Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1846)
Appletons' Emerson Ralph Waldo signature.svg

Ralph Waldo Emerson (born May 25, 1803 in Boston , Massachusetts , † April 27, 1882 in Concord , Massachusetts) was an American philosopher and writer.

In his numerous lectures, writings, and poems, Emerson emphasized in many ways his demand for a radical renewal and intellectual self-determination of American culture and literature, thereby establishing a line of tradition that preceded not only American literary history, but also the history of philosophy in the United States especially in the reception by William James , significantly influenced.

Life

childhood

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in a parsonage to William Emerson (1769–1811) and Ruth Haskins (1768–1853). He was the third of eight children. Emerson's father was a Unitarian pastor and died at the age of 42 when Emerson was eight. After his father's death, the intellectual education of Emerson was left to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson.

Pastor training and first marriage

From 1817 he studied at Harvard , graduated there in 1825 and got his license in 1826, which allowed him to work as a Unitarian pastor. Three years later he was called to the Unitarian Second Church of Boston as assistant to Henry Ware .

On September 30, 1829, he married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died on February 8, 1831 at the age of 19. In 1832 he resigned from his ministry and turned away from traditional theology.

Europe trip and second marriage

After the death of his wife he went on a trip to Europe, where he met Thomas Carlyle , William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge between 1832 and 1833 . On this trip Emerson also got to know German idealism and Indian philosophies , which later left traces in his work.

On his return he married Lydia Jackson (1802-1892) in 1835 and moved with her to Concord , Massachusetts. They had four children together: Waldo Emerson (1836–1842), Ellen Tucker Emerson (1839–1909), Edith Emerson (1841–1929) and Edward Waldo Emerson (1844–1930).

Activity as a writer

Postage stamp from 1940

He published his first book, Nature , in 1836 at the age of 33. In this collection of essays , he expressed his commitment that people should live in a simple manner and in harmony with nature. He saw nature as the true source of divine revelation. At the same time he emphasized the importance of the creative activity of the human being as a stimulus for a fundamental renewal and source of freedom and self-determination of the individual. So Nature ended with Emerson's famous appeal: Build, therefore, your own world . Emerson no longer understood the divine as an external or higher power, but saw it as being transferred within man himself. In Nature he developed one of the basic figures of his thinking, the transcendentalist triad, which includes self, nature and oversoul ( self, nature, oversoul ). According to Emerson, the Oversoul is not an autonomous entity detached from the world of appearances, but just as effective in it as it is in the human mind. According to Emerson, man can therefore participate directly in the divine both through observation of nature and through introspection . He therefore ascribes an important role to vision. He illustrates this with his metaphor of the transparent eyeball.

His lectures in The American Scholar (1837) and Address at Divinity College (1838) resulted in his suspension from Harvard University in 1838, which earned him recognition among students, some of whom joined the transcendentalists. Since then, Emerson has been considered the leading head of this movement in America. Together with Amos Bronson Alcott , Margaret Fuller , George Ripley and Henry David Thoreau , he founded the magazine The Dial (1840-1844) in 1840, which was intended as a "medium for new ideas and expressions of interest to serious thinkers in every society".

From 1850 his works began to be more successful, including for example Conduct Of Life (1860) and Society And Solitude (1870). In 1864 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1867 to the American Philosophical Society . Invitations to lectures, the award of an honorary doctorate, and the election to the board of directors of Harvard University , which had suspended him at a young age, also showed Emerson's later academic recognition.

He demonstrated his flair for literary talents when he prophesied a great career for Walt Whitman after the latter had sent him a copy of the Leaves of Grass in 1855 . He has repeatedly been a mentor for young talents. He encouraged American intellectuals to escape European influence and emphasized the cultural independence of the American nation.

Emerson and Slavery

Emerson was a declared opponent of slavery and was in intellectual exchange with Abraham Lincoln even before the outbreak of the American Civil War . For the first time in 1838 Emerson took an active position in American abolitionism by publicly condemning the murder of Elijah Parish Lovejoy , an American politician and anti-slavery. In 1854 he gave his speech The Fugitive Slave Law in New York City, in which he criticized the slavery laws of the USA as outdated and morally questionable.

Alongside his friend Charles Sumner and James Russell Lowell , he was an early member of the Saturday Club , founded in Boston in 1855 , a group of writers, philosophers and intellectuals who openly spoke out against slavery.

After an attempted assassination attempt on Charles Sumner in 1856, Emerson referred in a speech in Concord with the words “I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.” “I think we have to either Get rid of slavery or we have to get rid of our freedom. ”) Position against slavery more clearly than before.

During the American Civil War, Emerson visited Washington, DC, made public speeches and met President Abraham Lincoln , for whom he had already voted in the previous election in 1860. Although he and Lincoln shared major attitudes towards abolitionism , Emerson was disappointed that Lincoln was putting preservation of the Union of the United States above the abolition of slavery. After Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Emerson gave the eulogy at his funeral, in which he recognized his pragmatic and the circumstances of the time appropriate handling of slavery and praised him as an extraordinary statesman.

farewell

After the fire in his house in 1872, Ralph Waldo Emerson began to withdraw more and more from the public. He died on April 27, 1882 in Concord , Massachusetts.

Works (selection)

Ralph Waldo Emerson statue
  • Nature (1836).
    • First edition in German: Nature (Essays). Edited and translated by Harald Kiczka, Novalis-Verlag, Schaffhausen, 1981 ISBN 3-7214-0077-1 .
    • Nature: selected essays. Edited by Manfred Pütz. Einl., Übers. U. Note from Manfred Pütz u. Gottfried Krieger, Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-023702-5 ( Reclam's Universal Library , Volume 3702).
  • The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Thoreau (1862)
    • German in: Three speeches. About education, religion and Henry David Thoreau , introduction by Dieter Schulz, Derk Janßen Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-938871-01-0 .
  • Self-Reliance (1848).
  • Conduct Of Life (1860).
    • in German as: lifestyle , way of life and fate appeared.
  • May-day and other pieces (1867).
  • Society And Solitude (1870).
  • Journals
    • in German as: Die Tagebücher . Selected by Bliss Perry. Transferred from Franz Riederer. With copy by Eduard Baumgarten, Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1954.
  • Representative Men

Numerous speeches and essays by Emerson have appeared in Germany in various compilations under various titles. Only a limited selection follows.

Speeches & essays (selection)

  • The Lord's Supper (1832)
  • War (1838)
    • In German as: About the war . German by Sophie v. Harbou, Verlag Friedens-Warte, Berlin 1914.
  • The Fugitive Slave Law (1854)
  • John Brown. Speech at Salem (1860)
  • American Civilization (1862)
  • Abraham Lincoln. Remarks at the Funeral Service held in Concord (1865)
  • Walter Scott. Remarks at the Celebration by the Massachusetts Historical Society (1871)
  • The Fortune of the Republic (1878)

The listed works can be found among others in the anthology Miscellanies , ISBN 0-543-90658-2 .

literature

  • Newton Arvin : The House of Pain: Emerson and the Tragic Sense . In: The Hudson Review 12: 1, 1959, pp. 37-53.
  • Wolfgang Heller:  Emerson, Ralph Waldo. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 17, Bautz, Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-080-8 , Sp. 331-333.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Thomas Krusche: RW Emerson's conception of nature and its philosophical origins. An interpretation of Emerson's thought from the perspective of German idealism . Narr, Tübingen 1987, ISBN 3-87808-489-7 ( Mannheimer contributions to linguistics and literary studies , volume 12; revised dissertation from 1985).
  • FO Matthiessen : American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman . Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1941. Numerous new editions, most recently Barnes & Noble, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-4351-0850-9 .
    • German edition: American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman . German by Friedrich Thein. Metopen-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1948.
  • Edith Mettke: The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mystical thinking and poetic expression . Winter, Heidelberg 1963 ( Yearbook for American Studies , Volume 11; Dissertation).
  • Ralph L. Rusk: The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson . Scribner, New York 1957.
  • Rüdiger C. Schlicht: The educational approaches of American transcendentalists. Educational studies on Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau 1830–1840 . Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1977, ISBN 3-261-02392-9 ( Anglo-American forum , Volume 8; dissertation).
  • Dieter Schulz: American transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller. WBG , Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-534-09407-7 .
  • Beniamino Soressi: Ralph Waldo Emerson . Preface by Alessandro Ferrara, Armando, Rome 2004, ISBN 88-8358-585-2 .
  • Manfred Thiel: Emerson or the great music of the idea . Elpis-Verlag, Heidelberg 1982, ISBN 3-921806-08-9 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Ralph Waldo Emerson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson  - Quotes
Wikisource: Ralph Waldo Emerson  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Hubert Zapf : Ralph Waldo Emerson: Literary Pragmatism and American Religion . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 102-105, here pp. 102 f.
  2. ^ OW Firkins: Ralph Waldo Emerson , 1915, p. 9.
  3. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Leipzig and Vienna 1894, Vol. 5, p. 738.
  4. ↑ See Hubert Zapf: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Literary Pragmatism and American Religion . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 102-105, here pp. 102 f.
  5. ↑ See Hubert Zapf: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Literary Pragmatism and American Religion . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 102-105, here p. 103.
  6. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter E. (PDF; 477 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved July 29, 2018 .
  7. ^ Member History: Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 29, 2018 .
  8. ↑ See Martin Schulze: History of American Literature . Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-549-05776-8 , p. 135.
  9. ^ A b John McAleer: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter . Little, Brown, Boston 1984, ISBN 0-316-55341-7 , pp. 569-570 .
  10. ↑ Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Fugitive Slave Law . In: Miscellanies . Elibron Classics, 2006, ISBN 0-543-90658-2 , p. 214-218 .
  11. ↑ James R. Mellow: Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1980, ISBN 0-8018-5900-X , pp. 539 .
  12. ^ Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Assault upon Mr. Sumner . In: Miscellanies . Elibron Classics, 2006, ISBN 0-543-90658-2 , p. 233 .
  13. ↑ Ralph Waldo Emerson: Abraham Lincoln. Remarks at the Funeral Services held in Concord . In: Miscellanies . Elibron Classics, 2006, ISBN 0-543-90658-2 , p. 310 .
personal data
SURNAME Emerson, Ralph Waldo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1882
Place of death Concord, Massachusetts