Almanac When I Damn Well Feel Like It-Ralph Waldo Emerson Reshaped the American Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the towering intellectual colossus of the New England Renaissance and the unquestioned leader of the Transcendentalist movement. He was born on May 25, 1803 the son of the influential liberal minister of Boston’s First Parish and descended from a long line of notables including Revolutionary War heroes, poet Anne Bradstreet and early Puritan divines.
He was destined for Harvard and the ministry, following in the footsteps of his father, who died when he was eight years old. Emerson was ordained in the new Unitarian ministry in 1826 and was called to Boston’s Second Church only two and a half years later. He was an immediate success, his well-crafted and thoughtful sermons attracting large numbers, but he chaffed under the lingering conventions of Unitarianism in the style of William Ellery Channing. He resigned his pulpit in 1832 when he said that he could no longer serve communion in good conscience.
The year before Emerson’s nineteen-year-old bride had died of consumption, probably contributing to his unease. He undertook the grand tour of Europe, landing in Malta and traveling north through Italy, to Switzerland, France, England and Scotland. He met Lafayette in Paris and John Stuart Mill, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth in Britain. He established a lasting relationship with Thomas Carlyle.
Upon his return Emerson launched a successful career as a lecturer on science, philosophy and theology while continuing to accept invitations to preach in Unitarian churches. He settled into the family ancestral home at Concord in 1834 and remarried. The comfortable income from his first wife’s estate erased any financial concerns and made it possible to refrain from returning to full time parish ministry.
In 1836 his first book Nature was published to immediate success. Emerson’s beloved first son Waldo was born shortly after the publication of his book and his personal happiness seemed assured. Starting with fellow Concordian Henry David Thoreau and proto-feminist Margaret Fuller, he began to surround himself with a coterie of intellectuals who would become known at the Transcendentalists.
He continued to publish philosophy and a lecture at Harvard, The American Scholar, delivered in 1837 would be called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” The following year Emerson set off a storm of controversy when he delivered his Divinity School Address, a declaration of spiritual independence from the strict reliance on Biblical scripture and an avowal of individual conscience in determining religious truth. This set off a long and nasty quarrel with the followers of Channing style liberal Christianity in the denomination. Distressed by the reaction, Emerson gradually withdrew from all preaching, but lived to see Transcendentalism triumph as the principle strain of mid-century Unitarianism.
Emerson declared that he wished to be considered a poet above all other things, bu he mainly dabbled in verse, finding his greatest expression in epigramic essays and lectures. He did receive public acclaim for The Concord Hymn, a commemoration of the opening battle of the Revolution fought within earshot of his home.
In 1840 with Margaret Fuller he founded The Dial, the influential magazine of the Transcendentalists.
In 1842 he was dealt a crushing blow with the death of his beloved son Waldo. He was never again the sunny optimist of Nature. His moving poem Threnody was an elegy to his son and appeared in his 1846 volume Poems.
Opposition to the Mexican War and outrage at the Fugitive Slave Act would dominate his public life in the next few years. Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing, reflected his outrage at the tepid response of Unitarian worthies to these crises and the perceived betrayal of New England statesman Daniel Webster.
Emerson remained in demand on the lecture circuit the rest of his life, continued to write, and was showered with honors. He died after a lingering decline April 27, 1882.
For years Emerson’s reputation seemed unassailable, but conservative intellectuals have lately made him something of a whipping boy, blaming him for America’s moral decline into relativism and narcissism. It is a right wing revisionist house of cards which cannot undo Emerson’s towering presence and lasting influence.
Adapted from the biographical notes for Four Hundred Years of Unitarian and Universalist Poets from John Milton to Sylvia Plath, a readers’ theater presentation by Patrick Murfin.