Date: 11-05-00
PEOPLE IN AMERICA #1796 - Ralph Waldo Emerson
By Richard ThormanANNOUNCER:
PEOPLE IN AMERICA -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.
(THEME)
Every week at this time, we tell the story of the life of a
person who was important in the history of the United States.
Today Gordon Gaippe and Jack Weitzel tell about philospher and
writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was born in Eighteen-Oh-Three.
VOICE ONE:
The United States had won its independence from Britain just
twenty-two years before Ralph Waldo Emerson was born. But it had
yet to win its cultural independence. It still took its
traditions from other countries, mostly from western Europe.
What the American Revolution did for the nation's politics,
Emerson did for its culture.
When he began writing and speaking in the Eighteen-Thirties,
conservatives saw him as radical -- wild and dangerous. But to
the young, he spoke words of self-dependence -- a new language of
freedom. He was the first to bring them a truly American spirit.
He told America to demand its own laws and churches and works.
It is through his own works that we shall look at Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
VOICE TWO:
Ralph Waldo Emerson's life was not as exciting as the lives of
some other American writers -- Herman Melville, Mark Twain or
Ernest Hemingway. Emerson traveled to Europe several times. And
he made speeches at a number of places in the United States.
But, except for those trips, he lived all his life in the small
town of Concord, Massachusetts.
He once said that the shortest books are those about the lives of
people with great minds. Emerson was not speaking about himself.
Yet his own life proves the thought.
VOICE ONE:
Emerson was born in the northeastern city of Boston,
Massachusetts, in Eighteen-Oh-Three. Boston was then the capital
of learning in the United States.
Emerson's father, like many of the men in his family, was a
minister of a Christian church. When Emerson was eleven years
old, his father died. Missus Emerson was left with very little
money to raise her five sons.
After several more years in Boston, the family moved to the
nearby town of Concord. There they joined Emerson's aunt, Mary
Moody Emerson.
VOICE TWO:
Emerson seemed to accept the life his mother and aunt wanted for
him. As a boy, he attended Boston Latin School. Then he studied
at Harvard University.
For a few years, he taught in a girls' school started by one of
his brothers. But he did not enjoy this kind of teaching. For a
time, he wondered what he should do with his life. Finally, like
his father, he became a religious minister. But he had questions
about his beliefs and the purpose of his life.
VOICE ONE:
In Eighteen-Thirty-One, Ralph Waldo Emerson resigned as the
minister of his church because of a minor religious issue. What
really troubled him was something else.
It was his growing belief that a person could find God without
the help of an organized church. He believed that God is not
found in systems and words, but in the minds of people. He said
that God in us worships God.
Emerson travelled to Europe the following year. He talked about
his ideas with the best-known European writers and thinkers of
his time. When he returned to the United States, he married and
settled in Concord. Then he began his life as a writer and
speaker.
VOICE TWO:
Ralph Waldo Emerson published his first book, Nature, in
Eighteen-Thirty-Six. It made conservatives see him as a
revolutionary. But students at Harvard University liked the book
and invited him to speak to them.
His speech, "The American Scholar," created great excitement
among the students. They heard his words as a new declaration of
independence -- a declaration of the independence of the mind.
VOICE ONE:
"Give me an understanding of today's world," he told them, "and
you may have the worlds of the past and the future. Show me
where God is hidden. . . as always. . . in nature. What is near
explains what is far. A drop of water is a small ocean. Each of
us is a part of all of nature."
Emerson said a sign of the times was the new importance given to
each person. "The world," he said, "is nothing. The person is
all. In yourself is the law of all nature."
Emerson urged students to learn directly from life. He told
them, "Life is our dictionary."
VOICE TWO:
The following year, Emerson was invited to speak to students and
teachers at the Harvard religious school. In his speech, he
called for moral and spiritual rebirth. But his words shocked
members of Harvard's traditional Christian church. He said
churches treated religion as if God were dead.
"Let mankind stand forevermore," he said, "as a temple returned
to greatness by new love, new faith, new sight."
Church members who heard him speak called him a man who did not
believe in God. Almost thirty years passed before Harvard
invited Emerson to speak there again.
VOICE ONE:
Away from Harvard, Emerson's speeches became more and more
popular. He was able to make his living by writing and speaking.
"Do you understand Mr. Emerson?" a Boston woman asked her
servant. "Not a word," the servant answered. "But I like to go
and see him speak. He stands up there and looks as if he thought
everyone was as good as he was."
Many people, especially the young, did understand Emerson. His
ideas seemed right for a new country just beginning to enjoy its
independence -- a country expanding in all directions.
Young people agreed with Emerson that a person had the power
within himself to succeed at whatever he tried. The important
truth seemed to be not what had been done, but what might be
done.
VOICE TWO:
In a speech called "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson told his
listeners, "Believe your own thoughts, believe that what is true
for you in your private heart is true for all men."
Emerson said society urges us to act carefully. This, he said,
restricts our freedom of action. "It is always easy to agree,"
he said. "Yet nothing is more holy than the independence of your
own mind. Let a person know his own value. Have no regrets.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourselves."
VOICE ONE:
The Eighteen-Fifties were not a peaceful time for America. The
nation was divided by a bitter argument about slavery.
Most people in the South defended slavery. They believed the
agricultural economy of the South depended on Negro slaves. Most
people in the North condemned slavery. They believed it was
wrong for one man to own another.
Emerson was not interested in debates or disputes. But he was
prepared to defend truth, as he saw it.
Emerson believed that the slaves should be freed. But he did not
take an active part in the anti-slavery movement. All his
beliefs about the individual opposed the idea of group action --
even group action against slavery.
As the dispute became more intense, however, Emerson finally,
quietly, added his voice to the anti-slavery campaign. When one
of his children wrote a school report about building a house, he
said no one should build a house without a place to hide runaway
slaves.
VOICE TWO:
Emerson's health began to fail in the early Eighteen-Seventies.
His house was partly destroyed by fire. He and his wife escaped.
But the shock was great. Friends gave him money to travel to
Egypt with his daughter. While he was gone, they rebuilt his
house.
Emerson returned to Concord. But his health did not improve. He
could no longer work. In April, Eighteen-Eighty-Two, he became
sick with pneumonia. He died on April Twenty-Seventh. He was
seventy-nine years old.
VOICE ONE:
Ralph Waldo Emerson's death was national news. In Concord and
other places, people hung black cloth on houses and public
buildings as a sign of mourning. His friends in Concord walked
to the church for his funeral service. They carried branches of
the pine trees that Emerson loved.
After the funeral, Ralph Waldo Emerson was buried in Concord near
the graves of two other important early American writers -- Henry
David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
(THEME)
ANNOUNCER:
You have been listening to the Special English program, PEOPLE IN
AMERICA. Our program was written by Richard Thorman. Your
narrators were Gordon Gaippe and Jack Weitzel. I'm Shirley
Griffith.
Listen again next week for another People in America program on
the Voice of America.
Source: www.voa.gov/special/