Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25th 1803, Boston, Massachusetts - April 27th, 1882, Concord, Massachusetts) is a Essayiste and American Poète .

Biography

The father of Emerson, unitarian Pasteur , complains that his/her son does not read correctly at 3 years and dies in 1811, whereas Emerson is 8 years old. At 14 years, in October 1817, it is allowed with the Université Harvard, with a grant.

After obtaining its diploma, Emerson helps his/her brother in the school for young girls which is installed in the house of their mother. When his/her brother leaves to Göttingen to make studies of Théologie, Emerson takes the school in load, which ensures the essence of its incomes during several years. He also studies theology and becomes unitarian Pasteur, before resigning after a conflict with the leaders of the church. About at the same time, it loses its well loved young woman, Elena Louisa Tucker, which dies in February 1831.

Emerson goes on a great journey in Europe during the years 1832-1833. It crosses the Italy, goes to Paris (its visit with the national Muséum of natural history will mark it deeply) and in Great Britain where it meets then Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle with which it maintains then a correspondence until the death Carlyle, in 1881. It will go one second time to England, in 1847-1848, voyage from which it will draw its work English Traits in 1856.

In 1835, Emerson buys a house with Concord (Massachusetts), and quickly becomes one of the personalities of the city. It publishes its first book, Nature , in September 1836. It takes part with some other intellectuals in the foundation of the magazine The Dial whose first number leaves in 1840 to help with the propagation of the ideas transcendantalist S.

Emerson loses his/her Waldo oldest son reached of a Scarlatine, in 1842. Its pain inspires two major works to him: the poem Threnody and the test Experiment .

Emerson dies in 1882. It is buried with the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, in Concord.

Heritage

Among all the thinkers who can claim themselves today of Emerson, let us quote Stanley Cavell which brings closer what it calls morals the perfectionism émersonien which crosses certain cinematographic works (that Cavell joins together in the kind of the comedies of remarriage ). This perfectionism of the political subject has as a notable characteristic to be not-élitiste.

Works

Its more important work in prose is:

Natural , (1836)
The American Scholar , (1837)
The Divinity School Address , (1838)
Essays: First Series , (1841), including/understanding Compensation , Coil-Reliance and Circles )
The Transcendentalist , (1841)
Essays: Second Series , (1844), including/understanding The Poet , Representative Experiment and Politics
Men , (1850), tests on Napoleon, Plato, Montaigne, Shakespeare and Goethe)
English Milked (1856)
The Conduct off Life , (1860, including/understanding Fate and Power )
Thoreau , (1862).

Emerson also wrote poetry: Threnody , Uriel , Works and Days and celebrates it Concord Hymn .

Translations in French language

Seven tests of Emerson . Translated by J. Will, with a foreword of Maurice Maeterlinck, Brussels, P. Lacomblez, 1899,295 p.
Company and loneliness . Translation of Marie Dugard. Paris, Armand Colin, 1911, VIII-293 p. Comprend: Civilization; Art; Domestic life; Work and days; Courage; Success; Old age (National library of France, Gallica, format pdf)

selected Tests . Translated by Henriette Mirabaud-Thorens; preface by Henri Lichtenberger. Paris, F. Alcan, 1912, XVI-156-36 p. (National library of France, Gallica, format pdf)

Three volumes D Tests , at Michel Houdiard: I: Nature, Confidence and autonomy, Circles, the supreme Heart (1997) - II: The American Intellectual, Art, the Poet (2000) - III: History, Compensation, Experiment, Destiny (2005)

selected Pages . Translation of Marie Dugard. Bookstore Armand Colin, Paris 1908 - republished with the Astra Editions, Paris 1976.

Source

Stanley Cavell, Concerning the alleged pragmatism of Wittgenstein and Emerson , Diderot Association.

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