I‘ve been wanting to write a post on Emerson for a while, but I kept holding off while I tried to collect my thoughts. Now I’ve realized I’d rather know what you think.
I spent a bit of time over the last couple years thinking about Emerson because he was Bronson Alcott’s close friend and often paid the Alcott family’s bills during the long stretches when Bronson earned no income. Their relationship was interesting; Emerson–Waldo, as his friends called him–seems at times to admire Bronson, at times to pity him. He was certainly more shrewd than Bronson when it came to his career and finances. Although it helped that he married a very rich girl who was dying of tuberculosis. (Aside: He later remarried, and this relationship is the subject of the wonderful MR. EMERSON’S WIFE.)
Waldo also inspired and supported Louisa in her work. She talks in her journals of having a sort of intellectual crush on him when she was very young (he was about thirty years her senior) and leaving bouquets of flowers on his doorstep.
As much as I’ve tried to understand the profound effect Emerson has had on American literature, I have always shared many readers’ consternation with Emerson’s actual writing. And then last week my very thoughts found their way into an amusing and, if we can judge by the comments, divisive article on this very issue.
In short, the authors argue that Emerson’s prose contains “a set of contradictory, baffling, radical, reactionary ideas that offer no practical guidelines for actual human behavior.” Teaching Emerson, these English professors say, “leaves us frustrated, confounded, and sputtering before a class of students who want to know what they’ve just read and why they should care.”
But I also know plenty of people (most of whom were lucky enough to go to NELP–what was I thinking missing out on that?!) who would say that Emerson profoundly influenced their lives.
So, what do you think? Is Emerson worth grappling with, or is he mostly smoke and mirrors?
