Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson; Volume 1

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo 1844-1930 Emerson, Waldo Emerson 1879- Forbes

For the first time, the extensive personal journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) are here made available in digital format, having been scanned and edited by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute and presented in eBook Acrobat Reader files. This edition, edited by Richard Geldard, PhD, was first published in 1904-14 in ten volumes, comprising over 5,000 pages of material and edited by Emerson's son Edward. The journals cover most of Emerson's life, from 1820, when he was only 16 to 1876, when, at age 73, he stopped writing in his journal. The journals contain his personal views and much of the material found in his essays and lectures as initial notes and observations. The journals are a rich and varied history of the life and thought of America's Founding Thinker.

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

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

[Russell Stamets · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Emerson fans, these are treasures, insights into all his great works.

[Russell Stamets · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this early journal, young emerson is beginning to explore the themes he immortalizes later.

[GZwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In silence we must wrap much of our life, because it is too fine for speech, because also we cannot explain it to others, and because somewhat we cannot yet understand.”

Bought for $5 at Black Letter Books, a used and rare secondhand bookstore, in Stillwater, ME. Published 1960. Thanks for sharing this gem of a book, Marilyn Rogers.

[Fernando Alonso Lakkis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Los diarios completos de Emerson son, quizás, el mayor trabajo intelectual jamás registrado.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say? It's Emerson. Emerson is eternal.

I like that a lot of his sentiments are echoed later by one Frederick Buechner, a personal fave, who surprised even himself in becoming a Presbyterian minister in his life, in addition to the Princeton instructor and scholar and writer he already was.


"I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching."

"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory."

"I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated."
[what I'd like to believe about my own father:]

"My aunt had an eye that went through and through you like a needle. 'She was endowed,' she said, 'with the fatal gift of penetration.' She disgusted everybody because she knew them too well."

"Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on."

"If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards."

"We resent all criticism which denies us anything in our line of advance."

"I look with pity upon the young preachers who float into the profession thinking all is safe."

"Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function."

"The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being. ... Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism."


And the beat goes on.