Waldo Emerson
is truly the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most
of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature,
published in 1836, that represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy,
religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays.
Born in 1803
to a conservative Unitarian minister, from a long line of ministers, and a quietly
devout mother, Waldo--who dropped the "Ralph" in college--was a middle son of
whom relatively little was expected. His father died when he was eight, the first
of many premature deaths which would shape his life--all three brothers, his first
wife at 20, and his older son at 5. Perhaps the most powerful personal influence
on him for years was his intellectual, eccentric, and death-obsessed Puritanical
aunt, Mary
Moody Emerson. Yet Emerson often confessed to an innate optimism, even occasional
"silliness."
His undergraduate career at Harvard was not illustrious, and his
studies at the Harvard Divinity School were truncated by vision problems, but
he was ordained a minister of the Second Church in Boston, shortly before marrying
Ellen Tucker in 1829. He resigned
in 1832 after her death from tuberculosis, troubled by theological doctrines
such as the Lord's Supper, and traveled extensively in Europe, returning to begin
a career of lecturing. In 1835 he married Lydia
Jackson; they lived in Concord and had four children while he settled into
his life of conversations, reading and writing, and lecturing, which furnished
a comfortable income.
The Emerson house was a busy one, with friends like Elizabeth
Hoar, Margaret Fuller, and Henry Thoreau staying for months to help out and talk.
He, Bronson Alcott, and George Ripley decided to begin a magazine, The
Dial, with Margaret Fuller editing, in 1840; Emerson would edit the
final two years, ending in 1844, and he wrote essays for many issues. His Essays
(first series) were published in 1841.
Meanwhile, tragedy struck with the sudden
death of his five-year old son Waldo in 1842, soon after the death of John Thoreau
from lockjaw, and a darker, tougher strain appears in Emerson's writing, beginning
with his memorializing poem, "Threnody."
But Emerson pulled himself together to give a series of lectures in New York and
in 1844 he had a new
volume of essays prepared. He began planning a series of lectures on great
men and publication of his poems in 1846, while speaking out against the annexation
of Texas and reading deeply in texts of Persian and Indic wisdom.
In 1845 he
began extensive lecturing on "the uses of great men," a series that culminated
with the 1850 publication of Representative
Men; by that year he was giving as many as 80 lectures a year. Through
a career of 40 years, he gave about 1500 public lectures, traveling as far as
California and Canada but generally staying in Massachusetts. His audiences were
captivated by his speaking style, even if they didn't always follow the subtleties
of his arguments.
In 1847 Emerson travelled to England, noticing in particular
the industrialization and the chasm between upper and lower classes. When he returned
to Concord nine months later, he had a new approach to English culture, which
he expressed in his lectures on the "Natural
History of Intellect" and his 1856 book, English
Traits.
In 1851 he began a series of lecture which would become The
Conduct of Life, published in 1860. He was vigorous in middle age, traveling
frequently, but was increasingly aware of his limits and failing energy. He had
become quite famous, a major figure in the American literary landscape, a celebrity
which brought both adultation and satire. He had been a profound inspiration for
many writers, especially Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman. He continued his speeches
against slavery, but never with the fire of Theodore Parker. In 1857 he wrote
an essay on "Memory" but ironically, in his later years, his own memory would
falter, especially after his beloved house burned in 1872. He died quietly of
pneumonia in 1882.
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