Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is now nineteen years since I left the Land of Not, and I may safely say that, in the countries in which I have passed my time since that period, it has been invariably true that there is more crime, misery and vexation in every one of them, in the course of a single year, than transpires in the peaceful Land of Not in the lapse of many centuries. Except for the existence of one single institution which has been established from time immemorial, there is no question that a vast tide of emigration would rapidly flow into that country. This institution is a rigorous Alien Act which ordains that no man who leaves the limits of the country shall ever be permitted to set foot within it again. But, to my knowledge, many who have left it have often afterwards looked back to its pleasant abodes, and desired in vain to return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:32

When I was a lad—said the bearded islander—we had commonly a kind of vast musical apparatus in the Pacific islands which must appear as fabulous to you as it proved fatal to us. On the banks of the rivers there were abundance of Siphar trees, which consist of vast trunks perforated by a multitude of natural tubes without having any external verdure. When the roots of these were connected with the waters of the river, the water was instantly sucked up by some of the tubes and discharged again by others, and, when properly echoed, the operation attended by the most beautiful musical sounds in the world. My countrymen built their churches to the Great Zoa upon the margin of the water and enclosed a suitable number of these trees, hoping to entertain the ears of the god with this sweet harmony. Finding however by experience that the more water the pipes drew the more rich and various were the sounds of the Organ, they constructed a very large temple with high walls of clay and stone to make the echoes very complete, and enclosed a hundred Siphars. When the edifice was complete, six thousand people assembled to hear the long expected song. After they had waited a long time and the waters of the river were beginning to rise, the Instrument suddenly began to emit the finest notes imaginable. Through some of the broader pipes the water rushed with the voice of thunder, and through others with the sweetness of one of your lutes. In a short time the effect of the music was such that it seemed to have made all the hearers mad. They laughed and wept alternately, and began to dance, and such was their delight, that they did not perceive the disaster which had befallen their Organ. Owing to the unusual swell of the River and to some unaccountable irregularity in the ducts, the pipes began to discharge their contents within the chapel. In a short time the evil became but too apparent, for the water rose in spouts from the top of the larger ducts and fell upon the multitude within. Meantime the music swelled louder and louder, and every note was more ravishing than the last. The inconvenience of the falling water which drenched them, was entirely forgotten until finally the whole host of pipes discharged every one a volume of water upon the charmed congregation. The faster poured the water, the sweeter grew the music, and the floor being covered with the torrent, the people began to float upon it with intolerable extacies. Finally the whole multitude swam about in this deluge, holding up their heads with open months and ears as if to swallow the melody, whereby they swallowed much water. Many hundreds were immediately drowned and the enormous pipes, as they emptied the river swelled their harmony to such perfection that the ear could no longer bear it and they who escaped the drowning died of the exquisite music. Thenceforward there was no more use of the Siphar trees in the Pacific islands.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:29-31

The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy and Literature was a journal published by the Transcendentalists from 1840-1844. (See this Wikipedia article for more about this publication.) Emerson was the leader of this magazine, and Margaret Fuller was the first editor. Emerson took over the editorship about two years later, after Fuller decided to step aside.

You can view and download what seem to be complete anthologies of The Dial from Google Books. Here are the links:

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4

I have only read selections from The Dial, but am planning to go through these documents; they give the best overview of Transcendentalist thought during the important years of 1840-1844.

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; — cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind’s own sense of good and fair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, — in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer’s hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato’s and Shakspeare’s.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar