Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 Sep 2004, 20:22 UTC

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

I'm Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE
IN AMERICA. Today we tell about the life of Nineteenth Century
philosopher and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson.

VOICE ONE:

The United States had won its independence from Britain just
twenty-two years before Ralph Waldo Emerson was born. But it had yet
to win its cultural independence. It still took its traditions from
other countries, mostly from western Europe.

What the American Revolution did for the nation's politics,
Emerson did for its culture.

When he began writing and speaking
in the eighteen thirties, conservatives saw him as radical -- wild
and dangerous. But to the young, he spoke words of self-dependence
-- a new language of freedom. He was the first to bring them a truly
American spirit.

He told America to demand its own laws and churches and works. It
is through his own works that we shall look at Ralph Waldo Emerson.

VOICE TWO:

Ralph Waldo Emerson's life was not as exciting as the lives of
some other American writers -- Herman Melville, Mark Twain or Ernest
Hemingway. Emerson traveled to Europe several times. And he made
speeches at a number of places in the United States. But, except for
those trips, he lived all his life in the small town of Concord,
Massachusetts.

He once said that the shortest books are those about the lives of
people with great minds. Emerson was not speaking about himself. Yet
his own life proves the thought.

VOICE ONE:

Emerson was born in the northeastern city of Boston,
Massachusetts, in eighteen oh three. Boston was then the capital of
learning in the United States.

Emerson's father, like many of the men in his family, was a
minister of a Christian church. When Emerson was eleven years old,
his father died. Missus Emerson was left with very little money to
raise her five sons.

After several more years in Boston, the family moved to the
nearby town of Concord. There they joined Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody
Emerson.

VOICE TWO:

Emerson seemed to accept the life his mother and aunt wanted for
him. As a boy, he attended Boston Latin School. Then he studied at
Harvard University.

For a few years, he taught in a girls' school started by one of
his brothers. But he did not enjoy this kind of teaching. For a
time, he wondered what he should do with his life. Finally, like his
father, he became a religious minister. But he had questions about
his beliefs and the purpose of his life.

VOICE ONE:

In eighteen thirty-one, Ralph Waldo Emerson resigned as the
minister of his church because of a minor religious issue. What
really troubled him was something else.

It was his growing belief that a person could find God without
the help of an organized church. He believed that God is not found
in systems and words, but in the minds of people. He said that God
in us worships God.

Emerson traveled to Europe the following year. He talked about
his ideas with the best-known European writers and thinkers of his
time. When he returned to the United States, he married and settled
in Concord. Then he began his life as a writer and speaker.

VOICE TWO:

Ralph Waldo Emerson published his first book, Nature, in Eighteen
thirty-six. It made conservatives see him as a revolutionary. But
students at Harvard University liked the book and invited him to
speak to them.

His speech, "The American Scholar," created great excitement
among the students. They heard his words as a new declaration of
independence -- a declaration of the independence of the mind.

VOICE ONE:

"Give me an understanding of today's world," he told them, "and
you may have the worlds of the past and the future. Show me where
God is hidden...as always...in nature. What is near explains what is
far. A drop of water is a small ocean. Each of us is a part of all
of nature."

Emerson said a sign of the times was the new importance given to
each person. "The world," he said, "is nothing. The person is all.
In yourself is the law of all nature."

Emerson urged students to learn directly from life. He told them,
"Life is our dictionary."

VOICE TWO:

The following year, Emerson was invited to speak to students and
teachers at the Harvard religious school. In his speech, he called
for moral and spiritual rebirth. But his words shocked members of
Harvard's traditional Christian church. He said churches treated
religion as if God were dead.

"Let mankind stand forevermore," he said, "as a temple returned
to greatness by new love, new faith, new sight."

Church members who heard him speak called him a man who did not
believe in God. Almost thirty years passed before Harvard invited
Emerson to speak there again.

VOICE ONE:

Away from Harvard, Emerson's speeches became more and more
popular. He was able to make his living by writing and speaking. "Do
you understand Mister Emerson?" a Boston woman asked her servant.
"Not a word," the servant answered. "But I like to go and see him
speak. He stands up there and looks as if he thought everyone was as
good as he was."

Many people, especially the young, did understand Emerson. His
ideas seemed right for a new country just beginning to enjoy its
independence -- a country expanding in all directions.

Young people agreed with Emerson that a person had the power
within himself to succeed at whatever he tried. The important truth
seemed to be not what had been done, but what might be done.

VOICE TWO:

In a speech called "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson told his
listeners, "Believe your own thoughts, believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men."

Emerson said society urges us to act carefully. This, he said,
restricts our freedom of action. "It is always easy to agree," he
said. "Yet nothing is more holy than the independence of your own
mind. Let a person know his own value. Have no regrets. Nothing can
bring you peace but yourselves."

VOICE ONE:

The eighteen fifties were not a peaceful time for America. The
nation was divided by a bitter argument about slavery.

Most people in the South defended slavery. They believed the
agricultural economy of the South depended on Negro slaves. Most
people in the North condemned slavery. They believed it was wrong
for one man to own another.

Emerson was not interested in debates or disputes. But he was
prepared to defend truth, as he saw it.

Emerson believed that the slaves should be freed. But he did not
take an active part in the anti-slavery movement. All his beliefs
about the individual opposed the idea of group action -- even group
action against slavery.

As the dispute became more intense, however, Emerson finally,
quietly, added his voice to the anti-slavery campaign. When one of
his children wrote a school report about building a house, he said
no one should build a house without a place to hide runaway slaves.

VOICE TWO:

Emerson's health began to fail in the early eighteen seventies.
His house was partly destroyed by fire. He and his wife escaped. But
the shock was great. Friends gave him money to travel to Egypt with
his daughter. While he was gone, they rebuilt his house.

Emerson returned to Concord. But his health did not improve. He
could no longer work. In April, eighteen eighty-two, he became sick
with pneumonia. He died on April twenty-seventh. He was seventy-nine
years old.

VOICE ONE:

Ralph Waldo Emerson's death was national news. In Concord and
other places, people hung black cloth on houses and public buildings
as a sign of mourning. His friends in Concord walked to the church
for his funeral service. They carried branches of the pine trees
that Emerson loved.

After the funeral, Ralph Waldo Emerson was buried in Concord near
the graves of two other important early American writers -- Henry
David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

(THEME)

VOICE TWO:

This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman. I'm
Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another
People in America program on the Voice of America.