Emerson and the Examined Life

welcome to Fanueil Hall in the heart of Boston and to Emerson and the examined life a special tribute a living tribute to the life work and wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 200th year the philosophy foundation is delighted to join friends and everson scholars Richard Geldart David Robinson and America's most eminent poet Robert Pinsky to bring you this event tonight this event will be broadcast by the WGBH forum network on WGBH org it will also be available on c-span the philosophy foundation is a nonprofit organization which offers classes in the practical pursuit of wisdom and daily life what delighted to join Richard Geldart who will be our literary host for this evening dr. Geldart was educated at Bowdoin College Middlebury College and received a doctorate from Stanford University he's the author of several books on philosophy and Emerson most notably the spiritual teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and God in Concord he's also recently finished a book on the examined life which I'm looking forward to reading dr. Gayle Dodds work has opened and made accessible the work of Emerson in a new way to a new generation of readers he is able to go to the heart of Emerson and bring forward the spiritual ideas and the philosophy of Emerson we hope with this presentation tonight there'll be a new generation of listeners as well to do honor to Ralph Waldo Emerson in the bicentennial year of his birth please join me in welcoming Richard geldart and our distinguished guests Thank You Mita and welcome to all of you on this rare evening I particularly like to welcome the members of the Emerson the immediate Emerson and family members who are here this evening among the events of this emerson bicentennial here in massachusetts and around the world very few of these events have offered an opportunity to truly listen to emerson interpretation has been rampant and you will hear some of that tonight as well but the main focus is on the eloquence of the seer of concord we are offering an opportunity to listen to his words as performed by one of our most eloquent contemporary voices Robert Pinsky and in this very special venue the cradle of freedom where the voices of our heritage once rang out to proclaim the values of a new nation although he was frequently in attendance here Emerson himself did not often lecture at Faneuil Hall this space as he phrased it was where one went to be played upon by the stormy winds and strong fingers of enraged patriotism references to the hall and his work tended to focus on the subject of eloquence a natural topic for a professional speaker one who thought about the nuances of communication for example on the evening of August 3rd 1826 the 23 year old teacher and future minister attended Fanueil Hall to hear Daniel Webster eulogize John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who had both died a month before on July 4th the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence although in later years Emerson would come to accuse Webster of the trail to the cause of freedom that night he spoke glowingly of the great orators vocal skills and how well his voice and manner suited the space I hope you appreciate that mr. Webster the great tradition of the hall was that it served as a gathering place to protest and to gather and then move volunteers for revolutionary action Emerson later said a crowd of men go up to Faneuil Hall they are pretty well acquainted with the object of the meeting yet the orator teaches them to see the thing with his eyes by the new placing the circumstances acquire new solidity and truth in Emerson's later years we have references to his appearances on the platform and as an occasional speaker or supportive presence on one such occasion Louisa May Alcott wrote the following in her journal when Fanueil Hall used to be a scene of riot and danger in anti-slavery days I remember sitting tip aloft an excited girl among the loyal women who never failed to be there and how they always looked for that serene face on the platform and found fresh courage in the mere sight of the wisest man in America standing shoulder to shoulder with the bravest and in 1873 at the centennial celebration of the Boston Tea Party Emerson read his poem Boston he was by this time an elderly man and I would like to read the relevant portion of three verses of that poem bad news from George on the English throne you are thriving well said he now by these presents be it known you shall pay us a tax on tea tis very small no load at all honor enough we send the call not so said Boston good my lord we pay your governor's here abundant for their bed and board six thousand pounds a year Your Highness knows our homely word millions for self-government but but for tribute near ascent the cargo came and who could blame if Indians seize the tea and chest by chest let down the same into the laughing sea for what avail the plough or sail or land or life if freedom fail for this evening we gather not so much to protest as with a certain anguish at the present state of the Republic which after all is nothing if not the state of its people we come here this evening to explore Emerson's words on the life of the mind to see if we are yet capable of looking inward in the face of the intrusive uproar and pandemonium of our environment to know ourselves and to see if such self knowing still has some currency Emerson never wrote an essay entitled the examined life and yet in a real sense he wrote about nothing else for it was always at the core of his vision as the program notes already explained the reading that Robert Pinsky will offer this evening is a selection from the essays journals and lectures I'm sorry essays lectures and journals if the selection fails as a as a coherency the fault is mine and not Emerson's and certainly not mr. Pinsky's who graciously accepted this challenging assignment if you choose to take issue with the selection I shall evade by quoting mr. Emerson who went accosted by a listener on some point after a lecture said sir if something I said this evening met your mood I am glad but I must tell you that I never debate these high questions that reservation notwithstanding we hope that you will have questions to ask about the theme of the examined life following the formal presentations this evening and to that end microphones have been placed for duty for you to use at the centre and side of the hall so just step up at when you wish so to begin we are pleased that David Robinson has agreed to introduce the theme this evening especially since he's already been active this week at the Unitarian Universalist convention here in Boston and no doubt is well-prepared to speak about Emerson and the life of the spirit professor Robinson is Oregon professor of English and distinguished professor of American literature at Oregon State in Corvallis he is a noted scholar of the New England transcendentalist movement and the author of apostle of culture the Unitarians and Universalists Emerson and the conduct of life he is taught as a Fulbright guest professor at the University of Heidelberg and held fellowships from the American Council of learned societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities professor Robinson has conducted nine neh seminars for teachers on the transcendentalist and served as chair of the panel on theological education of the Unitarian Universalist Association his collection of Emerson's key spiritual works the spiritual Emerson is newly published by the beacon press to mark the Emerson Emersonian bicentennial professor Robinson thank you very much Richard it's a pleasure and an honor to be here this evening and as we begin the evening to hear the words of Emerson I believe we should hold in our minds one question that he posed near the beginning of his first book nature why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe he asked to make his point perfectly clear he rephrased it more pointedly why should we growth among the dry bones of the past Emerson loved the past of course he read platonic dialogues and ancient Hindu scriptures as if they were mystery thrillers and he had spent many weeks preparing a historical discourse on the town of Concord including archival research in the town records in the Harvard library but his reading of the past was always present minded as I think ours must be this evening the power of tradition the reputation and fame of great thinkers of the past the authority of even the most ancient institutions these things did not impress him they were only useful and valuable insofar as they enabled you and me to see something directly and to judge it for ourselves thus in this Divinity School address he laid down the one-and-only principle of spiritual insight whilst the doors of the temple stand open night and day before every man and the Oracles of truth cease never he wrote it is guarded by one Stern condition it is an intuition it cannot be received at secondhand to inherit spiritual insight are too adopted from some person book or church or to assent to some groups doctrines or practices just will not cut it in the spiritual world Emerson reminds us there are no half measures no shortcuts no easy substitutes souls are not saved in bundles he wryly remarked the spirit saith to the man how is it with thee thee personally to see the world through our own eyes and to measure events and persons through our own values constitutes much of what Emerson meant when he called on us to have an original relation to the universe it was also a reminder that we should cease to sleepwalk through the days and hours of our lives however ordinary those events may seem by conventional standards there was no such word as ordinary and Emerson's vocabulary of values the great thinkers have always enabled us to see the miraculous in the ordinary and the everyday and to realize that all spiritual and philosophical questions ultimately resolved themselves into the simple query what shall we do with the day we have before us give me insight into today Emerson declared and you may have the antique and future world's although the term transcendentalist which is usually applied to Emerson in his group of like-minded friends gives the impression that he was in some way abstract or otherworldly and his concerns if you read his work carefully and I would emphasize the adverb you find just the reverse what would we know the meaning of he asks us in the American scholar the meal and the furqan the milk in the pan the ballot in the street the news of the boat the glance of the eye the form and gait of the body for Emerson the purpose of philosophy and of poetry was to equip us to live better lives richer lives to use the current expression but that term itself suggests a materialism that is self-defeating lettuce instead say more open lives more passionate and committed lives lives with more presence with more depth with more integrity lives lived in the here and the now but with the recognition that our actions in the present moment always make the world that is emerging Emerson recounted a friendly debate he once had with Samson read a dedicated mystic in a Swedenborg Ian who had been a big influence on his first book nature in town I also talked with Samson read a Swedenborg in the rest it is not so in your experience but it is so in the other world Reid said to him other world I reply there is no other world here or nowhere is the whole fact all the universe over there is but one thing this old double creator creature mind matter right wrong the first step toward this original relation with the universe was one of acceptance in particular and particularly for Emerson of self-acceptance we think of self-reliance his best-known essay as something that has hard edges but it is that but also an ability to resist destructive seductions of social conformity that begins in a more humble acceptance of who we are accept the place the divine providence has found for you the society of your contemporaries the connection of events Emerson writes he believed that denial of our own identities a refusal to believe in ourselves with the first sin the first great falling from which all others ultimately sprang but once we come to terms with the unalterable fact that we are who we are constructive and beneficial things begin to happen we should not postpone and defer and wish you rights an experience but do broad justice where we are by whomsoever we deal accepting our actual companions and circumstances however humble there or odious as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us as difficult as this principle may be to apply in all cases I think of some of my colleagues back home Emerson's point is ultimately an empowering one resisting reality is a fruitless endeavor working where you are and thus transforming that reality with what Emerson calls broad justice is the only path to wisdom and fulfillment in Mersin believed that we could maintain this faith in who we were because of the larger assumption the ultimate interconnection and unity of all things in the cosmos he understood this perhaps in a flash of vision the famous transparent eyeball experience that he describes in nature but he also understood this to be a basic teaching of the Platonic and neo platonic traditions of Christian mysticism of Quakerism of the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures of the work of the German and the English romantics the world globe's itself into a drop of dew he wrote signifying that the tiniest part of nature contained and reflected all of nature the to true doctrine of omnipresent is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb the value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point for him this was not only a statement of metaphysics but of ethics as well so do we put our life into every act he said erasing any distinction between the realm of ethics and that of ordinary life each moment presents us with choices and every choice is an ethical challenge in itself thus is the universe alive he says all things are moral his great challenge was to trance these insights into a new language because he understood that the old language of conventional religion was dying for many especially the younger generation who found in Emerson the voice they needed the old religious terminology and its symbols no longer provided insight but had become a burden even a barrier to genuine spiritual insight and religious experience religion itself was not dying the hunger for the life of the stoic soul still remained and as Emerson realized always would but such hunger always demands expression and the forms of expression were no longer adequate in Emerson's day in the Divinity School address he referred to the famine of our churches in wonder where he would find those words that the older sages said and that drew people into the lives of the spirit Emerson understood that he would have to write those words himself and that each generation would have to do the same Emerson spoke these words in the Divinity School address at a religious ceremony to an audience of ministers and ministerial students but his message in fact helped to found a tradition of American poetry based on the idea of Perpetual experimentation innovation reinvention the remaking of the self he's now largely the property of departments of English rather than departments of philosophy or of religious studies Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Robert Frost Wallace Stevens Langston Hughes ar Emmons Gary Snyder Mary Oliver I would even say Robert Pinsky have all had their Emersonian moments and can all trace some lineage back to the prose poet who exemplified invention with words Emerson's Restless inventiveness new arts destroy the old he wrote in circles was not however aimless or purpose for him necessity was indeed the mother of invention and it was this desire to forge a new way of speaking about the spiritual life that lies the hand behind I think the vast and challenging corpus of his work finally I think it's remembered it's important to remember one other thing about Emerson we hear his words as words of wisdom the writings of the sage of Concord Emerson's words were in constant flux and in constant transition the reading of the journals in which he struggles and tries new ideas constantly the evolution of his work over time the evidence that he left us in the essay of experience of his own spiritual crisis and his attempt to work out of it remind us that these are the words not of some Olympian who brings the truth down to us but of a thinker constantly engaged in the process of formulating a new way to talk about life and to examine the lives thank you David very much sets our tone now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce our reader this evening Robert Pinsky poet laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000 his poetry editor of the online journal slate and a contributor to the news hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS he teaches in the Graduate writing program at Boston University in 1996 received the Shelly Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America his writing has also won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation the National Endowment of the Arts the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences his the figure at Weill Newman collected poems 1965 to 1995 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry also received the Lenore Marshall Award the ambassador Book Award of the english-speaking Union his book length poem an explanation of America was awarded the saxifrage Prize when it was first published in 1980 and the history of my heart was chosen for the 1985 William Carlos Williams prize for the Poetry Society of America in September 1998 two books by Penske appeared the sounds of poetry a brief guide and the handbook of heartbreak his latest collection is Jersey rain and his book democracy culture and the voice of poetry was published in September of 2002 his work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including the Norton Anthology of modern poetry which I'm sure has served as a bookend for many students in the room the Harper American literature the Harvard book of contemporary poetry in the vintage book of contemporary poetry it is my great pleasure to introduce Robert Pinsky thank you very much it's kind of to use this teenage word awesome as as well as inspiring and a great honor to read these words in this city in this building on this occasion I'm grateful for it and slightly intimidated by it as an opportunity as David Robinson's eloquent words indicated I hope it's appropriate for the experiment that we're about to have which is the experiment of listening to passages put together and edited by Richard Emerson's mind after all as David's remarks intimated was not only as we know defiantly rebellious lofty good you learned it was also venturesome it was more heuristic than systematic as the essays often are as reader not a scholar I often find I don't remember what essay a passage is from seems like it could be in any of many so we will see what happens as I read these to you from the essay to begin from the essay experience it is very unhappy but too late to be helped the discovery we have made that we exist that discovery is called the fall of man ever afterwards we suspect our instruments we have learned that we do not see directly that we have no means of correcting these colored distorting lenses which we are or of computing the amount of their errors perhaps these subject lenses perhaps these subject lenses have a creative power perhaps there are no objects once we lived in what we saw now the rapaciousness of this new power which threatens to absorb all things engages us from the Oversoul man is a stream whose source our being is sending in to us from we know not whence I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher argent for events than the will I call mine there is a difference between one and another hour of life in their authority and in their subsequent effect our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences we live in succession in division in parts in particles meantime within man is the soul of the whole the wise silence the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related the eternal one and this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour but the act of seeing and the things seen the seer and the spectacle the subject and the object are one experience again where then do we find ourselves in a series of which we do not know the extremes and believe that it has none we wake and find ourselves on a stair there are stairs below us which we seem to have ascended there are stairs above us many a one which go upward and out of sight but the genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter and gives us the leafy of forgetfulness to drink that we may tell no tales mixed the cup too strongly and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes as night hovers all day in the battles of the fir tree all things swing and glitter our life is not so much threatened as our perception ghost like glide through nature and should not know our place again we leave amid surfaces and the true art of life is to skate well upon them life itself is a mixture of power and form and will not bear the least success of either power or form to finish the moment to find the journey's end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom and yet there seems no need to fear that we should grow to wise the path of truth has obstacles enough of its own we dwell on the surface of nature we dwell amidst surfaces and surface laps so closely on surface that we easily Pierce to see the interior organism then the subtlety of things under every calls another cause truth source too high or dives too deep for the most resolute Enquirer see of how much we know nothing our ignorance is great enough and yet the fact most surprising is not our ignorant but our aversion from knowledge that which one would say would unite all Minds and join all hands the ambition to push as far as fate would permit the planted garden of man on every hand into the kingdom of night really fires the heart a few and solitary men tell men to study themselves and for the most part they find nothing less interesting from self-reliance that popular fable of the sodden who was picked up dead drunk in the street carried to the Dukes house washed and dressed and laid in the Dukes bed and on his waking treated with all obsequious ceremony like the Duke and assured that he had been insane that fable owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man who is in the world a sort of son but now and then wakes up exercises his reason and finds himself a true Prince we lie in the lap of immense intelligence which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity when we discerned justice when we discern truth we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage to its beams if we ask whence this comes if we seek to pry into the soul that causes OH is that fault its presence or its absence is all we can affirm every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith his due he may err in the expression of them but he knows that these things are so like day and night not to be disputed nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind absolve you to yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world I remember an answer which went quite young I was prompted to make to a valued advisor who was wont to import to me with the dear old doctrines of the church am I saying what have I to do with the sacredness of traditions if I live only from within my friend suggested but these impulses may be from below not above I replied they do not seem to me to be such but if I am The Devil's child I will live then from the devil no war can be sacred to me but that of my nature in this pleasing contrite would life which God allows me let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect and I cannot doubt it will be found symmetrical though I mean it not and I see it not my book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects the swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also for the sense of being which in calm our rises we know not how in the soul it's not diverse from things from space from light from time from man but one with him and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also perceived and now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid probably cannot be said for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition that thought by what I can now nearest approach to say it is this when good is near you when you have life in yourself it is not by any known or accustomed way you shall not discern the footprints of any other you shall not see the face of mankind you shall not hear any name the way the thought the good shall be holy strange I must be myself I cannot break myself any longer for you or you if you can love me for what I am we should be the happier if you cannot I will still seek to deserve that you should I will not hide my tastes or aversions I will so trust that what is deep is holy that I will do strongly before the Sun and Moon whatever in me rejoices me and the heart of points if you are noble I will love you if you are not I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions if you are true but not in the same truth with me please to your companions I will seek my own I do is not selfishly but humbly and truly it is alike your interest in mine in all men's however long we have dwelt in lies to live in truth it is alike in your interest and mine and all men's however long we have dwelt in lies to live in truth does this sound harsh today you will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine and if we follow the truth that will bring us out safe at last but so you may give these friends pain yes but I cannot sell my Liberty in my power to save their Sensibility besides all persons had their moments of Reason when they look out into the region of absolute truth then will they justify me and do the same thing passage from his journal in all my lectures I have taught one doctrine namely the infinitude of the private man this the people accept readily enough and even with loud commendation as long as I call the lecture art or politics or literature or the household but the moment I call it religion they are shocked though it be only the application of the same truth which they receive everywhere else to a new class effects meantime whilst the doors of the temple stand open night and day before every man and the Oracles of this truth cease never it is guarded by one Stern condition it is an intuition it cannot be received at secondhand truly speaking it is not instruction the provocation that I can receive from any other soul what he announces I must find true in me or wholly reject and on his word or as his second be he and then his word or as his second be Hui may I can accept nothing on the contrary the absence of this primary faith is the presence of degradation let this faith the part and the very words that spoke and the things that made become false and hurtful then Falls the church the state art letters life the doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten a sickness infects and Dwarfs the Constitution Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets he saw with open eye the mystery of the soul drawn by its severe harmony ravished with its beauty he lived in it and had his being there alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man one man was truly - what is in you and me he saw that God incarnates himself in man and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world he said in the Jubilee of sublime emotion I am divine through me God acts through me speaks would you see God see me or see thee without also thinkest as I now think but what a distortion that his doctrine and memories suffer in the same in the next in the following ages there's no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught but the understanding the understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips and said in the next age quote this was Jehovah come down out of heaven I will kill you if you say he was a man and quote it is time that this ills suppressed murmur of all thoughtful men against the famine of our churches this morning of the heart because it bereaved it is bereaved the consolation hope the grandeur that come alone out of the culture of the moral nature should be heard for the sleep of indolence and over the din of routine the test of the true faith certainly should be its power to charm and command the soul as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands so commanding we find pleasure and honor and obeying the faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting Suns with the Flying Cloud with the bird with the breath of the flowers we distinguished the announcements of the soul its manifestations of its own nature by the term revelation these are always attended by the emotion of the sublime for this communication is an influx of the divine into our mind the nature of these revelations is the same there are perceptions of the absolute law there are perceptions of the absolute law they are solutions of the soul's own questions they do not answer the questions which the understanding asks thus all answers never by words but by the thing itself that is inquired after this energy does not descend into individual life and any other condition than entire possession it comes to the lowly and simple it comes to whomever will put off what is foreign and proud it comes as insight as scenario serenity and grandeur when we see those whom it inhabits we are apprised of new degrees of greatness let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all fought to his heart this namely the highest dwells within him and the sources of nature are in his own mind if the sentiment of Duty is there but if he would know what the Great God speaketh he must quote go into his closet and shut door and quote as Jesus said God will not make himself manifest to cowards he must greatly listen to himself withdrawing himself from all other accents of men's devotion the whole course of things goes to teach us faith we need only obey there's guidance and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and your modes of action and of entertainment certainly there's a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and willful election for you there is a reality a fit place and congenial duties place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats and you are without effort impelled to truth then you put all gainsayers in the wrong then you are the world the measure of right of truth of beauty I say do not choose but that is a figure of speech by which I would distinguish what is commonly called choice among men and which is a partial act the choice of the hands of the eyes of the appetites and not a whole act of the man each man has his own vocation the talent is the call there is one direction in which all space is open to him he has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion he's like a ship in a river he runs against obstructions on every side but one on that side all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deep in deepening channel into an infinite sea this talent and this call depend on his organization or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him by doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed by doing his own work he unfolds himself the common experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into and pins him as a dog turns a spit I guess 19th century dogs turned spits tends it as a dog turns a spit then is he part of the machine he moves the man is lost until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature in proportion he does not yet find his vocation he was fine in that an outlet for his character so he may justify his work to their eyes if the laborer is mean let him buy his thinking and character make it liberal whatever he knows and thinks whatever in his apprehension is worth doing that let him communicate or men will never know and honor him or write from the essay nature prospects I shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions of man and nature which a certain poet sang to me and which as they have always been in the world and perhaps reappear to every poet may be both history and prophecy the foundations of man are not in matter but in spirit but the element of spirit is eternity to it therefore the longest series of events the oldest chronologies are young and recent in the cycle of the universal man from whom the known individuals precede centuries are points and all history is but the epoch of one degradation we distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature we own and disown our relation to it by turns we are like Mehcad Nezzer dethroned bereft of reason and eating grass like an ox but who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit a man is a god and ruins man is the dwarf of himself once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit he filled nature with his overflowing currents but having made for himself this huge shell his waters retired he no longer fills the veins and vain lets he is shrunk to a drop he sees that the structure still fits him colossal II say rather once it fitted him now it corresponds to him from afar and on high he adores timidly his own work it sometimes he starts in his slumber and wonders at himself in his house and uses strangely at the resemblance between him and his show he perceives that if his laws still power paramount if you still have elemental power if his word is sterling yet in nature it is not conscious power it is not inferior but superior to his will it is instinct thus my or fect pet sang but far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a poultry empiricism since there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded patience and patience we shall win at the last we must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time we must be very suspicious of the elements the deceptions of the element of time it takes a good deal of time to eat but to sleep or to earn $100 in a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life we dress our garden eat our dinner discuss the household with our spouses and these things make no impression are forgotten next week but in the solitude to which every person is always returning he has a sanity in Revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him never mind the ridicule never mind the defeat up again old heart it seems the same there is victory yet for all justice and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power thank you Robert here in this cradle of freedom our young nation began to frame the language of an authentic independence the founders adams and jefferson in particular articulated the two great principles upon which america was to form its natural character namely the sovereignty of the individual and freedom of worship a half-century later the eloquence of Ralph Waldo Emerson our founding thinker spelled out the elements of those two principles in effect he clarified the experience of Independence for us and at the core of his work the very marrow of it was the examined life for us as Americans the examined life is more than a philosophical notion or a tenant of the perennial philosophy for us it represents the two founding principles fused together into a quest for the ground of being that few choose to follow this path must be evident we have abdicated our individuality to the impulses of mass marketing in the other seductions of popular culture and we have sacrificed our freedom of worship either to unthinking fundamentalisms or the reverse an insensible agnosticism Emerson devoted his life to freeing us from these prisons of our own making he said I have my own spirits in prison spirits in deeper prisons whom no man visits if I do not if this seems like hyperbole just look around with something less than a jaundiced eye so what is to be done what about this examined life is it worth having if you heard Emerson this evening you would have to say at least it is something to consider something to reflect upon seriously Emerson begins spiritual laws with this sentence when the act of reflection takes place in the mind when we look at ourselves in the light of thought we discovered that our lives are in business in bosom in beauty on the surface of it the sentence introduces a passage about memory and our tendency to transform the tragic into the sublime over time but the grammar of it is doing something very interesting that opening clause not when we sit down to reflect on the past but rather when the act of reflection takes place in the mind there's no agent there no entity doing the reflecting the act of reflection at some point just happens it takes place that bubbling up from some hidden source within us is what we have to learn how to trust then the next clause when we look at ourselves in the light of thought not for instance when I think about my life or again there is this light of thought that arises independently and gives us the mean the means to look at ourselves consciously but an agent appears here the light of thought Dawn's and we are permitted to observe the action of looking at ourselves in the light of thought following the act of reflection which takes place in the mind is the examined life of our subject here this evening what we may see in this reflected light are the faculties of the mind instinct intuition memory analysis imagination if we are attentive we may also observe the fragmented operation of the ordinary mind as it rides along with us all day as strange as it may seem most of what takes place in the mind all day is really none of our business it's just stuff going on rambling tape loops of commentary that some have called roof brain chatter we entertain these thoughts like uninvited guests in our most private spaces Emerson knew it well when he said we are what we think about all day the examined life as mapped by Emersonian texts guides us on the way we learn to listen seriously to ourselves in the light of thought we learn to give our attention to the act of reflection as it takes place in the mind and we even learn to throw out those uninvited guests who blunder into our precious solitude as readers of Emerson we come upon these powerful provocations of his these shocks to our intellectual and emotional systems and if they resonate with us we can allow ourselves to examine the reflections which bubble up from the Wellsprings of our experience from that source of mind that without reflection would otherwise remain hidden from us I said earlier that the two principles of individualism and freedom of worship fuse in our national psyche for Emerson and for us a crucial a crucial question then naturally arises what is the source of these reflections that arise mysteriously in mind brain chemistry the materialist same God the Mystics say the collective unconscious the unions say intimations of immortality Wordsworth said a presence which is not to be put by he called it inspired in part by Wordsworth Emerson devoted himself to this question of the source of Revelation if indeed we lie in the land of immense intelligence how are we to recognize its intimations Emerson's glib reply to the question of sources that if he was the devil's child then so be it will not suffice we lie in the land of immense intelligence how are we to recognize its intimations Emerson's glib reply to the question of sources that if he was the devil's child then so be it will not suffice the answer has to do with the character of the infusion Emerson perceived symmetry and harmony in his inspiration he observed his ego diminished to a genuine humility in the face of these involuntary perceptions so when good is near us when we have life in ourselves we shall not hear any name even our own these revelations from the source of our life are impersonal and when putative leaders step forward to claim that God has spoken to them and given them a task to perform we need to reject the claim Emerson said about such a man in spiritual laws the pretense that he has another call a summons by name and personal election and outward signs that mark him extraordinary and not in the role of common men is fanaticism and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all individuals and no respect of persons therein we have an American history a long list of rogue messiahs to bear out the importance of Emerson's warning against this arrogance the examined life entails a humbling awareness that we are in the presence of certain universal laws laws which are reflected in the way in which our minds are structured consider the famous aphorism in self-reliance nothing nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind now religious fundamentalism would assert that nothing is sacred but the revealed Word of God in authorized texts and that our minds are by no means a reliable source being full of sinful thoughts attendant guilt and that the only way to reach salvation is to live by the revealed word while praying for forgiveness many people are content to trust in this protective world of sacred texts fearing the extremes of the Messianic position this position asserts that God speaks directly to us for a particular role or actions to be taken for us as God's will such extremism leads to exalted egotism seen in those individuals who are convinced that God has singled them out as unique and most dangerously given them power to control the lives of others the dangers of this exalted egotism are obvious as seen from the jungles of Guyana to Waco Texas to the streets of Baghdad Emerson's position of course is directly contrary to these extremes what does Emerson mean when he speaks of the integrity of our minds integrity means not only honesty in the sense of being honest with ourselves in the light of thought of having the courage to be what we fully are but also integrity in its sense as the state of being complete undivided unimpaired integrity suggests the unifying of the various faculties of mind into a healthy receptive whole in recent weeks a powerful example of the examined life appeared in papers around the world in Castro's Cuba a new crackdown on free expression this put hundreds of writers and journalists in prison for offending or challenging the regime one journalist Raoul Rivero writing from prison where he is currently serving a 20-year sentence has articulated a moving affirmation of the examined life writing about his personal struggle in the light of thought here is some of what he said the path I set out on a few years ago after a total rupture with the government's press and cultural media has transformed me into a different human being someone who has liberated himself on his own someone who in threatened and hostile circumstances could begin the journey toward individual freedom fear prison and harassment have only served to give more value to these discoveries they have contributed to the fact that my devotion to the sovereignty of the individual is now much more than an idea or a necessity it is an untamable instinct Rivero has perceived that under oppressive duress the sovereignty of the individual is at its core an untamable instinct the forces arrayed to tame or suppress that instinct are many even here in this cradle of freedom Emerson's great contribution to this spiritual crisis has been to awaken us to a life of the mind and invite that untamable instinct to take its central role in the integrity of our own minds to allow us to recover what he called the erect position as you well know it was Socrates who first articulated the value of the examined life in his time in Athens in the 5th century there were three particular persons most admired and treasured in Athens the spa dais or one with an ordered soul the sophist the wise one and most important the are ystös Felix one who is the best guardian of the values of the polis the community for us Emerson is all three and we can best treasure him by keeping his vision alive among us thank you we would like now the formal part of the program has the scripted part of the program is finished and we have these two microphones and also these three which I guess are about to be turned on and for a few minutes at any rate I know it's warm and but you have exercised your transcendental attributes very well I think if you and if you would like to pose a question we would certainly welcome it and do our best to respond first my apologies for getting up first what do I know I'm just a fool but I want to say this to you if I may this is a great occasion why it was a call to us call to our hearts our minds our soul and the great thing about this magic my office a question could it be that what you're doing here is taking through the body this is thoughts each of you with your own particular coloring your own particular sounds doing dancing or your motions or dams you're giving us giving this thought the coloring of your own personalities that's great you with thousands of others are doing this across the world it's one of those great events I might say this is a paradigmatic event for us to do this and to be present while you're standing there giving us what cannot be put on the page that is the glory of this presentation so thank you singers poets dancers and my apologies there's a poor fool but I honor you and I'll try to take this to the streets because this is great thank you for those of you who don't know that was brother Bloo maybe in fact I have to say I have to say brother that I watched you throughout mr. prince qi's reading and you were right there now could we have perhaps a more enthusiastic question - well personally personally all great minds of his nature and character I think need defending near his birthday on May 25th there was a piece in The New York Times in the op-ed section that was an extraordinary disservice to Emerson and I know a number of people in this room see Barbour nodding and a number of people in this room responded to the New York Times they published one letter but then the next day or soon after that dick Gordon here in Boston had Larry Buell from Harvard on for a wonderful hour of what I would call the the best you know the best defense is a good offense and I think so that's one thing I think we need to defend this vision and then the other thing would be to do the work to be there what are some of the things that Emerson himself did he kept a journal he took walks he conversed with his friends and you converse with them deeply and he sought them out to do that he spoke up against evil especially and in particular policies of the government that he felt were unjust even though this was not his orientation politics were a kind of suffering for him but I would also say log on to RW e dot org and avail yourself of this wonderful collection of material that is in the public domain and there were wonderful sources there that Jim Manley has pulled together and one quote that came to me that I passed on to him was that Emerson wrote in his journal when he was 21 years old when he said when I hear a nation shouting patriotism I am fain to look at the cleanliness heart and the cleanliness of his hands and it's 21 and he said that in response to the Mexican War so that was a man who understood and felt deeply what he would what he instinctively understood and wrote it down young lady over here just stand pat sir we were talking about that nothing is more sacred than the integrity at the mind I first asked myself God but which I'm missin saying if you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's well Emerson in fact lost the capacity of his mind in the last five years of his life and he was fully aware of it and this is the natural part of this instrument it's the natural part of the instrument it gets older as you will discover someday and gradually begins to fail us but it it obviously doesn't mean that is the phrase integrity of the mind doesn't mean the things don't don't happen to the brain which is a different instrument one of the things he lost was the ability to recall nouns in particular so one day he was looking for his umbrella and he asked his wife where is the thing that the visitors always leave and he he he stood over the open coffin of Henry what's with Longfellow and looking down at it at that late stage in his life and said I don't remember his name but he was a good man sir ever since I've been getting a great deal of attention this bicentennial year how widely is Emerson taught in the schools and how much is he read in our society compared with the past and what do you think the prospects are for the future well he is certainly assigned what takes place after that as a matter of some conjecture and debate in my own experience I did not respond well to my first reading of self-reliance it was complex and complicated and didn't speak to me but I was 17 what did I know I do think that Emerson is a personal discovery I don't know whether one can be led to it or not but it is certainly there there is nothing like however the voluntary attention and devotion that comes when people gather and I do recommend small groups gathering to read and discuss a paragraph at a time from our own experience and I think that's where a number of years helps to have some years so that some residents takes place and that we are able to feel because that's what it is it is gradually a matter of the heart so I'm not pessimistic about Emerson surviving in this culture whether he does so in the schools or not may not be relevant I sometimes describe myself as a teacher of slow reading and that's especially true when we get to Emerson he does I think Richard is exactly right take take a very considered and a very slow pace in order to begin to penetrate it there are not many AI that many ideas once you begin the moment to find the momentum of reading Emerson things begin to fall into place in a very interesting way the other footnote I said here is that curiously in in the universities you know through the era of the revision of the Canon the distrust of many of the writers of the past the beginnings of literary theory Emerson seems only to have gotten more prominent revival so insofar as I'd like to relate that question to the question young woman who asked what would Emerson having talked about the integrity of the mind as being the one sacred thing my two colleagues will correct me if I'm wrong I think Emerson perhaps is somewhat neglectful of mortality which played such a tremendous role in his own life and his writing you know we are all diagnosed with something terminal everybody here is going to go and the Alzheimer's diagnosis is on the excruciatingly because it can be made and because the process is gradual and I'm relating that to my thought that whether Emerson is on the reading list whether the students read him or not he is he influences probably not only hundreds of thousands but millions of people who may not he had this immense car equivalency in the writing of Whitman who you know Whitman influences people in languages in Asia and in Africa and through all the poets and all the aspects of American culture and the everything that relates to American individualism not to a kind of capitalist entrepreneurial thing but to some other spiritual idea that all comes a lot of it comes from these essays and I think it's I hope it's someone in the Amazonian spirit to say that his survival as someone who is read consciously is perhaps secondary to his immense survival in the effect that his eloquence and his ideas had on other people and rippling out and going through many other people Jim yes thank you I'd like to start by echoing brother blue and I think many of us our appreciation thank you very much and also Edie and Needham and the philosophy foundation as well thank you you quoted from spiritual laws each man has his own vocation the talent is his call we as you also mentioned are the writers of our own day we are compelled by Emerson to rewrite in a way history but really maybe rewrite but now for ourselves to discover that talent that genius my question is any ideas I as a father as a friend as a as a person very much interested how can we explore that process of self-discovery at least that and become that author a very reassuring thing that I find in in the writing is that the many passages where he says whatever it is whatever the sacred is it's not gonna look like the sacred that the one time you're sure you're not in the presence of it it's when everyone is acting very holy and I find that reassuring not simply because my own peculiar passion interest in religion rather secular life but because it makes me think that my obsessive thinking about my own metier about some thing I start doing some some physical process on engaged in my fantasy life all my desires and wonderings that are absolutely seem most petty or most there you go again there it is Robert again most TVs and things maybe it isn't that and he encourages me to think that thank god everybody is different and my way of being a dad and yours in my way of being a middle-class American and yours though they have many similarities probably also are unique and it's someone are not uniqueness that I would interpret that passage about the talent and the call that in a way I'm perfectly tired of my quitted ease and here I go again this way or that way is so familiar to me but thank God maybe there's something valuable in it maybe there is a talent or a call and that's somewhere so it may be in the thing that seems most you know your your passion interest in the classic automobiles or God knows what and where you communicate it to your child it's it's something that's not like that's not like what we all think we have to become very solemn of that maybe it's what you tell ethnic jokes and we also all know in fact where your call has been and deeply appreciated mr. manleigh whose website are w.org as I think brought many many thousands of people to to Emerson and it's a great contribution thank you sir like I asked that in light of some of the concepts we heard from the lecture tonight such as the infinitude of the private man and the question how is it with me personally self-reliance and the sovereignty of the individual how Emerson would comment here tonight about the degree of reliance that Americans have on unions and political parties and PACs and government federal state and union federal state and local from I want to pay tribute to David Robinson's response to the earlier question when someone very early young woman sitting near you over there said what do you recommend and David pointed out that Emerson whose natural vent was to read and write and be the private be by himself or to speak eloquently I'm sure he enjoyed his success in eloquence he bent himself to the uncongenial wheel of abolitionist politics and other politics as well and he had to do with organizations and many of us will understand with the gravity of which I say he went to meetings he went to meetings and he was willing to immolate himself and was like that and its wealth remember he was also on the conquered school board he was also on the evaluation committee at West Point and he accepted those responsibilities and he also traveled six months out of the year for over 30 years away from home lecturing as far as San Francisco and so he was deeply committed to the country and I think also to his sense of community and friendship all he hoped for obviously that one wouldn't abdicate one's sense of self to a mob like response and lose that integrity of mind in ever since poem Brahma he says that Brahma is his term for the kind of consciousness that's behind all our consciousness he says that Brahma consciousness is the doubter and the devil that it is this sort of almost skeptical consciousness and I also noticed them in the Hindu Vedas it says that skepticism is really from very central to understanding the spiritual it helps you break through could you speak about the skeptical and Emerson spiritual consciousness the Emerson's sense of skepticism and didn't have a negative quality about it first of all I think it was a wariness and a self trust and but he was also very careful to evaluate what what the impulses were and to test as I indicated in my talk the sources of his instincts and so on but he you bring up Brahma which of course is a very important poem when he talks about turn thy back on heaven which is its last line and the and the sense of of this world as David pointed out being where the work is done he was one of the very earliest Americans interested in Eastern philosophy and Eastern thought kept a copy of the Bhagavad Gita under his desk in the Latin School and we Oh in fact our interest I think in the 60s in particular to Eastern philosophy when it swept from the west to the east to the groundwork laid by Emerson let me add a quotation from Octavius Brooks frothingham who is a later disciple of Emerson who wrote doubt is the evidence of a live mind and I believe that that's the spirit in which Emerson took skepta skepticism skepticism keeps you moving forward skepticism keeps you from settling in skepticism always makes it clear to you that there is another challenge that tomorrow is a new day that the page is always blank and so in that sense skepticism was a kind of tonic or a kind of energizer for the the sort of continual process of thinking that he engaged in sir yes sir one of the speakers tonight referred to Emerson's love for the whole man acting and I feel that this is the key to the Emerson revival today if Emerson's to anything he stood for one word or one spirit and that was expression and as Anna good naturalist he said that all nature is expressing all at the time and so he he followed through and said that we are to be expressing all of the time he would look upon the marketplace tonight and say we see jugglers we see musicians but this is mere punk near mind what we want is not the visual but the whole man where is the heart where is the truth and here is the connection I think for all of us with his forum and with the enduring value of Emerson what he has to say to us in 2003 it is man speak to each other from the heart and truth not just the words of this generation which has computers which has advertising many of them corrupt people living light minded lightheaded lives where they're alienated from their selves and from everything this great profit of freedom probably the greatest America has ever produced would say again today speak speak that all may know thee and speak what is true and that will have thank you this oh yes I was just wondering if you could confirm or deny a story I heard a very long time ago that they could not confirm or deny it at Emerson's house the guide couldn't that he was giving one of his anti-slavery sermons when a heckler jumped up and yelled slavery is a divine institution and he looked down at the heckler and said so is hell like I can't either confirm or deny that I do sounds Emersonian but I can't give you any chapter in verse on that sorry it absolutely happened thank goodness that's settled yes sir good evening I'm a great admirer of Emerson I'm also a great admirer of Walt Whitman and I wonder if you could comment for me how he edited a book of poetry I think in the late 60s and Whitman was conspicuously absent from that in ecology of poetry and this is the same man who wrote I am NOT blind to the worth the wonderful gift of leaves of grass I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed and it seems to me that he had lots of praise for him and then after some of his literary friends like Thomas Carlyle told him that they thought the poetry was awful he changed his tune and I admire Emerson greatly but I'm disappointed that he I think he sort of abandoned Whitman and I wonder if you gentlemen could comment on that hmm well there are two things that great letter of course that went from Emerson to Whitman was a personal letter not meant for reproduction and Whitman took it and put it on the back as a blurb probably the first blurb we've ever in American literary history and much to Emerson consternation because he meant it as a private comment and part of the problem of course was the perceived obscenity in leaves of grass that embarrassed Emerson's somewhat when he was identified with Whitman and there was a famous meeting of Whitman coming to Boston and they took a long walk around the common and Emerson tried unsuccessfully to get Whitman to edit edit the work so I think there was a tension there when Whitman was invited to Emerson's home mrs. Emerson took a walk I think so it was awkward I mean you have to think of the time I think and now we look at it of course and wonder what the problem could possibly have been anyway that's my sense of it it's the best and the worst of Emerson that he this thing comes to him through the mail unsolicited he couldn't even figure out the author for a while had no idea where it you know what what the source of this was but he loved it and he immediately wrote the letter and there was this kind of generosity and sense of nurturing younger writers that was it was just very naturally a part of his personality and then there was a reserve and there was a certain air I suppose of conventionality with respect to the mores of the times that does as Richard points out come come out to Emerson's discredit I think in his advising of Whitman and in his later leaving Whitman out of Parnassus I think I think Whitman was hurt you know by that exclusion and a sad thing you spoke of how how Emerson felt that each new generation needed new language new inspiration for the spirit and religion of their times and I wondered if you could elaborate on that and especially speak to how you imagined Emerson would feel about the spirit and language and religion of sometimes you find in in Emerson's essays a very remarkable mixture of highly formal language with an enormous range of vocabulary and of the language in a vernacular language slang the language of the the language of the present moment as he herded and that year to the way people spoke and the way they articulated their experience I think is you know was what he was about in in his writing and his advising of future writers to be and so I think this is the strain of Emerson that has been so important I think to a whole tradition of American poets and there's no way to make that formulaic except to say that there is a kind of natural process by which language expands and grows and Wells up out of the experience of each generation as it as it lives through its particular events and what the what the poet must do is is have that year be attentive to to that that way of speaking and find a way to make that somewhat more permanent in the form of the poem the essay or whatever form or genre there might be Robert may want to speak to that this question gives me an opportunity to differ in the most gentle way I can from the gentleman who spoke about the moms and the jugglers and the computer and the advertiser I feel that almost I'm professionally as a poet I'm almost professionally required to suspend judgment of the advertising in the computer and the mime and God knows what all this teenage slang or whatever it is because maybe like the sacred the expressive can come and unexpected places and that the expected places the last places to look for it the one characteristic that I would say from age to age however is to maintain as broad a definition of this human instrument that we can don't shut down don't get caught in the reductionist view of us as crawling about with limited capacity I think if ranked the darts palm to the 20th century which is largely at that his gratitude for the ability to press the play and the rewind button and in that Toscanini Laurel and Hardy Toscanini Laurel and Hardy certain things unlike Goose a spoof of Collis unlike certain performances before the technology of electronic reproduction and I think there's something American perhaps Emersonian and that generosity is trying to think about Laurel and Hardy and Toscanini as both things that we have access to through magnetic recording and that perhaps that's good for the spirit that exists yes he shared with us tonight about Emerson's great interest in the bhagavad-gita keeping a copy always at hand and also about his involvement with the abolitionist movement what might have been his understanding of caste system in Hinduism and did he have a comparable outrage over the oppression of the untouchables Emerson's knowledge of the culture of India was was quite limited there's a good deal of confusion in his work between the Vedas and Hinduism and the multiplicity of gods and so on so we can't really say accurately what his understanding was I'm not familiar with his attitude toward the caste system particularly except to say that the information didn't travel well and didn't travel accurately to these shores in those in the 1840s I might just add that I myself was raised in a liberal religious tradition and exposed to Hinduism as one of the many world religions and now today in my middle life I find it hard to romanticize Hinduism with if anyone has seen the current issue issue of National Geographic with all it has to say revealing you know the extent of the oppressions get serious involving us thank you sir you spoke about his ascendancy as a thinker because it was ability to write about both the political and the spiritual and sort of combine those in ways that helped define our thinking and I wonder if you would comment on authors today that you think are carrying on that tradition and who do you think are in the senses his intellectual errors in their ability to do to address those topics simultaneously I don't it's difficult to say there are so many different kinds of responses to the Amazonian text I can give you an example that when I was doing graduate work I had of course from our from Harold Bloom who said in 1965 I discovered Emerson and it changed everything and what he meant by that was that it freed him to be a strong reader and it freed him to be the literary critic that he became now one can argue and look at the work of bloom and and his spiritual heritage or lack thereof and yet you can see how the extraordinary power of the expression and so on was freed by the Emersonian connection so I think there are many many different voices taking different paths I think if the poet in winters his book of poems he to the city there were seven or eight palms about New York and Harlem particularly where she grew up in Jacob Riis and her way of seeing is so thoroughly politicized and at the same time entirely poetic and her own I think of Anne winters book and the way Harlem is seen there I think if James McMichaels poem about Pasadena for good things in which the American suburban landscape in the presence of Caltech in Pasadena as a place that was founded by disciples of William Morris to teach weaving and wallpaper making and how it became the fun carnival wind tunnel and how Pasadena reflects that kind of contradictions that an American suburban city is seen from the inside in all of its social fabric and I go back a generation I think of misfits bishops way of seeing the first colonizers and Spanish conquistadors coming to this country Allen Ginsberg's walked through a supermarket in California I think that American art contrary to what some people say is particularly rich in social vision it's also very idiosyncratic I'd add the work of Gary Snyder poetry and prose to that list the work of wendell berry the environmental essayist certainly would fit the plays of August Wilson I think have the the poetic and the political in in beautiful harmony with each other I think we will have two more questions we have two people at each microphone and that will complete our program for tonight Lindsay introduced his work before it became widely recognized as be true Lindsay was at least in hue yeah as Rachel introduced Langston Hughes this work to the public and then he was shunned for it but well nature was his first book published anonymously although everyone knew who wrote it they printed 500 copies it took 25 years to sell out the first pretty it was the social circumstances are so different social sort of sense of Langston Hughes that he was working as a busboy at the time and ever said not from very high up the middle class but securely in it and from a clerical family the circumstances are different and I think the Vachel Lindsay Langston whose relationship is the exceptions rather unusual and the notion that the way American artists come to prominence is through a figure establish figure who becomes an advocate and supporter of that artist it's a very striking story because of the racial part of it and the social part but often I would say that's an exception and when I think of American careers in art certainly in poetry that having an older person it's a rather attractive story but I don't think it's a characteristic story right off the top of my head Emerson did not have that kind of introducer but he himself served in that role to a certain extent if you think of the work he did for Thoreau for Margaret for for Thomas Carlyle he became essentially his American agent in the course of his life for Whitman as we we have discussed in Mersin was in a position and had the prominence and had the had the desire to develop an American literary culture and spent an enormous amount of time I think on behalf of other writers in his own career and finally of course Emerson's own financial condition was in deplorable shape until he married into the Forbes family he improved considerably after that sir I think you've all made the point that Emerson was an enormous Lee practical man who enjoyed as you put it going to meetings and I was wondering that being the case joy he went to them he went to them that being the case and also given his suspicion I guess you could say of organized religion how do you think he would respond to the current crisis in the Boston archdiocese we we want to thank you for coming Emerson warned us never to trust in and rely on institutions this is the whole point of self-reliance you must think these things through for yourself so that's simply an instance of many instances that I'm sure we could all develop institutions that failed and a warning that institutions are important and necessary but they must be entered into formed and kept kept healthy by thinking individuals who are always there to do the right kind of work that they see is necessary to be to be gone I would like to whether we we do have a housekeeping message or two and like to ask me to Cushing to come back up on the stage and also me too and there's so many people here who have made this evening possible Edie would you just stand up for a moment please I just say thank God Emerson listened to his inner voice and he was smart enough to write it down we do want to make just I would just like to say we have to thank ET and meet meeting in particular for making this evening necessary yes and our authors will also be available for a book signing Barnes & Noble has assembled a an Emersonian bookstore also as you leave tonight please be sure to receive the commemorative book Emerson and the examined life a gift from the philosophy Foundation and compiled by richard gallagher and spoken of course so beautifully tonight by mr. Pinsky we'd also like to thank the city of boston and the wonderful staff of Paul Berkley for the hospitality here at Faneuil Hall I can't imagine a more fitting place to play tribute to Ralph Waldo Emerson to our co-sponsors WGBH and also the Omni Parker house we'd like to also invite you Richard gale Garrett has been invited back and has assembled a most interesting panel for September 20th this will be our culminating event in the emerson bicentennial richard Gelder will be joined by authors Robert Thurman and Jacob Needleman and the discussion will be on American wisdom in the world today it's called reawakening the American soul if you'd like some more information about this event which is free and open to the public here at Faneuil Hall please access WWF annual Hall form org thank you for your attention in your presence you

Channel: GBH Forum Network

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Keywords: david m. robinson, essayist, ralph waldo emerson, richard geldard, robert pinsky, transcendentalism

Id: pMhmoH42bRs

Length: 115min 49sec (6949 seconds)

Published: Fri May 09 2014