25 Sep 2004, 20:22 UTC
Broadcast: September 26, 2004
(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
I'm Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA.
Today we tell about the life of Nineteenth Century philosopher and writer
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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 traveled 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."
