I Meet Ralph Waldo Emerson
by Glen Draeger
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Hello Self-Reliant Readers of Literature,
As I said some time ago I know my life sounds like an extremely exciting one, but, like everything else, the reality is always different than the perception and even I, at times, get bored.
Because I'm always trying to think of new ways to improve this web site I decided to make a major purchase, one that will not only provide you with the best web site your parent's money can buy, but also make it a little more exciting for me to prepare. So, I bought a time machine.
They're expensive, I realize, but I found an older model in the paper. The warranty is only good for 10,000 years in either direction, but I don't need more than that for this class. Plus, it has a couple of added features that the sales guy threw in for free. For one, I can also visit fictional places in this machine. For instance, when I first got it home I immediately buzzed into The Fellowship of the Ring just to see if the movie was accurate. Well, it was okay, but the reality of Middle-earth was more terrifying than the movie, so I left quickly. Besides, Gandalf wasn't pleased to see me and was obviously relieved when I decided to go.
This machine also has two cup holders.
I have dubbed it, H.G. Wells because, as you probably know, Wells wrote The Time Machine. I call it H.G. for short. H.G. is a hollowed out rock, a big granite rock. It's about 7 feet high and 10 feet across. It's a rock because if you landed this baby in ancient Greece and it looked like a time machine it would attract a lot of attention. Rocks, well, rocks are common in any era. Inside there are two big comfortable recliners. On the computer you set the type of travel, real or imagined, the place and the date if applicable. For fictional travel you don't set the date, just a page number of the edition of the book you are using. The computer has a complete catalog.
Another reason I bought it is because it has become apparent to me that the likelihood of continuing to meet people by chance who either know about the writers we're reading or who actually think they are the writers themselves is not very high. Let's face it, these past encounters have been so incredibly timely that any sane person would question whether or not the events actually happened. I can hardly believe it myself.
The immediate problem for me was time travel. I don't even like to fly. What I needed was someone or something to calm me, to give me a sense of security regardless of where or when I ended up. So, I decided to take Fezzik, my faithful dog. Fezzik is a boxer/rottweiler mix. He's about 80 pounds with a golden brown short-haired coat, extremely strong, handsome as dogs go and friendly to the point of overkill. Upon meeting someone he will sometimes wag his tail so exuberantly that he breaks the tip open and starts bleeding. We call this malady, happy tail.
"Fezzik! Let's go," I said some months ago. He doesn't care where we go he just wants to go. I led him into the backyard where H.G. sits in all its granite glory. Once I opened the door Fezzik ran in like a bloodhound on the trail of escaped convicts. He sniffed everything: both recliners, the computer keyboards, the cup holders., the floor and the walls. I patted the seat of the recliner and said, "Up, Fezzik, up!" He jumped right up into the recliner and sat facing the screen in a dignified manner: head high, ears alert, moving his head from side to side as if he expected me to open a window so he could hang it out in the winds of time. I closed the door which was no easy task. It weighs about a thousand pounds and the hinges are a little rusty—remember this is a used model. I set the date for 1881 and the place for Concord, New England. I pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
I pushed it again. Nothing. Fezzik looked at me with an inquisitive expression as if to say, "Are we gonna go? Are we gonna go? Please, please, let's go. I wanna go. Let's go."
I checked everything. Reset the date and place and pushed the button again. Nothing. Well, I should have known a good deal like that (Did I tell you it was only $699?) was a little too good to be true. "All right, let's go boy," I said to Fezzik. I opened the door. We were no longer in California and no longer in 2002. Time travel is a smooth, smooth ride.
We asked around and I finally found the place we were looking for: the house of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I wanted to talk to him at the end of his life and this would mean he'd be about 78. He was born in 1803 and died in 1882.
Emerson was one of America's greatest writers. He was a poet, essayist and minister. He lectured widely both in America and abroad. He influenced the likes of Nietzsche (a German philosopher), Miguel de Unamuno (a Spanish writer and philosopher), Henri Bergson (a philosopher) and many others. That's why we're reading him. "Self-Reliance" is one of his most famous essays.
We found him sitting on his porch rocking slowly. Fezzik bolted, ran up the steps, sniffed Emerson and whacked his legs with his tail. "Fezzik," I yelled running after him, but by the time I got to the porch he had calmed down somewhat. Emerson was stroking his chin and laughing.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"No need," he replied.
"I wonder if I might talk to you for a few minutes?"
"Certainly," he said. "Many people come here to talk to me."
"Sir, you seem to be a man of great optimism and yet you have faced much tragedy in your life. Your first wife died after less than two years of marriage and your two brothers died soon after in 1834 and 1835 . . ."
He interrupted me. "Those events, particularly my wife's death, drove me to question my beliefs and my profession. At the time I was a successful Unitarian minister and many of my essays have their origins in the sermons I preached. It was, however, time for a change. I couldn't accept everything I once believed. I took a trip to Europe to meet Wordsworth, Coleridge and Carlyle and began to develop a spiritual philosophy of the relationship between man and nature."
"You wrote an essay entitled, 'Nature.'"
"Yes, in 1836. One of my other earlier essays is 'Self-Reliance' published in 1841. They are, admittedly, different in tone from some of my later essays. My son, Waldo, died in 1842 after those essays were written."
"So you don't believe those things anymore?" I inquired.
"No, no, it's not like that, but as I have gotten older—I have mellowed a bit. In my essay, 'Fate,' I wrote, 'Once we thought positive power was all. Now we learn that negative power, or circumstance, is half.' I see that humankind has more limitations than I once thought it had. Nature, God if you will permit me, teaches us and we must grow. It is a great mark of maturity to be able to admit your past mistaken ideas."
"You were an exponent of New England Transcendentalism. What is that?"
He chuckled a little. "You wish to have a short explanation? Don't answer. I can see that is what you want." He scratched Fezzik's head as he spoke. "It is a literary and philosophical movement asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends what we learn by observation and is knowable through intuition."
"I see," I said not very convincingly because I didn't see, but he saw this.
"The scientists think that you find out everything by looking at it, by observation and they, most that is, believe that that is the only way to gain knowledge. But I believe that there is a kind of knowledge that can only be gained through intuition. In other words you cannot learn everything through observation. Some knowledge, and in my view the most important knowledge, is beyond observation."
"I see."
"That's the point," he said. "You don't see it. You have to look with your other eyes—your intuitive ones."
"I don't see," I said.
"Precisely!"
With that I figured it was about time for Fezzik and me to go. "Thank you," I said. "Come on, Fez." He sat there as Emerson stroked his head. "Fez, come on!" He looked as if he had no intention of budging. "Fezzik! Let's go!" I finally had to clip his leash on and pull him away. It was about a 15 minute walk to H.G. It's good to be back.
Emerson read widely and was influenced by Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. It was a privilege meeting him, though I had the odd feeling that he enjoyed Fezzik's company just as much, if not more, than mine.
Regards,
Mr. Draeger
©2005-2012 Glen Draeger (all rights reserved)
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