Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
R. W. Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837)
I.
• The first in time and the first in importance of the
influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day,
the sun; and, after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the
winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and
women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The
scholar must needs stand wistful and admiring before
this great spectacle. He must settle its value in his mind.
What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there
is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this
web of God, but always circular power returning into
itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose
beginning, whose ending, he never can find,—so entire,
so boundless.
• As the world was plastic and fluid in the
hands of God, so it is ever to so much of
his attributes as we bring to it… but in
proportion as a man has any thing in
him divine, the firmament flows before
him and takes his signet and form.
II.
•
•
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.
… They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book,
than to be warped [pervertito] by its attraction clean out of my own orbit
[sottratto alla mia orbita], and made a satellite instead of a system. The
one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is
entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all
men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute
truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the
privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate [il solido
patrimonio] of every man. In its essence, it is progressive.
The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop
with some past utterance of genius. … But genius looks forward: the
eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead [nuca]: man
hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create
not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; — cinders [cenere] and
smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners,
there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions,
words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing
spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair.
III.
• The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies
wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock
my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run
eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of
those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer
and to work, taught by an instinct, that so shall the dumb
abyss be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate
its fear; I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding
life. So much only of life as I know by experience, so
much of the wilderness have I vanquished and
planted, or so far have I extended my being, my
dominion.
• [The duties of the scholar] may all be comprised in selftrust.
• …It becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to
defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the
world.
• The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent,
is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strown
along [sparsi sul] the ground. The private life of one man
shall be a more illustrious monarchy, — more formidable
to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to
its friend, than any kingdom in history.
•
I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or
Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common,
I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into
to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we
really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin [barilotto]; the milk in the
pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the
form and the gait [portamento] of the body;--show me the ultimate reason of
these matters
•
Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of
man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the
American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of
Europe.
…
We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will
speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for
pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. … A nation of men will for the
first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul
which also inspires all men.
•
•
Brookfarm: comunità di ispirazione transcendentalista,
fondata a West Roxbury, Mass., negli anni 40 dell’800
Fruitlands: comunità di ispirazione trascendentalista,
fondata a Harvard, Massachusetts, negli anni 40
dell’800
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Resistance to Civil Government, or, Civil
Disobedience (1849)
Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854)
The site of Thoreau’s cabin, 1908
The pond today
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
We must learn to reawaken and keep
ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids,
but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,
which does not forsake us in our soundest
sleep.
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so
dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life
into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved
to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness
of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true
account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to
me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or
of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
• Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat
but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things
in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of
petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a
German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The
nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by
the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy
[inefficiente] and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture
and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless
expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million
households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a
rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and
elevation of purpose. It lives too fast.
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
• We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you
ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the
railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee
man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered
with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They
are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a
new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have
the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the
misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a
man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary
sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they
suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it,
as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it
takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the
sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a
sign that they may sometime get up again.
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
For my part, I could easily do without the
post-office. I think that there are very few
important communications made through
it. …And I am sure that I never read any
memorable news in a newspaper. … To a
philosopher all news, as it is called, is
gossip, and they who edit and read it are old
women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy
after this gossip.
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
• God himself culminates in the present moment, and will
never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we
are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and
noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the
reality that surrounds us. …
• Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet
downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and
prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance,
that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and
London, through New York and Boston and Concord,
through Church and State, through poetry and
philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom
and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say,
This is, and no mistake…
“Economy”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Boards........................................................... $ 8.03+, mostly shanty boards.
Refuse shingles for roof sides ...................... 4.00
Laths............................................................. 1.25
Two second-hand windows with glass.......... 2.43
One thousand old brick................................. 4.00
Two casks of lime.......................................... 2.40 That was high.
Hair............................................................... 0.31 More than I needed.
Mantle-tree iron............................................ 0.15
Nails............................................................. 3.90
Hinges and screws....................................... 0.14
Latch............................................................ 0.10
Chalk............................................................ 0.01
Transportation....................... 1.40 I carried a good part ———- on my back.
In all........................................................... $28.12+
“Higher Laws”
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my
pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck
stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight,
and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I
was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.
Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself
ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange
abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour,
and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest
scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and
still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life,
as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage
one, and I reverence them both.
• We are conscious of an animal in us,
which awakens in proportion as our higher
nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual,
and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled;
like the worms which, even in life and
health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we
may withdraw from it, but never change its
nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain
health of its own; that we may be well, yet
not pure.