Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays & Lectures

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Emerson's prose is his triumph, both as eloquence and as insight. After Shakespeare, it matches anything else in the language."
-Harold Bloom Here are Ralph Waldo Emerson's classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance," the embattled realizations of "Circles" and "Experience," and the groundbreaking achievement of "Nature." Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he calls "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Also gathered here are his wide-ranging discourses on history, art, politics, friendship, love, and much more.
For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes.
The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from Ralph Waldo Essays and Lectures, volume number 15 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by three companion volumes, gathering Emerson's poems, translations, and selections from his journals.

Genres: Philosophy

1150 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.

Reviews

[mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of the stars. Upon reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden and having my life profoundly change, I naturally decided I must read Thoreau's mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. To go to the source of things tends to be a wise move.

Unsurprisingly, my life and understanding of virtue, nature, idealism, beauty, genius, self-reliance, work, society, and greatness (among others) changed profoundly again. Every word of Emerson's Essays and Lectures is intentional and purposeful. No thought is left unfinished, no sentence left weak. This is literary thought to fulfill a lifetime. Just as the work of virtue requires a lifelong commitment to uphold, so does the commitment to Emerson's work. You will see me come back time and time again to review Emerson's writing on friendship, art, intellect, God, and love. Not to replace my own thoughts on the matter, but to remind myself of my own. That was the main point I got from Emerson this read. To go to oneself as the source of value, opinion, and virtue.

The universal truths of his arguments remain relevant and applicable to a world 200 years past his time. His truths remind us to value work for its own sake, to build a reservoir of beauty and intellect within ourselves, to embrace solitude, to speak directly and truthfully in all capacities, and to see nature as an extension of the Godly expression of man. By reading these truths, I feel comforted and lovingly seen as an individual, while being simultaneously reminded of the universal properties of humanity to which I belong. Emerson's influence on humanity (and creative people, especially) is a natural progression of the sheer strength of his ideas, and his recognized truth.

I am surprised at how strong Emerson's voice comes through. I read and feel as if we are having a conversation. As if he is speaking to me as a friend rather than an author. I can't help, but feel comforted when I think Virginia Woolf, Nietzsche, Proust, Walt Whitman, and William James likely felt the same way I do now. This book reminded me why I read and why I am so affected by literature in the ways I am.