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Representative Men
AMONG eminent persons, those who are most dear to men are not of the class which the economist calls producers: they have nothing in their hands; they have not cultivated corn, nor made bread; they have not led out a colony, nor invented a loom. A higher class, in the estimation and love of this city-building market-going race of mankind, are the poets.
Paperback
Published
June 1st 2004
by Kessinger Publishing
(first published 1850)
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Emerson can annoy me at times, but when he’s in full cry, his ecstatic professions of readerly adventure and speculative gusto are difficult to dislike. He writes the marching songs of America’s thinking men; and like Whitman’s
I have witness’d the true lightning—I have witness’d my cities electric;
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise...
and
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world o...more
I have witness’d the true lightning—I have witness’d my cities electric;
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise...
and
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world o...more
Emerson's "Representative Men" is a selection of exemplars from history that more or less became the typification in Emerson's mind of the kind of giants that have gone before and trailblazed a way to truth and understanding within western civilization. Included in the essays are discussions on the contributions of (in order of my favorites) Montaigne (representative of skeptics), Shakespeare (of poets), Plato (of philosophers), Goethe (of writers), Napoleon (of 'leaders of the people' [my words...more
This is only from the Napoleon essay:
Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and after each action wait for an impulse from abroad.
"Incidents ought not to govern policy," he {Napoleon} said, "but policy, incidents."
"To be hurried away by every event is to have no political system at all." NB
He saw only the object: the obstacle must give way.
Having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. He put out all his str...more
Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and after each action wait for an impulse from abroad.
"Incidents ought not to govern policy," he {Napoleon} said, "but policy, incidents."
"To be hurried away by every event is to have no political system at all." NB
He saw only the object: the obstacle must give way.
Having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. He put out all his str...more
not sure if this is the book I read. Published in 1892 by Henry Altimus Begins with Uses of Great men?
Really enjoyed the chapter on Michel de Montaigne.
I am not too far into this yet, but there is a lot of good, deep and truthful stuff in here. It is inspiring!
May 01, 2013
Mabel
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
transcendentalism,
well-educated-mind
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Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.
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“Every hero becomes a bore at last.”
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“Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.”
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