Emerson's "Self Reliance"

[agentarenas]

Not the normal topic on NT nowadays, but I was wondering how many of you are familiar with this piece. I read it about 3 years ago and fell in love with it.Its something I still relate to and find myself recalling a great deal.

Link to it for those who arent familiar (its a long read)

http://www.youmeworks.com/selfreliance.html

EDIT: some things in particular that I liked:

"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes somesaint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones;they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied,and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or,heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present,above time."

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, forworse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plotof ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he knowuntil he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and anothernone."

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the societyof your contemporaries, the connection of events."

"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enterinto the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which themembers agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater."

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not whatthe people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. Itis the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy inthe world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps withperfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

"For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know howto estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin incontempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, liketheir sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs."

So much more in there. Literary crack.

 

[agentarenas]

I guess not

 

[oh you mad]

*Clicks on the link*

 

[marath0n]

Checking it out right now. Def a long read tho.

 

[not a sneak]

Read this last year retaking American Lit.

 

[agentarenas]

Originally Posted by marath0n

Checking it out right now. Def a long read tho.

Yeah. Whats nice about it though is the parts that you find interesting/relevant practically jump out at you. His writing style is amazing.

 

[horchata kid]

Nice thread OP. I'm in the middle of reading it myself, mixed in with the actual school required stuff I have.

 

[agentarenas]

One more chance at life for this thread

 

[ryda421]

Ralph

 

[p0tat0 5alad]

Wasn't Emerson a friend of Thoreau? I don't really care for either of them to be honest.

I'll check this out later though, I'm bout to head out.

 

[migit1209]

Read it last year. Had my final based on this. too many topics to talk about.

posting to edit later

 

[agentarenas]

Originally Posted by p0tat0 5alad

Wasn't Emerson a friend of Thoreau? I don't really care for either of them to be honest.

I'll check this out later though, I'm bout to head out.

Yeah they were close friends until Thoreau passed. Emerson was 14 years older and was sort of a mentor to Thoreau I think. Personally, at the timeI read it at least, I wasnt feeling Thoreau. Self Reliance made a big impact on me though.

 

[2g00d4u]

Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman. Those guys were about the only thing interesting that I read in all of high school english. I remember one of my english teacherswas in love with one of those guys. I think it was Thoreau since he wrote "Walden".

 

[superantigen]

Originally Posted by AgentArenas

Originally Posted by p0tat0 5alad

Wasn't Emerson a friend of Thoreau? I don't really care for either of them to be honest.

I'll check this out later though, I'm bout to head out.

Yeah they were close friends until Thoreau passed. Emerson was 14 years older and was sort of a mentor to Thoreau I think. Personally, at the time I read it at least, I wasnt feeling Thoreau. Self Reliance made a big impact on me though.

When you say you weren't feeling "Thoreau", are you referring to the eulogy given by Emerson at Thoreau's funeral, appropriately titledThoreau, or are you rather saying that you weren't feeling Thoreau-- the individual, the man?

That aside though, I definitely agree with you about "Self-Reliance". I had the pleasure of reading it in my American Lit class this past springsemester and it definitely made an impression on me.

Some of my favorite lines:

Well most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of those communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their very truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest ASININE expression.

Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and ever pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. TO BE GREAT, IS TO BE MISUNDERSTOOD.


And in his call for a great American Bard, a call later answered by Whitman in his Song of Myself, via Leaves of Grass, I share some more of my favorite lines:

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we here those primal warbling, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and this miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of nations

Everyman should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or [energies] have sufficient force to arrive at the sense, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.

I could go on and on with the quotes...

...point is, Emerson is def. appreciated.

BUT--it must be said. Thoreau > Emerson. (Real talk, if you read "Thoreau" carefully, you'll become aware of Emerson jealousy ofThoreau--which is masked in his expressed disappointment in Thoreau).

Don't believe me, go ahead and read the Economy chapter of Walden and take note of the premier class knowledge dude was spitting. I'm not even talkingabout all of Walden, rather just the first chapter...

For now, I gotta get to bed, but best believe i'll def be back with some Thoreau--

...

 

[agentarenas]

I was referring to a piece we read by Thoreau, I dont remember it right now though. This was all back in tenth grade though, so Im sure it would be differentto me now. Im definitely going to look into the pieces you mentioned, thanks for bringing it up.

 

[jthagreat]

ima read this later on tonight,... hope its good.

 

[budahbro]

posting to read later, took lit and we briefly skimmed over his body of work. Def been meaning to check him out

 

[deletedelete]

i need to read this but have too much reading/writing on my plate at the moment -_-

 

[djprestige21]

Originally Posted by p0tat0 5alad

Wasn't Emerson a friend of Thoreau? I don't really care for either of them to be honest.

I'll check this out later though, I'm bout to head out.

Yes except Emerson was well liked and social. The works of Thoreau are the works of someone who has been tormented by his own mind throughloneliness, lots of people looked past him.