拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生
拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生
（Ralph Waldo Emerson，1803－1882）
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-82), American poet and essayist, b. Boston. Through his essays, poems, and lectures, the "Sage of Concord" established himself as a leading spokesman of transcendentalism and as a major figure in American literature.
Life
The writer's father, William Emerson, a descendant of New England clergymen, was minister of the First Unitarian Church in Boston. Emerson's early years were filled with books and a daily routine of studious and frugal homelife. After his father's death in 1811, his eccentric but brilliant aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, became his confidante and stimulated his independent thinking. At Harvard (1817-21) he began recording his thoughts in the famous Journal. Poor health hindered his studies at the Harvard divinity school in 1825, and in 1826, after being licensed to preach, he was forced to go south because of incipient tuberculosis. In 1829 he became pastor of the Old North Church in Boston (Second Unitarian). In the same year he married Ellen Tucker, whose death from tuberculosis in 1831 caused him great sorrow.
Emerson's personal religious scruples and, in particular, his conviction that the Lord's Supper was not intended by Jesus to be a permanent sacrament led him into conflict with his congregation. In 1832 he retired from his only pastorate. On a trip to Europe at this time he met Carlyle (who became a close friend), Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Through these notable English writers, Emerson's interest in transcendental thought began to blossom. Other strong influences on his philosophy, besides his own Unitarian background, were Plato and the Neoplatonists, the sacred books of the East, the mystical writings of Swedenborg, and the philosophy of Kant. He returned home in 1834, settled in Concord, Mass. and married (1835) his second wife, Lydia Jackson.
Work
During the early 1830s Emerson began an active career as writer and lecturer. In 1836 he published anonymously his essay Nature, based on his early lectures. It is in that piece that he first set forth the main principles of transcendentalism, expressing a firm belief in the mystical unity of nature. He attracted wide attention with "The American Scholar," his Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard in 1837, in which he called for independence from European cultural leadership. In his lecture at the Harvard divinity school in 1838, his admonition that one could find redemption only in one's own soul was taken to mean that he repudiated Christianity. This caused such indignation that he was not invited to Harvard again until 1866, when the college granted him an LL.D. degree.
In 1840 Emerson joined with others in publishing The Dial, a magazine intended to promulgate transcendental thought. One of the younger contributors to The Dial was Henry David Thoreau, who lived in the Emerson household from 1841 to 1843 and became Emerson's most famous disciple. The first collection of Emerson's poems appeared in 1847. In spite of his difficulty in writing structurally correct verse, he always regarded himself essentially as a poet. Among his best-known poems are "Threnody," "Brahma," "The Problem," "The Rhodora," and "The Concord Hymn."
It was his winter lecture tours, however, which first made Emerson famous among his contemporaries. These lectures received their final form in his series of Essays (1841; second series, 1844). The most notable among them are "The Over-Soul," "Compensation," and "Self-Reliance." From 1845-47 he delivered a series of lectures published as Representative Men (1850). After a second trip to England, in 1847, he gave another series of lectures later published as English Traits (1856). During the 1850s he became strongly interested in abolitionism and was an active sympathizer with the North in the Civil War. His late lecture tours are contained in The Conduct of Life (1860) and Society and Solitude (1870). Though his last years were marked by a decline in his mental powers, his literary reputation rapidly continued to spread. Probably no writer has so profoundly influenced American thought as Emerson.
拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生,美国思想家,诗人。1836年出版处女作《论自然》。他文学上的贡献主要在散文和诗歌上。他认为美的艺术目的在于创造，诗人不能脱离自己的时代和国家，他号召美国作家写美国题材，创造出明显的美国风格，对同时代的作家如梭罗、惠特曼、艾米莉·狄金森等产生过较大影响。他的哲学思想和著作对二十世纪的美国作家如德莱塞、弗罗斯特等人的影响也很明显。他的诗简洁、精辟，富有高度的哲理性。
老牧师威廉·爱默生的儿子们也继承了这样的传统。其中尤以12岁的拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson，1803－1882）最有性格。小拉尔夫很早便显出自己的个性，他平时上教堂总带着帕斯卡尔（Pascal Blaise，1623－62）的著作在布道时阅读。夜晚躺在冰凉的寝室内，拉尔夫总习惯于把毛毯拉到颏下捧读那本珍爱的柏拉图的《对话集》。以致于久而久之形成条件反射，每每将毛毯的味道与哲人柏拉图联系在一起。
与一般职业演说家演说的方式不同，爱默生专向那些富于思考的人们进行演讲，有时甚至专门为一个人演说。并试图唤醒听者的潜意识。他鼓动人们对未来充满信心，人类创造了辉煌的过去，未来将会更加富于机遇，他认为在未来世界面前思想家与作家一样负有艰巨的使命。
在康考德这个地方定居之前，爱默生并未急于将自己的思想整理发表，而是有意识地扩展自己的思维空间使其更加趋于深入、缜密、合理。他喜欢西门尼（Simonides）的名言：“假若给我两次机会，我会更加深思熟虑。”在此独处期间，爱默生经常独自一人在林间漫步沉思，他觉得自己的学识及思维能力如同这林中的树木花草一样得以滋长强壮起来。爱默生按他自己的方式理解生命，他具有这样的天赋，即可以在众人面前揭开帷幕将神的魅力展现给我们。他在瓦尔登湖边买下一块林地，一块荒无人烟的岩架地带，放眼望去是漫漫的湖景，夏目午后他在此游泳休闲，他喜欢漫步徘徊于林间湖畔，阅读柏拉图和歌德的著作，为刊物撰写文章。他觉得自己仿佛是这林中的国王，摒弃了一切人间的牵连而成为这石灰岩和花岗岩的同类。青蛙在歌唱、树叶在低吟，他也从人类社会里死而后生来到这另一片天地。在这样的境界里，爱深得其乐融融陶醉，他思维的视野早已超乎一般人类世界的现实水准，如同当年尼采在Sils－Maria所感觉到的一样，今天爱默生亦得以亲身体验，这便是神与人合二为一的力量。康考德是一个平静、闲逸的地方。这里的乡镇与外界相比并没有任何差异，而那些善于经营生意的美国佬很轻易地舍其而去，因为这里的山山水水并不能带给他们任何激情。可是从另一方面看，对康考德则不失为一所研究人性的学校。在此你可以通过与铁匠、杂货店主和管道工们闲谈并能获得各种新鲜的知识。从印度和中国运来的各种货物源源不断地从轮船转到卡车上，再由此驶往佛门特（Vermont）和新罕布夏州（New Hampshire）。如果你具有一定的想象力，就会发现原来这里人们一天的工作其实连接着东方和西方，过去与未来。