Will, I have been thinking about these matters for days. Wikipedia says:DWill wrote:Still, is he or is he not a bit of a misanthrope, is the question that runs through my mind. . . .P.S. A hint from you that Emerson was a sellout?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_EmersonEventually the two would reconcile some of their differences, although Thoreau privately accused Emerson of having drifted from his original philosophy, and Emerson began to view Thoreau as a misanthrope. Emerson's eulogy to Thoreau is largely credited with the latter's negative reputation during the 19th century.
I don't think this is fair. Thoreau was shy, focused, and stayed on message. What Emerson said by itself would not have tarnished his reputation. Thoreau's narcolepsy, I believe, contributed to his separation from society, and people judge by appearances.
Emerson did, I think, drift from his original philosophy. It's as if there are two Emersons, the younger radical philosopher and the older conservative man of wealth. The younger Emerson of Nature and The American Scholar made Thoreau. Thoreau was so taken by Emerson that he imitated Emerson's style, gestures, tone of voice, and posture. He become so much like Emerson that you couldn't tell them apart in the dark, someone said. Thoreau reproduces ideas from Nature and The American Scholar in Walden.
Emerson developed serious failings.
He did not treat his wife Lydia as an equal but more like another servant. She came to hate Transcendentalism and retreated into chronic invalidism.
He abandoned his family for long periods of travel.
He made big money and indulged himself. Contrary to Wikipedia, Emerson lived rich. He inherited a small fortune from his first wife and would have been financially independent were it not for his extravagance. At one time he employed five servants. Even his brother reproved him.
Also contrary to what Wikipedia would lead one to believe, Emerson was a closet racist, as were many New Englanders of his era. He found blacks so repulsive that he would not eat food prepared or served by them, I have been told. Thoreau, in contrast, sheltered one or more runaway slaves at Walden:
"Some who had more wits than they knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say, --
"O Christian, will you send me back?
One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the north star" (6.16).
I suspect that most of the eventual friction between Emerson and Thoreau was that Thoreau reminded him of the self he used to be.
Tom