*
From the section Emerson in Concord:
RALPH WALDO EMERSON had lived in Concord
since 1834. The former pastor of a Boston church
and a son of the Reverend William Emerson, he had
withdrawn from the ministry. Having a little income, he
had bought a house on the Boston turnpike, surrounded
with pine and fir-trees. There was a garden by the brook,
filled with roses and tulips. In the western window of his
study, he placed an Aeolian harp. It sang in the spring
and summer breezes, mingling with the voices of the
birds, fitfully bringing to mind the ballads that he loved,
the wild, melodious notes of the old bards and minstrels.
He had been writing essays and giving addresses that
grieved and vexed most of his older hearers. Dozens,
even hundreds of the younger people, thinking of him,
thought of Burns's phrase,
Wi' sic as he, where'er he be,
May I be saved or damned.
But, although he had his followers in Boston, he was
anathema to the pundits there. Everett sneered at Emer-
son's "conceited, laborious nonsense. " John Quincy
Adams and Andrews Norton thought he was an atheist
and worse. The Cambridge theologians reviled him: he
was a pantheist and a German mystic, and his style was
a kind of neo-Platonic moonshine. The Concord prophet
smiled at these accusations. He had the temerity to think
that the great Cambridge guns were merely popguns.
There was nothing explosive in his own discourse. He
was a flute-player, one who plucked his reeds in the Con-
cord river. But when he began to play, one saw a beauti-
ful portico, standing in a lovely scene of nature, covered
with blossoms and vine-leaves ; and, at the strains of the
flute, one felt impelled to enter the portico and explore
the unknown region that lay beyond. It was an irresistible
invitation. As for the smiling musician, he was a mystery
still. One thought of him as the man in Plutarch's story
who conversed with men one day only in the year and
spent the rest of his days with the nymphs and demons.
Everyone had heard of him in Boston, where he was
giving lectures. His birthplace there was a kitestring's
distance from the house where Franklin was born and the
house where Edgar Allan Poe was born. But, although
he belonged to one of the oldest scholarly families, with
countless names in the college catalogues, most of the
signs had been against him. Tall, excessively thin, so thin
that, as Heine said of Wellington, his full face looked
like a profile, pale, with a tomahawk nose, blond, with
blue eyes and smiling, curved lips, he had none of the
traits, aggressive or brilliant, that marked his brothers in
various ways. At moments, on the platform, he spoke
with a tranquil authority, but his usual demeanour was
almost girlishly passive. He had not acquired the majes-
tic air, as of a wise old eagle or Indian sachem, that
marked his later years. He appeared to be easily discon-
certed, for his self-reliance was a gradual conquest. He
had drifted through many misfortunes, drifted into and
out of tuberculosis, drifted into teaching and out of the
Church, maturing very slowly. He had known dark hours,
poverty, pain, fear, disease. His first wife had died; so
had two of his brothers. The trouble with him was, his
elders thought, that he seemed to like to drift. He had no
sort of record as a student. At Harvard, even three gen
-erations later, when people spoke of Emerson's "educa-
tion," they put the word in quotation-marks,* it was not
that he did not know his Greek and Latin, but that he
was never systematic. He had read, both then and later,
for "lustres" mainly. He had drifted first to Florida and
then to Europe, and finally settled at Concord, the home
of his forbears, where he had often visited at the Manse.
The minister there, Dr. Ezra Ripley, who was Emerson's
step-grandfather and very fond of the young man, felt
that he was obliged to warn the people against this leader
of the Egomites, those who "sent themselves" on the
Lord's errands, without any proper calling. As for the
lectures that Emerson was giving in Boston, on great
men, history, the present age, the famous lawyer,
Jeremiah Mason, when he was asked if he could under-
stand them, replied, "No, but my daughters can."
To the outer eye, at least, Emerson's life was an aim-
less jumble. He had ignored all the obvious chances, re-
jected the palpable prizes, followed none of the rules of
common sense. Was he pursuing some star of his own?
No one else could see it. In later years, looking back,
Emerson's friends, remembering him, thought of those
quiet brown colts, unrecognized even by the trainers, that
out-strip all the others on the race-course. He had had
few doubts himself. He had edged along sideways
towards everything that was good in his life, but he felt
that he was born for victory. He had not chosen his
course. It had sprung from a necessity of his nature, an
inner logic that he scarcely questioned.
*
The above excerpt is one of my favourite passages in on of my favourite books of literary criticism - a book that was once famous (Pulitzer Prize, a year atop the Best Seller list) and highly prestigious; but is now neglected and deeply unfashionable.
Brooks wrote it (and the accompanying four volumes in the Makers and Finders series of the history of American Literature) by years of immersion in the primary texts (many of which he was the first to reread for many decades or centuries), and detailed note taking - then wrote the texts almost as a pastiche of the style of each author as he considered them - and without footnoting.
The vast primary scholarship was thus concealed, the style was made varied and vivid, and the book made accessible and appealing to a broad 'middlebrow' audience as well as to academics for whom this was, for a while, the only overview and the first point of reference to several authors.
*
About 15 years ago, the above passage was especially relevant for me - I found it intoxicating, a description of 'what life is about' - more Emersonian than Emerson himself, somehow.
It captures something of permanent value which Emerson brought to the West - that close-up Aeolian Harp sensitivity to the phenomena of the world.
Emerson broke away from Unitarianism, which was already a break from Christianity - and that was a terrible error; but I feel that if this Aeolian Harp sensitivity could be brought-back into Christianity - or rather, allowed to grow from the incompleteness of current mainstream Christian perspectives - it would be a wonderful thing!
*
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