The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Summary)

 

The American Scholar

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Summary) 

A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself...

In his essays, Emerson questions and looks into the recognized modes that characterize writings in religion and philosophy and asserts his commitment to the merging and blending of the real with the ideal as well as of the material with the spiritual. His writing frequently takes up positions that may run counter to established cultural traditions and are expressed through the technique of having imaginary poets speaking them in the form of metaphors or fables. Emerson tries to convey, in these pieces, what the limitations or boundaries are of a practical world of ‘a notion’ as opposed to the views of a poet. They are therefore, in a sense, a dramatic portrayal of this argument.

Most of Emerson’s essays are a collection of his lectures. His manner of developing a theme was to think of a topic and wait for ideas and examples to come into his mind in much the same way that birds and insects come to a plant or flower. And when he got an idea, he gave chase to it “as a boy might hunt a butterfly” and pinned it down in his “Thought Book” like a specimen in his collection. He utilized other people’s writings as a stimulus for his thoughts rather than for guidance. According to him, books were meant for the idle times of a scholar: “I value them to make my top spin.” He loved poetry and mystical philosophy and was fond of Shakespeare, Dante, George Herbert, Goethe, Berkeley, Coleridge, Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme, Plato, the new Platonists, and also the translated versions of the religious books of the East. He also liked biographies and anecdotal texts but declared that he did not value writing by Aristophanes, Cervantes, Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen or even Charles Dickens. He wrote in an epigrammatic style infused with the glow of a steady but moderate optimism and, not being a consistent observer, expressed himself in flashes of gem-like clarity but could be somewhat obscure in his long paragraphs.

What constituted the greatness of Emerson’s oratory or writing? It was his sublime imagination; his spirit that was so idealistic but which, at the same time so loved reality as well as the quickness of his gift of perception.

His writing was passionate and originated from his conviction that words, if they were to be strong, should be highly charged, dynamic and tangible. For him, nature was like a book and everything newly learnt was like a new word. He felt that both oral and written language had a significant role to play in the creation of an evolving culture that would be different from that of Europe and would break away from existing European modes and influences. This was, however, not a revolutionary thought during that time. He was an important figure in the evolution of a national, American literature due to his emphasis on the creation of something new as well as his concern about the influence of the past, of books and monuments.

The American Scholar was delivered as the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard in 1837. It was an impassioned prayer for a realistic, sincere and independent American intellectual thought. It was an appeal to make the scholarly life of America a distinctively American one shorn of all European influences and models. Emerson began by criticizing American and particularly New England culture, saying that Americans were “a people too busy to give to letters anymore.” In spite of being extraordinarily well-read and erudite, he also criticized excessive bookishness as is to be found in Wordsworth and English Romanticism and declared his commitment to practical experience as opposed to knowledge purely gleaned from books: “Only so much do I know, as I have lived.”

According to him, Nature is the most important influence on the mind and influences both written and read thought as both tasks are performed by the same mind. And, he said further that both writing and reading should be ‘creative’ as the development of the individual is essential if there is to be a meaningful interaction between the mind that reads and the mind that is in the book. Learning does not mean being a book worm but become a “Man Thinking” – someone whose intellectual life is independent, active and whose mind is in touch with Mind and the “Divine Soul.” It is only through this process, declared Emerson, that “A nation of men will for the first time exist” in America.