The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679600183 ISBN 13: 9780679600183

Publisher: Modern Library, 1992

Synopsis

"Standing on the bare ground--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space--all mean egotism vanishes," Emerson wrote in Nature, his statement of the principles of transcendentalism.  "I become a transparent eyeball."  Nature, published in 1836 when Emerson was thirty-three, is collected here with his book of observations on the English people; a famous sermon against administering communion in church; a sketch of his step-grandfather; the eulogy he delivered at the funeral of his Concord friend and neighbor Henry David Thoreau; twenty-three poems; and addresses, lectures, and essays on such subjects as slavery, self-reliance, and organized Christianity's obsession with the person of Jesus.  Emerson called transcendentalism another word for idealism--"a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry."  Considered intensely radical at a time when materialism and a rigid form of Christianity were ascendant, he urged Americans to "enjoy an original relation to the universe."  These selections span Emerson's career as author and traveling lecturer, and chart his evolving thought:  the concepts of the "oversoul", individualism without egotism, and antimaterialism; a belief in intuition, independence, and "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil." --Walt Whitman

About the Author:

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About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0679600183
• ISBN 13: 9780679600183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 864
• Editor: Atkinson Brooks