of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, Ralph, or Waldo, as he later preferred to be called, grew up with multiple advantages. He was able, for instance, to attend the Boston Latin School (which he entered in 1812), he had the time and opportunity to read widely, and in 1817 he was able to enter Harvard College, where he received assistance in paying his tuition. Although never an especially distinguished student (he graduated in almost the exact middle of his class), he nonetheless had already begun to write and think seriously while still in college, and he would eventually become far more distinguished than his higher-ranking classmates.

After graduating in 1821, Emerson taught at and later supervised a girls’ school until the end of 1824; then, early in 1825, he himself entered the Divinity School at Harvard, although problems with his eyes soon interrupted his studies. By fall that year he was teaching school yet again; by fall 1826 he had become licensed to preach by the Unitarian Church, one of the most liberal branches of American Christianity. Health problems, however, intervened once more, leading him to spend several months in the warmer climate of South Carolina and Florida, but by spring 1827 he was back in Boston, had resumed his preaching career, and by December had also met a captivating 16-year-old, Ellen Louisa Tucker, who would soon become his wife. They became engaged a year later and were married on September 30, 1829, even though it was already clear by this time that Ellen was affl icted with tuberculosis. By this time, too, Emerson had become an ordained Unitarian minister, serving the congregation of the Second Church in Boston. When Ellen died on February 8, 1831, Emerson was devastated, and this crisis in his personal life was soon matched by one that affected him both spiritually and professionally: By 1832 he had become increasingly disenchanted with traditional forms of religious thinking and traditional forms of worship, and in September that year he offered his church his resignation because he was no longer willing to serve communion. Although many members of the congregation wanted him to remain as their leader, a majority voted to accept his resignation. Suffering once again from poor health, he departed for Europe on Christmas Day 1832.

Emerson’s trip to Europe was good both for his physical well-being and for his psychological health. He traveled in Italy and France, but his most fruitful experiences occurred in England, where he met many of the country’s most important writers and began a long friendship with Thomas Carlyle, one of the masters of 19thcentury English prose. Returning to the United States in September 1833, Emerson began a new career as an itinerant preacher and lecturer. In 1834 a financial settlement from the estate of his late wife helped ease his financial worries, but the death of a beloved brother of tuberculosis in that same year stung Emerson deeply. Meanwhile, he continued to develop a reputation as a popular lecturer on literary and intellectual topics, and he continued to preach independently, declining an offer in 1835 to become a regular pastor. Additionally in 1835 he bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts—the town near Boston with which he would become so much identified—and he also married his second wife, Lydia (whom he called Lidian) Jackson, on September 14. Although their relationship was less romantically intense than his marriage to Ellen, Emerson and Lydian lived a long and quietly happy life together. Unfortunately, however, this new happiness was temporarily offset by the death of another of Emerson’s brothers, who succumbed to tuberculosis on May 9, 1836.

Yet, 1836 also saw the publication of Nature, one of Emerson’s most important books and a key to much of his so-called transcendentalist thinking. As the title of this work suggests, Emerson and other transcendentalists—some of whom now began meeting as an informal group—were struck by the beauty and harmony of the physical universe and by the supposedly close bonds among God, man, and the totality of God’s creation. Humans, these thinkers believed, could rely on instincts and on highly personal insights as reliable guides to truth; these transcendentalists also tended to deemphasize older Christian ideas about the pervasiveness of sin and innate human corruption, replacing them with a more optimistic view of human nature and human potential. Emerson was a leading figure in this new movement, and, indeed, he was now becoming an increasingly well-known intellectual. Nevertheless, his Phi Kappa Kappa oration at Harvard in 1837—an address in which he issued a call for intellectual independence from slavish devotion to dead or dying traditions—offended many, as did a subsequent lecture given at Harvard’s Divinity School. In general, listeners to Emerson’s speeches over the years had varying reactions: Many felt inspired and enlightened, some were angered, and some were simply confused.

In 1840 Emerson, along with his friend Margaret Fuller, began publishing a magazine called the Dial; its first issue included work not only by its two editors and other transcendentalists but also by Thoreau, whose writing Emerson would encourage and whose career he would help promote. In the meantime, Emerson’s own career took a major step forward in 1841 with the publication of his first set of Essays, in which he laid out many of his key ideas. This piece of good fortune was soon followed, however, in 1842 by the death of his young son, Waldo—an especially painful loss. Waldo’s death contributed to the darkened tone of some of the pieces included in the second set of Essays Emerson published in 1844, and throughout the 1840s Emeron’s thinking was also becoming increasingly troubled by the dark and sickening spectacle of American slavery. By the end of the decade he had become a more and more fervently outspoken abolitionist, but he had also—with the publication of his Poems in 1846—won attention as a significant writer of verse. Thus, by the time he set sail once more for England in 1847, he was recognized both at home and in Britain as a leading American “man of letters, ” and during his time abroad he met and mingled with some of the most prominent of his fellow intellectuals in Victorian England.

After returning from Europe in summer 1848, Emerson resumed his active career as a writer and as a popular fi gure on the U.S. lecture circuit. A new book, titled Nature; Addresses and Lectures, appeared in 1849, followed in 1850 by Representative Men. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in that latter year, Emerson also became an especially vigorous and eloquent opponent of slavery, and his attacks became more frequent as the 1850s wore on. Politics, however, was neither his sole nor even his main interest; his reading, thought, and writing were all wide-ranging. It was Emerson, for instance, who in 1855 was one of the first to hail Whitman as a major new voice in American poetry. Meanwhile, in 1857 he himself published a signifi cant new prose work titled English Traits, which was followed in 1860 by a work called The Conduct of Life. By this time, of course, the Civil War seemed plainly imminent, and Emerson actually welcomed the confl ict, seeing it as an opportunity to end slavery in the United States once and for all.

In the years after the war Emerson was increasingly recognized as one of his country’s leading public fi gures. Harvard granted him an honorary degree in 1866, his career as a lecturer was at its height, a new book of poems was issued in 1867, and in the latter year he was also (ironically enough) appointed to Harvard’s board of supervisors. His career as a lecturer continued throughout the 1860s. A new book, Society and Solitude, appeared in 1870, and although his health weakened in the ensuing decade, his social status and public fame continued to grow. In 1872–73 he traveled abroad for the last time, visiting not only Europe but Egypt, and in 1875 he brought out a book of prose, Letters and Social Aims, while also continuing to revise his poetry. By the late 1870s, however, both his physical health and his mental strength were in decline, and when he died on April 27, 1882, his best days had long been behind him. Nonetheless, during his lengthy and highly productive lifetime he had not only won respect for himself but also contributed substantially to the developing intellectual life of the young but increasingly self-reliant nation his thinking had helped shape and transform.

 

 


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