Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1803-82.

In 1836, there was published anonymously in Boston a little book of about a hundred pages, entitled “Nature”. This was Emerson's first characteristic utterance through the printed essay. It was a reflective prose poem; beautiful in its exaltation of spirit, poetical, mystical, vague--incomprehensible, doubtless. It was the first public enunciation of the transcendental principles on which much of the subsequent teaching was based.

Under the heads Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline, the essayist speaks of the varied advantages which our senses owe to nature. Nature attracted some attention, aroused some hostile criticism. Its ideas were pronounced pantheistic, and considerable ridicule was bestowed upon the transcendental notions of the Concord sage.

In the following year, 1837, Emerson delivered his famous address on “The American Scholar”, and with this notable utterance emerged clearly into the light of public recognition. This address is first of all a challenge of academic ideals in that day, and then a plea to the scholar for a larger vision of his relation to nature, a braver attitude toward the conventions inherited from the past, a stronger confidence in the sacred, the divine character of his own perception of truth, and a call to participate in the life of his generation; -- not only to think, but to live.

From this time on, Emerson was a familiar figure on the public platform. His occasional addresses were regarded as events of importance in the literary and intellectual world. Throughout New England, Mr. Emerson was looked upon as the most eminent lecturer.

The unmethodical manner in which these lectures were prepared is perhaps exaggerated by those who have dwelt on this feature of Emerson's work. From his commonplace book, or journal, Emerson culled the ideas, epigrammatically recorded, which touched his theme; and thus he built the discourse -- almost haphazard, without the usual regard to logic or coherence in composition. Yet these sharp, short, often paradoxical sentences, weighty with truth, yet brilliant with their illuminating thought, keenly witty and delicately fanciful, made a most effective appeal to the audiences prepared to appreciate them. It was a new voice in the land, a challenge and a prophecy, which came to have vital force in the intellectual and moral growth of thoughtful Americans in that generation.

There was no vociferousness in Emerson's lecturing. Calm, simple, almost monotonous in delivery, without gestures, he read from his notes with deliberation and with frequent pauses; but his voice was melodious and resonant, and all agree in the charm felt by his auditors. He did not prolong his discourse to weariness; at the end of the sixty minutes, without peroration, without climax, he stopped. Lecturing he found laborious; he followed it from necessity. And yet in spite of the discomforts of long journeys and of unhomelike inns, he enjoyed, too, the freedom of expression on the platform. It more than supplied the opportunities of his old Boston pulpit, and immeasurably amplified the congregation of his hearers, for to the last Mr. Emerson remained a preacher.

The First Series of Emerson's Essays appeared in 1841. It included these now familiar discourses: “History”, “Self-Reliance”, “Compensation”, “Spiritual Laws”, “Love”, “Friendship”, “Prudence”, “Heroism”, “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “Intellect”, and “Art”. These were for the most part transcripts from his lectures. The favorite doctrines appear felicitously expressed. Essays of Emerson are illuminating and quickening epistles which have their greatest value, perhaps, in arousing and confirming a wholesome independence of mind.

The Second Series of Essays, published in 1844, included “The Poet”, “Experience”, “Character”, “Manners”, “Gifts”, “Nature”, “Politics”, “Nominalist and Realist”, and “The New England Reformers”.

In 1847 in England and Scotland Emerson delivered many lectures. The material of these lectures appeared in 1850 under the title “Representative Men”.

In “English Traits” (1856) Emerson produced a thoughtful, appreciative, and not uncritical study of British personality and the significance of the national character. These two volumes stand by themselves as the only works of the essayist having a formal structure and definite plan.

The first collection of Emerson's poems appeared in 1846. He had been writing verse for many years, and some of his best-known compositions, “The Problem”, “Woodnotes”, “The Sphinx”, and others, had appeared in “The Dial”. Some, like the famous “Concord Hymn”, had been heard upon notable occasions. In 1867, a second collection appeared under the title “May-Day and Other Pieces”.

The poetry of Emerson is intellectual, subjective, abstract. It is unemotional and often austere. While criticism has often joined in the poet's own depreciation of his power, there are also many who find the fire of genuine poetic genius in his verse. The thought, the substance of his verse has the originality and vital strength of all his discourse; the poetical form is uneven. There are numerous passages of wonderful simplicity and beauty in the poetry of Emerson. In poems like “The Humble-Bee”, “The Snow-Storm”, “The Rhodora”, “Woodnotes”, “Monadnoc”, “Musketaquid” Emerson is at his best among American nature poets.

While Emerson never strikes the chord of passion, there is one poem -- and that one of his best -- wherein we feel the human heart-beat of a human grief. In 1842, the poet lost his little son, "a perfect little boy of five years and three months. In “Threnody” we have the calm, philosophic, yet very feeling expression of the father's experience. It is not disconsolate.

Emerson's literary activity continued throughout a period of forty years. In 1868, 1869, and 1870, he delivered courses of lectures at Harvard which furnished the material for the volume entitled “Natural History of Intellect”. “Society and Solitude” was published in 1870. The volume “Letters and Social Aims” appeared in 1874. “Parnassus”, a collection of poems by British and American authors, a selection made by Mr. Emerson for his own pleasure, was published in the same year.

The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whether prose or poetry, are philosophical; but they make no attempt to set forth a comprehensive system of thought. Emerson is rather a spiritual teacher than a philosopher. His real philosophy was the purest idealism -- an idealism which to materialistic readers appeared merely vague and mystical. In his search for truth, he felt only one responsibility -- the responsibility to himself. Assured of his own integrity, he stood serene and happy in absolute freedom. This freedom of individual opinion and expression which he claimed for himself, Emerson urged upon all; it was a cardinal point in his teaching. He taught also the simple life and practiced it. Above everything else, he believed and taught the immanence of God, the presence of divinity in all of nature and in man.

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