Books
Having just read Mary Oliver’s essay on some of the greats, including Emerson, I have been on the hunt to add them to my collection. I found a beautiful copy of Emerson’s essays, a book containing both series at a Salvation Army in Brooklyn. It’s the 1981 Franklin Library Edition, with gold embossed red leather and red and black lettering. Lovely. $3! I’m really indulging, too, because I’ve taken a pen to mine.
It included a little booklet about Emerson’s life and a brief history of the time period he wrote in. And now, after having been inspired by Walden for ever so long, I got to dive into Emerson.
This essay was about how all history is us, and we are history. Each of us are living the experiences of every other human being. That’s the gist, though written much elegantly with phrase like:
“The mind is One, and . . . nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
I resonate with the idea that we are all connected and the importance he puts on our emphasis with nature. There’s much more to glean from this essay. I’ll definitely circle back to it once I’ve finished the other essays.
My favorite quotes:
“The true poem is the poet’s mind: the true ship is the ship-builder.”
“Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.”
“As near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events! In splendid variety these changes come, all putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him.”
“A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.”
“The path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child and the unschooled farmer’s boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.”
I suppose now you don’t have to read it since I’ve already pulled out the best bits for you. Context is always nice though!