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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Born May 25, 1803, at Boston, Massachusetts and died on April 27, 1882, at Concord, Massachusetts.
His life as poet, essayist, lecturer, and founder of the Transcendentalist Movement in America is so filled with the joy of living, and the grief of loss, that it will not be possible to give proper credit here to such a mind. We will simply highlight his life, and ask that the reader seek through the volumes he wrote and the volumes written about him in order to achieve some understanding of the greatness of his mind.
His father, a Unitarian minister who had called his son “a rather dull scholar,” died when Emerson was only eight years old, and his mother struggled to raise five boys — including a mentally retarded son — alone. With the aid of several grants, however, Emerson was able to enter Harvard College when he was fourteen. He was appointed Freshman’s President, a position that gave him a room in which to live free of charge, and he waited tables which reduced his board to one quarter. He worked as a tutor, a messenger in order to help pay other expenses and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary, he tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of eighteen, he assisted his brother in teaching at a school established in their mother's house.
Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School and emerged as a Unitarian minister in 1829. His brief career as a minister was marred by religious doubt and by his wife's death. His first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died of tuberculosis at age 19 on February 8, 1831.
Because he felt that he could no longer perform certain church rituals in good faith, he resigned his ministry in 1832.
Emerson toured Europe and the Middle East in 1832 and during this trip he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Talor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained contact with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881 and he served as Carlyle's agent in the U.S. After traveling through Europe for a year, Emerson returned to the United States to devote himself to lecturing and writing.
Emerson bought a house in 1835 on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Massachusetts that is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House. He quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town, and married his second wife, Lydia Jackson, there. He called her Lydian and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lydian’s suggestion. From 1836 through 1838 he served as Minister to the small Unitarian congregation in East Lexington Massachusetts, Follen Church Society. This was his last ministerial position.
In September 1835, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club which served as a center for the movement. Emerson anonymously published his first essay Nature in September of 1836, but did not publish the Transcendental Club’s journal The Dial until July of 1840.
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." In the same year, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
In 1845, Emerson's Journal records that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke’s Essays on the Vedas. Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism.
One of the clearest examples of this can be found in part in his essay, "The Over-soul:"
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Yet he had his light side also, saying "Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses."
Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.
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. The Emerson Chair is expected to be occupied in the fall of 2007 or soon thereafter.
Born May 25, 1803, at Boston, Massachusetts and died on April 27, 1882, at Concord, Massachusetts.
His life as poet, essayist, lecturer, and founder of the Transcendentalist Movement in America is so filled with the joy of living, and the grief of loss, that it will not be possible to give proper credit here to such a mind. We will simply highlight his life, and ask that the reader seek through the volumes he wrote and the volumes written about him in order to achieve some understanding of the greatness of his mind.
His father, a Unitarian minister who had called his son “a rather dull scholar,” died when Emerson was only eight years old, and his mother struggled to raise five boys — including a mentally retarded son — alone. With the aid of several grants, however, Emerson was able to enter Harvard College when he was fourteen. He was appointed Freshman’s President, a position that gave him a room in which to live free of charge, and he waited tables which reduced his board to one quarter. He worked as a tutor, a messenger in order to help pay other expenses and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary, he tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of eighteen, he assisted his brother in teaching at a school established in their mother's house.
Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School and emerged as a Unitarian minister in 1829. His brief career as a minister was marred by religious doubt and by his wife's death. His first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died of tuberculosis at age 19 on February 8, 1831.
Because he felt that he could no longer perform certain church rituals in good faith, he resigned his ministry in 1832.
Emerson toured Europe and the Middle East in 1832 and during this trip he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Talor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained contact with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881 and he served as Carlyle's agent in the U.S. After traveling through Europe for a year, Emerson returned to the United States to devote himself to lecturing and writing.
Emerson bought a house in 1835 on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Massachusetts that is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House. He quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town, and married his second wife, Lydia Jackson, there. He called her Lydian and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lydian’s suggestion. From 1836 through 1838 he served as Minister to the small Unitarian congregation in East Lexington Massachusetts, Follen Church Society. This was his last ministerial position.
In September 1835, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club which served as a center for the movement. Emerson anonymously published his first essay Nature in September of 1836, but did not publish the Transcendental Club’s journal The Dial until July of 1840.
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." In the same year, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
In 1845, Emerson's Journal records that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke’s Essays on the Vedas. Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism.
One of the clearest examples of this can be found in part in his essay, "The Over-soul:"
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Yet he had his light side also, saying "Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses."
Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.
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. The Emerson Chair is expected to be occupied in the fall of 2007 or soon thereafter.