Mr. Emerson’s Journals

Emerson started his journal in 1820 while a student at Harvard University. Naming it “The Wide World,” he continued to write entries until 1875. The journal served as the vital source of his many essays, lectures and poems and he referred to them as his “Savings Bank.” In his entries, he coalesced his ideas, thoughts, and insights prior to sharing them with his wider audiences.

The journals were a platform for Emerson to evaluate and make decisions; to react to news, good or bad; and to form a record of the people he met and the places he visited.

Examples of journal entries reflecting different periods of Emerson’s life follow:

While at Harvard he wrote in his Journal about his decision to become a Minister.

April 18, 1824, “…in Divinity I hope to thrive. I inherit from my sire a formality of manner and speech, but I derive from him, or his patriotic parent, a passionate love for the strains of eloquence.”

After his first wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson, succumbs to tuberculosis Emerson went to Europe, returning nine months later. In November of 1834 he moved to the Manse in Concord and declared his intentions for his future.

November 15, 1834, “Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem or book that is not entirely and peculiarly my work. I will say at public lectures, and the like, those things which I have meditated for their own sake, and not for the first time with a view to that occasion.”

During the 1840’s Emerson bought plots of land at Walden Pond to protect his favorite place to walk and to be part of nature.

April 9, 1840, “We {poet Jones Very and Emerson} walked this afternoon to…Walden Pond. …the water seemed made for the wind, and the wind for the water…I said to my companion, I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.”

When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in late 1850 as a compromise between the South and North, Emerson was incensed.

May 1851, “We shall never feel well again until that detestable law is nullified in Massachusetts and until the Government is assured that once for all it cannot and shall not be executed here. All I have and all I can do shall be given and done in opposition to the execution of the law…”

Emerson met President Lincoln on a lecture tour to Washington, DC in 1862, it was their second meeting.

February 2, 1862, “The President…[is] a frank, sincere, well-meaning man with a lawyer’s habit of mind, good clear statement of his fact, correct enough, not vulgar, as described; but with a sort of boyish cheerfulness…”.

As Emerson entered his 68th year, he reflected on what he has witnessed over his lifetime:

June, 1871, “In my lifetime have been wrought five miracles, -- namely, 1, the Steamboat; 2, the Railroad; 3, the Electric Telegraph; 4, the application of the Spectroscope to astronomy; 5, the Photograph; -- five miracles which have altered the relations of nations to each other.”

The Very Quotable Emerson

Mr. Emerson conducted many lectures over 40 years, sharing his thoughts with audiences in the hope that they might reflect and learn. As we enter a new year, hopeful of positive changes, it seems to be a good time to look back on some of his most notable quotations.

Emerson proposed that one could live best by trusting and acting in accord with one’s own “intuition”. He inspired his listeners to think freshly about the paradoxes and problems of life and society, as well as the pressing issues of their own day. His was an American voice: inclusive, outspoken, curious, democratic, tolerant, optimistic, original, and pragmatic.

The following quotations are taken from some of his many lectures and essays.

Quotation from Nature:
”The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

Quotations from Self Reliance:
“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

Quotations from Essays, First Series:
“What is the hardest task in the world? To think.”
“Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.”
”Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
”Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.”
”Tis the good reader that makes the good book.”

Quotations from The Conduct of Life:
“Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.”
“A little integrity is better than any career.”
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
“… the secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.”

Quotations from The American Scholar:
“Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
“Fear always springs from ignorance.”

Emerson and The Atlantic Monthly

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was always open to creating platforms to generate and share new ideas, met with like-minded men in April 1857, the result of which was the creation of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and others joined Emerson as co-founders and by November 1857 the first issue of the magazine was issued. A magazine that is still published and enjoyed 164 years later.

One can imagine these great minds sitting at the Parker House exchanging ideas for the creative side of the magazine as well as the practical side. One participant wrote “The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually that I ever had.”

The timing was fortuitous to take on crucial issues of the day, including the abolishment of slavery. The mission statement was signed by Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and many others. The goal was to publish literature from American and foreign writers, and to rank itself politically with “the body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private.”

The first issues featured Walt Whitman’s poetry, Thoreau’s essays, short stories from Louisa May Alcott and contributions by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. While the Table of Contents in the early issues have the titles of the pieces within the magazine, the names of the authors are not listed. Emerson wrote “The names of contributors will be given out when the names are worth more than the articles.”

In 2004 the name of the publication was changed from The Atlantic Monthly to The Atlantic. In the December 2021 issue, Mark Greif reviewed The Transcendentalists and Their World . Written by Concord historian and writer Robert Gross, the book explores the nineteenth century relationships between Concord’s elite writers (including Ralph Waldo Emerson), their shared philosophies and the impact on America’s literary culture.

Nature

On September 9, 1836, Emerson’s first significant work, Nature, was printed and offered for sale. Interestingly, he originally did not take credit for it but published it anonymously. Subsequent printings carried his name.

Nature was the culmination of several years of Emerson’s work and thought – starting on his voyage from Europe to America in 1833. In Nature he explores for the first time the connections between God, the soul and nature. “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.” Reflecting on his own experiences in nature, “In the woods we return to reason and faith…I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” The transparent eye-ball analogy suggested that to appreciate nature, one must absorb all that nature has to offer.

Walden Published

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was published on August 9, 1854. Emerson had a significant impact on Thoreau’s life. When Walden was published, Emerson wrote “…it is cheerful, sparkling, readable, with all kinds of merits & rising sometimes to very great heights. We account Henry the undoubted King of all American lions.”