Don't wait! Try Yumpu. Start using Yumpu now! Terms of service. Privacy policy. Cookie policy. Richardson Jr. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives… Expand. View via Publisher. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. Though many people believe that Ralph Waldo Emerson was a brilliant thinker, lecturer, and writer, there is a widespread notion among scholars that he abandoned his early philosophy during the latter … Expand.
Philosophy and Personal Loss. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death.
Now Robert D. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother.
Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age. Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations.
This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.
Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature. Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings—from Persian poets to George Sand—and to his many friendships and personal encounters—from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston—evoking both the man and the times in which he lived.
Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published November 6th by University of California Press first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions 5. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
To ask other readers questions about Emerson , please sign up. Would you rate this as one of the best biographies most insightful about his life, work and thoughts on Emerson? Simon Pockley In my opinion this biography the mind on fire is more about how Emerson thought than it is about his life. He was adept at making quotable platitude …more In my opinion this biography the mind on fire is more about how Emerson thought than it is about his life. He was adept at making quotable platitudes but the more I read of Emerson the more nonsensical some of these are at least to me.
I think religion got in the way of any clear thinking. For example, in his essay on Nature, he argues that nature was put there by God for man to exploit. See 1 question about Emerson…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4.
Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Aug 06, Caroline-getting-updates-again rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction , biography.
The Mind on Fire is an intellectual biography of Emerson, although Richardson says that he ended up including more routine biography than he intended to in order to help the reader understand the development of his thought.
I started off listening to this, but quickly headed to the library so I could have a hard copy as well to source the sources. Emerson himself indexed the journals repeatedly and drew on them heavily for his speeches and essays.
And he read everything. The classics of course, but he also read widely in Asian religion and philosophy Zoroastriansim, Buddhism, Hinduism , German biblical criticism, Swedenborg, de Stael, botany, government studies of social conditions, Goethe, translations from Arabic and Persian etc etc.
He was heavily influenced by Hafez and Swedenborg, among so many of the others he read. He also returned again and again to books previously read to study them again in light of what he had read since. Richardson's exposition details the wide span of the reading but grounds it by embedding the books in well-selected examples of how a particular author shaped his next speech or essay.
His friendships with Carlyle, Thoreau, Fuller, and others are thoroughly discussed here, along with how they expanded his reading. View 1 comment. Jul 07, Tom rated it it was amazing Shelves: literary-criticism , biography. As with RR's excellent Thoreau: A Life of the Mind," this is a bio of a reader more than a chronological account of a life, and if indeed we are what we read, then RR provides a fascinating portrayal of one of the country's most important thinkers.
That's quite liberating for any devoted rea As with RR's excellent Thoreau: A Life of the Mind," this is a bio of a reader more than a chronological account of a life, and if indeed we are what we read, then RR provides a fascinating portrayal of one of the country's most important thinkers. That's quite liberating for any devoted reader who feels guilty for not finishing every book started! His accounts of how ideas evolve through conversation and especially correpsondence provides an important picture of the process of public and private intellectual debate.
In RR's detailed but accessible renderings, such debates become the stuff of brainy thrillers. For all the high-powered intellect on display here, RR never loses sight of the fact that ideas don't mean much without flesh and blood people to embody them. The Prologue's opening description of RWE visiting and opening the coffin of his deceased wife Ellen is more than just a bit of gothic detail to hook the reader; rather, RR uses it to explain a central motif in RWE's work throughout his adult life -- the need for "direct, unmediated experience" as a means of "striv ing for an original relation to the Universe.
Nonetheless, I would recommend reading both. Far from repeating key points and ideas -- since T and E knew each other well -- these works complement each other very well. Intellectual bio's just don't get any better than this. Though I've never been particularly attracted to the work of William James, I plan on reading RR's recent bio of that man, figuring that if it's anywhere near as good as this book, it will be an equally enlightening and enjoyable read. Jan 18, Sher rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , nineteenth-century , religion.
It wasn't planned, but I read this book concurrently with Margaret Fuller: A New American Life , and so I was able to consider closely how the Emerson bio related events in comparison to the more recent Fuller biography. The authors took the primary sources in many of the same ways, but they did not agree across the board--especially in the personal relationship between Emerson and Margaret Fuller and other female Transcendentalis THE cultural and intellectual biography about Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The authors took the primary sources in many of the same ways, but they did not agree across the board--especially in the personal relationship between Emerson and Margaret Fuller and other female Transcendentalists of the period. Plus the Fuller biography is less sympathetic toward Emerson, which was helpful, because Richardson biography does not present Emerson in relationship to feminist interests of the day.
The Richardson biography glosses over Emerson's troubled second marriage and fails to present the darker side of his male nineteenth century persona.
And, the Fuller biography stresses these areas, so I was able to see Emerson somewhere in the middle. My understand is much more complete having read these books concurrently. This biography is comprehensive and detailed: it covers every literary and religious influence, all of Emerson's writings, and each major and minor figure having anything to do with Emerson and the Transcendental movement.
Nov 11, Keith Skinner rated it it was amazing. I read this several years after reading Richardson's biography of Thoreau, A Life of the Mind, and after my first visit to Concord. In fact, I found this book in one of the Concord bookstores and immediately snatched it up, motivated partially by my memory of the Thoreau book and and partially by my visit to Emerson's house earlier that day. The title of this book says it all. When you crack open the cover and turn past the flyleaf, you will embark upon an incredible journey in witnessing the de I read this several years after reading Richardson's biography of Thoreau, A Life of the Mind, and after my first visit to Concord.
When you crack open the cover and turn past the flyleaf, you will embark upon an incredible journey in witnessing the deeds and transformations of a man who must rank as one of the most intriguing thinkers of all time.
Richardson lets the story unfold in two different tracks, showing us the external world that influences Emerson while deftly allowing us to explore Emerson's emerging thoughts through the use of journals, letters and published works.
We see a man who constantly struggles with the reconciliation of his New England Christian principles and the truths that he distills from his constant examination and re-examination of the world around him. This book completely changed my earlier impressions of Emerson.
Rather than a principled but somewhat despotic voice of Transcendentalism, he was a seeker and his written work was simply Waldo the man working through his feelings and perceptions, perhaps without a hope of ever arriving at a conclusion. If he spouted platitudes, he was his own intended audience rather than the world at large. Apr 23, Brian Willis rated it really liked it.
This intellectual biography covers all the major strains of thought distilled into Emerson's own writing and the development of his mind. It does cover major biographical events but those events are secondary to the reading and writing of Emerson himself. Although there are noteworthy events in Emerson's life, they do seem to be mostly segregated from his intellectual life, for which he is rightly renowned.
It's the right approach to take. Often, this biography reads like a laundry list of the re This intellectual biography covers all the major strains of thought distilled into Emerson's own writing and the development of his mind.
Often, this biography reads like a laundry list of the reading Emerson conducted, especially in the first pps. However, the book really comes alive as he begins to engage his thoughts with his Concord neighbors and the European world. Highlights are his meetings with Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, as well as the obvious interactions with Thoreau and other intellectuals.
It does read faster than it looks like, with shorter chapters highlighting key areas of intellectual development as well as major biographical events.
If you want to read about Emerson, other than reading his works themselves, this is the book. Apr 24, Yesterday's Muse Bookstore rated it really liked it Shelves: biography.
This is THE biography of Emerson. Not only does it cover the complete expanse of Emerson's life and work, it accurately and unapologetically follows the development of Emerson's skills as a writer and thinker. Many biographies adopt a perspective of adulation towards their subject, which in some cases can cloud the reality of things. Richardson maintains an objectivity that allows him to paint an accurate portrait.
In addition, Richardson's decision to approach Emerson in this way highlights how effective was Emerson's famous work ethic in honing his talents and progressing towards new ideas.
For the scholar, this book also provides an extensive bibliography of works read by Emerson throughout his life, as well as a chronology of when he read them, which lends important insight, and gives readers an opportunity to walk in Emerson's footsteps. Nov 12, Ashley Adams rated it liked it Shelves: philosophy , biography-and-memoir , transcendentalism , usa. Robert D. Richardson also wrote a biography on Thoreau that got great reviews. Indeed, Richardson knows what he is talking about.
His facts are solid, and his story clear. I finished the reading with a greater appreciation for the relationships Thoreau cultivated with other transcendental figures of his time It was kind of boring. Emerson himself put a strong emphasis on the art of writing biography. Boldly, Emerson said, "All history is biography. Shelves: non-fiction. This is the definitive bio on Emerson and well-deserves all the praise it has earned.
A marvelous and gripping read, not to be missed by any of RWE's admirers. Sep 17, Frank Strada rated it really liked it Shelves: books-reviewed. Wow - what a read! If you want to know more about Emerson or transcendentalism or the intellectual history of the western world in the early to middle 19th century, then this is the book for you. I leave out the later part of the century because Richardson barely mentions American pragmatism, Peirce, James or Dewey.
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