The American Transcendentalists documentary

Summary

The documentary delves deeply into the lives and ideas of the American Transcendentalists, focusing on key figures such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Through interviews with scholars and writers, viewers explore the movement's emphasis on individual intuition and the search for truth beyond the senses. The transcendentalists sought to redefine American culture, advocating for simplicity, individualism, and social reform. Their ideals continue to resonate today, inspiring individuals to challenge societal norms and seek a deeper, personal understanding of life.

Highlights

• Emerson claimed that self-reliance was the key to personal success and fulfillment. 🌟
• Thoreau's "Walden" is a manifesto for living simply and deliberately. 🌲
• Margaret Fuller used her platform to champion women's rights and intellectual equality. 📚
• Transcendentalists believed in looking beyond materialism to find spiritual and intellectual fulfillment. 🌌
• Their ideas laid the groundwork for social reform movements, echoing in modern society's quest for justice and equality. ⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Transcendentalism is about trusting oneself and looking beyond the surface to understand deeper truths. 🔍
• Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of self-reliance encourages individualism and trusting one's intuition. 💪
• Henry David Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond highlights the value of simplicity and nature. 🌿
• Margaret Fuller was a pioneer for women's rights, advocating for female intellectual development. 👩‍🎓
• The movement encouraged social reform, influencing issues like anti-slavery, women's rights, and more. ✊

Overview

In the bustling center of Concord, Massachusetts, the transcendentalists found their haven, emphasizing the beauty of individual intuition and the pursuit of truth beyond superficial realities. Their legacy is a call to action for introspection and reformation within each person.

Ralph Waldo Emerson stood at the forefront with his idea of self-reliance, imploring everyone to trust in their intuition and innate ability to shape their lives. Thoreau, living by Walden Pond, epitomized the transcendental value of simplicity, showing that minimalism leads to a more profound understanding of one's place in the world.

Margaret Fuller emerged as a strong voice for women's rights, proving that intellectual power was not limited by gender. Through essays and dialogues, she persuaded society to reconsider women's roles in personal and public spheres. The transcendentalists as a group fostered social reform movements, compelling society to realign with the equitable ideals they championed.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Historical Context The chapter titled 'Introduction and Historical Context' presumably sets the stage for the book's content, diving into the background necessary to understand the subject matter. It might explore origins, key historical milestones, and foundational elements that are important for the reader to comprehend as they proceed. Unfortunately, the transcript provided is incomplete, and only mentions '[Music] [Music] huh', which does not offer substantive content to summarize further.
• 03:00 - 11:00: Key Figures of Transcendentalism The chapter takes place in Concord, Massachusetts, historically known as a literary mecca in the 19th century, especially for American transcendentalists. It sets the geographical and cultural context of transcendentalism by emphasizing Concord's significance in American literary history.
• 11:00 - 18:00: Ideals and Appeal of Transcendentalism The chapter explores the ideals of transcendentalism, emphasizing the belief in individualism as a key to understanding the universe. It sets the stage for discussions with writers and scholars on the relevance of transcendentalism today and examines the lives of prominent figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau, highlighting the movement's strong influence in New England.
• 18:00 - 29:00: Influence and Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson The chapter explores the ongoing appeal and influence of transcendentalism, particularly as represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It highlights how Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond symbolizes a style of individualism that resonates not just with Americans but also with people globally.
• 29:00 - 41:00: Henry David Thoreau's Experiment at Walden Pond The chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond, focusing on the concept of simplification in life. It underscores the idea of shedding unnecessary baggage to begin anew. Additionally, it mentions Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy, emphasizing individualism and the infinite potential of the private man. Emerson's connection to Thoreau's experiment highlights the transcendentalist belief in personal growth and self-reliance.
• 41:00 - 48:00: Margaret Fuller and the Role of Women in Transcendentalism The chapter discusses the role of women within the transcendentalist movement, focusing particularly on Margaret Fuller.
• 48:00 - 53:00: Impact of Transcendentalism on Society In this chapter, the discussion focuses on the influence of mid-19th century Transcendentalist writers on society. The curriculum includes these writers, aiming to instill a sense of literary and political heritage in young people. A crucial focus is on understanding Margaret Fuller among other Transcendentalists, who emphasized the concept of 'newness'—a term frequently used by them to express their belief in being part of a transformative cultural era.
• 53:00 - 56:00: Conclusion and Lasting Legacy This chapter explores the mindset and ambitions of second-generation Americans born in the early 19th century. These individuals, often of Puritan descent, felt a strong sense of responsibility and mission to build a new nation on the American continent. This task imbued them with hope and a defined purpose, embodying a concept they referred to as 'the newness.'

The American Transcendentalists documentary Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] [Music] huh
• 00:30 - 01:00 [Music] i'm standing right here in the center of concord massachusetts bustling town of activity even today it's located 23 miles northwest of boston and in the 19th century concord was the literary mecca for american writers the transcendental men and women were
• 01:00 - 01:30 idealists who believe that the individual held the key to understanding the universe in our program we'll be asking leading writers and scholars to comment on what transcendentalism meant and how it relates to our time we will explore the lives of its principal exponents ralph waldo emerson margaret fuller and henry david thoreau all of this to better understand the appeal of this powerful intellectual movement and its deep roots here in new england
• 01:30 - 02:00 [Music] what is the appeal of the transcendentalist still today for thorough the appeal is a place walden pond and the memory of his two-year experiment living there that's a style of individualism that not only americans but people worldwide can relate to
• 02:00 - 02:30 simplify simplify simplify check all the baggage and go out and start again for emerson the appeal is more abstract i think but still connected with the idea of individualism [Music] emerson once said i have only one doctrine the infinitude of the private man i think that's crucial emerson stood
• 02:30 - 03:00 for the idea of the possibility of making it on your own resources if you believe in yourself then you can get your life together keep your life together meet the necessary challenges [Music] emerson formulated an entire theory based upon the fact that we had to depend upon our intuitions the forerunner of all the transcendentalists
• 03:00 - 03:30 all the great uh canonical writers of the mid-19th century uh into the curriculum so young people have a sense of their literary heritage and a great deal about their political heritage one of the points that's absolutely essential to understand margaret fuller as well as the other transcendentalists is the concept of the newness which was a phrase they use all the time they believed that they were participating in a kind of
• 03:30 - 04:00 mental state an ambition a feeling that they called the newness they were all second generation americans all born somewhere time early in the 19th century and they felt that it was their job because they had been brought up as responsible for people of puritan stock it was their job to create this new nation on this new continent they were filled with a sense of hope and a sense of mission in walden
• 04:00 - 04:30 faro addresses his audience by saying that his book is for those who are dissatisfied with their lives in some way one thing we've seen in american culture today and we see in american culture in every decade is a group of people who are dissatisfied with the way their world is the transcendentalists speak to those people by asking us to reevaluate our lives by asking us to answer the question are we happy with american culture as we find it today
• 04:30 - 05:00 since american culture change all these questions are relevant in each decade to each generation and for this reason i think the transcendentalists continue to be relevant at all times the ideal society that thoreau and other american romantics hoped for was an american society of thinkers a society of creators not of money makers you know in a period of of conspicuous consumption i mean when i
• 05:00 - 05:30 was growing up they talked about conspicuous consumption now uh we've we've tripled we've increased it tenfold and even young people have their credit cards their vast array of technological devices all of that seems to multiply complexity in their lives and there needs to be someone something that balances philosophically
• 05:30 - 06:00 with all of that stuff transcendentalism is an intellectual and cultural movement in 19th century america that began in new england in the 1830s what joined all of these people together who were furthering the aims of transcendentalism was a sense that reality does not reside
• 06:00 - 06:30 in the surface of things what our eyes see and our ears here each passing day at a dinner party at brook farm a young lady by the name of elmira barwa in responding to the question what is transcendentalism was said to respond a little beyond that to me is sort of the essence of transcendentalism it asks the question what is there beyond the individual what is there that is more important than
• 06:30 - 07:00 ourselves what is there that is universal the typical transcendentalist genres would be those types of vehicles that emphasized the moment of inspiration uh for example the conversations held by margaret fuller and bronson alcott were occasions to let the spirit flow through the speaker and there was a relative lack of preparation and structure to those occasions uh the transcendentalists also highly valued lectures they tended to downplay fiction as an important genre
• 07:00 - 07:30 for them but most of their essays were based on certainly a very strong sense of literary craft one of the big mysteries is how a movement that small could have produced such diversity in the way of individualists at the one end and communitarians at the other on the one hand we've got henry thoreau moving out to walden in a cabin all by himself
• 07:30 - 08:00 on the other hand brook farm for all the transcendentalists the heart of the matter the source of authority was the voice of the spirit within [Music] as thinkers mankind have ever divided into two sects materialists and idealists the first class founding on experience the second on consciousness the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses
• 08:00 - 08:30 the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say the senses give us representations of things but what are the things themselves they cannot tell the materialists insist on facts on history on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man the idealist on the power of thought and of will on inspiration on miracle
• 08:30 - 09:00 on individual culture these two modes of thinking are both natural but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature he concedes all that the other affirms admits the impressions of sense admits their coherency their use and beauty and then ask the materialists for his grounds of assurance that things are as his senses represent them
• 09:00 - 09:30 transcendentalists moved in two directions one in their influence outward the other inward the outward movement of transcendentalism was in the direction of reforming society helping people to live together better and more productively and more meaningfully they formed societies of their own one notably at brook farm west roxbury
• 09:30 - 10:00 massachusetts founded in 1841 by a transcendentalist george ripley days were constructed in a way that allowed for physical labor out in the fields and allowed for intellectual and moral stimulation as well the other direction which transcendentalism moved was inward by trusting yourself by listening to your own conscience by listening to your own heart and not being burdened down encumbered by
• 10:00 - 10:30 antique texts and traditions dead hand and the staleness of conventional attitudes trust thyself trust thyself they said again and again the leading exemplars of that inward looking equally optimistic as the outward looking equally anti-materialistic were ralph waldo emerson henry david thoreau and margaret fuller transcendentalism is still with us in many ways every time you look at one of the
• 10:30 - 11:00 national parks or think about the possibility of saving some open land or green space that is the transcendentalist legacy as henry thor writes in walden the walden waters mingle with those of the pure ganges he's not writing about a pond in eastern massachusetts he is writing about the natural world this attempt to achieve universalism is what to me transcendentalism is all about
• 11:00 - 11:30 i'm at the lovely home of ralph waldo emerson here in concord massachusetts ralph waldo emerson lived in this house for the majority of his adult life here is where he greeted european and american writers and poets anyone who wished to be empowered by his personal presence and thoughtful encouragement concord massachusetts is probably the most famous village in america in the 1830s and 40s
• 11:30 - 12:00 concord was where some of the most famous writers and intellects of america gathered and the question comes up why did so many of them settle in this little village because of one man ralph waldo emerson probably the most influential thinker of the 1830s and 40s having written a small 90 page book called nature
• 12:00 - 12:30 and given a couple of historic revolutionary addresses at harvard and people came to concord because emerson encouraged them if they were the people he wanted to have as neighbors and because they admired emerson very much emerson had a very strong sense of history not just because he loved to read history but because he had a sense of his family's role in founding concord his ancestor peter buckley was one of the founders of the
• 12:30 - 13:00 town in 1635. emerson came to his ancestral home the old mance as a child during the war of 1812 from boston when invasion was feared by the british and in 1835 when he bought this house the coolidge mansion he really was returning to his ancestral grounds and this remained his home for his entire life after that emerson set about to attract uh as neighbors people whom he respected and hawthorne moved to concord because
• 13:00 - 13:30 emerson's generosity in making the old match available to him he lured bronson alcott from boston and alcott's uh daughter louisa may alcott who wrote little women and what life was like growing up there in the 1840s margaret fuller was a frequent visitor to concord because she was a close friend of emerson and would spend weeks at a time with mr and mrs emerson
• 13:30 - 14:00 the only one of the great names associated with concord he was born there and that was henry david thoreau henry thoreau was born in concord the only one of the conquered writers to be born there in 1817 in 1845 he went out to walden pond and began his famous stay out there he stayed at the pond in a little hut that he built for two years two months and two days
• 14:00 - 14:30 thorough determined to build a hut on that plot of ground that emerson had made available to him and live in the hut as long as it took to find out essentially what life was all about what do we really need and what can we do without in may of 1862 thorough died the first of the great concordian writers to be buried in sleepy hollow cemetery sleepy hollow was a bowl-shaped geologic
• 14:30 - 15:00 formation that these lovers of nature these transcendentalists retreated to margaret fuller liked to walk in sleepy hollow and hawthorne liked to go there and meditate and commune with nature emerson took many walks in there thorough did emerson died in 1882 most influential thinker perhaps of the middle of the 19th century and he was buried
• 15:00 - 15:30 there of course the families of all these people were buried there as well in the late 1880s when bronson alcott died and his daughter died within two or three days by chance without knowing of her father's death both were buried in sleepy hollow cemetery
• 15:30 - 16:00 transcendentalism really started when its major figure ralph waldo emerson broke with the life plan that he left college with to become a minister in boston in a respectable unitarian church and became a freelance lecturer and writer at the point when emerson became emerson it was 1832 it was his last sermon that
• 16:00 - 16:30 he delivered before his congregation it caused a crisis of sorts over the question of whether to administer communion the lord's supper as it was called he felt that this was a ritual in which he could no longer believe and he gave his congregation the choice of whether to keep him or to keep the ceremony and they chose to keep the ceremony
• 16:30 - 17:00 for me to live a life that's meaningful i need to consult what's most deeply meaningful to me i think that was the beginning of the notion of self-reliance he didn't yet use those those words self-reliance but that was his master concept and that was the start of it emerson anticipated postmodern theory which so stresses the way in which society constructs
• 17:00 - 17:30 our identities constructs our gender constructs everything and what emerson was warning against was that very socially constructed uh set of ideas asking each of us to look into ourselves to find the answers as i am so i see a wonderful quotation for young people
• 17:30 - 18:00 to deal with because it suggests that their identities determine the reality that they look at in the world outside themselves it is so connected to modern ideas of quantum mechanics things don't happen until the perception is made which leads to that i think fascinating idea that each of us creates our own
• 18:00 - 18:30 realities creates our own worlds uh creates the old world in which we live [Music] emerson was born in 1803 in boston and he died in 1882 in concord but the long life and his life really is most of the 19th century in america he witnessed it and he made a good deal of it in 1831 he was a minister in a boston
• 18:30 - 19:00 church recently married to a very beautiful young woman a poet and she died tragically of tuberculosis and it completely destroyed his world he quit the ministry he quit preaching he really left christianity behind he sold his furniture he sold his house he moved his mother he got on the first ship he could find he went to europe and he stayed there for almost a year and when he came back his life was completely changed he was a new kind of person and what
• 19:00 - 19:30 his whole life is about what it really means is how you remake yourself after some kind of disaster i'm sitting here in emerson's study in his house in concord massachusetts and i'm looking at a copy of a volume from his library of the langhorne edition of the life of plutarch emerson's reading was voracious he read about everything from history to literature to philosophy and religion and science as a minister he often
• 19:30 - 20:00 quoted from plutox lives and from plutox morals to give examples of virtuous behavior as he as he matured he became especially interested in how each of us individually has heroic elements of our own personalities and to that end in representative men he was concerned with how we are poets we are philosophers we are mystics in our own way one of the most central ideas of emerson's and one of the most often misunderstood is that of self-reliance self-reliance
• 20:00 - 20:30 is often used as an excuse for jingoism for salesmanship for the uglier sides of self-assertion that make people wonder what emerson could possibly have meant by the concept he begins using the term even in early sermons where he says that god that god reliance is really what self-reliance is all about its reliance not on our lower greedier selves but on our best instincts on our higher selves a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
• 20:30 - 21:00 adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines with consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do he may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict everything you said today in nature published in 1836 emerson
• 21:00 - 21:30 probably expresses his classic moment of oneness with the universe his sense of mystical inspiration what he calls a perfect exhilaration standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the bligh there and uplifted into infinite space all mean egotism vanishes i become a transparent eyeball i am nothing i see all the currents of the universal being circulate through me
• 21:30 - 22:00 i am part or particle of god six years later however a very different note appears in emerson in the essay experience inspired in large part by the death of his son waldo at the age of five from scarlet fever emerson finds nature illusory difficult to fathom throwing up roadblocks to oneness with the with the observer with the experiencer an innavigable sea washes with silent waves
• 22:00 - 22:30 between us and the things we aim at and converse with grief too will make us idealists in the death of my son now more than two years ago i seem to have lost a beautiful estate no more i cannot get it nearer to me if tomorrow i should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience
• 22:30 - 23:00 to me perhaps for many years but it would leave me as it found me neither better nor worse emerson struggles throughout this essay to make sense of the death of his son there are no easy answers he says very honestly in the death of my son now more than two years ago i seem to have lost a beautiful estate no more i cannot get it nearer to me many people see this passage as reflecting a coldness on emerson's part
• 23:00 - 23:30 a failure to engage on a human level but there's a terrible honesty about this passage too a reluctance to take easy answers to find easy solutions easy meanings grief two will make us idealist he says in this passage but if there is an optimism in this essay it's a very hard one optimism this man has become the great writer about hope about rebuilding oneself about the regenerative possibilities of the soul in the heart emerson's life means how to rebuild oneself
• 23:30 - 24:00 how to come back from trouble from disaster from loss he liked to say and he wrote once i am defeated all the time yet to victory i am born perhaps this is the most celebrated pond in america walden pond about one mile west
• 24:00 - 24:30 from the center of concord massachusetts it was here that thorough worked wrote and lived for two years of his life [Music] and there are two significant works walden pond and a provocative essay on the duty of civil disobedience one of the debates in concord has always been the pronunciation of henry thoreau's name how it's pronounced in a sense is up to you because there is no single one answer
• 24:30 - 25:00 this is almost a paradigm for tharo's writings there is no one answer just as there is no one pronunciation [Music] henry david thoreau lived here at walden pond from 1845 to 1847. thorough focused on scientific observation and extensive reading an approach culminating in his most famous book walden published in 1854. what is it about walden that attracts
• 25:00 - 25:30 and inspires so many people from around the world henry thoreau was born in concord the only one of the conquered writers to be born there in 1817 he died also in concord in the middle of the civil war in 1862 in 1845 he began his famous experiment at walden pond when he went out and he moved in and he stayed for two years two months and two days which he later shaped into a beautiful
• 25:30 - 26:00 book walden published in 1854 which takes that two-year period condenses it into a single year and follows the cycle of the seasons i lived alone in the woods a mile from any neighbor in a house which i built myself on the shore of walden pond in concord massachusetts and earned my living by the labor of my
• 26:00 - 26:30 hands only i lived here two years and two months at present i am a sojourner in civilized life again if i should attempt to tell how i have desired to spend my life in years past it would probably surprise those who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history i will only hint at some of the
• 26:30 - 27:00 enterprises which i have cherished i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if i could not learn what it had to teach and not when i came to die discover that i had not lived i wanted to live deep
• 27:00 - 27:30 and suck out all the marrow of life to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms and if it proved to be mean why then to get to the whole and genuine meanness of it and publish its meanness to the world or if it were sublime to know it by experience and be able to give a true account of it what makes thara valuable as a nature
• 27:30 - 28:00 writer is the way he contrasts the natural world to the so-called civilized world the way he sets up an opposition between nature and society those people who only see him as someone who observes nature are missing the wonderful sense of tension that's there between the natural world and the questions he raises about coming out of that natural world and returning to society as he himself did after he returned from walden walden is the great book about
• 28:00 - 28:30 how to live a simple life with nature it very much focuses on how the individual lives how should i lead my life civil disobedience is about how we behave in public what we do when we think the government is wrong how we behave politically but these were the same issue in many ways for thorough because what he believed and taught was that the all political
• 28:30 - 29:00 and social action depends upon individual beliefs you don't just get in a mob and storm down the street hollering that is not the way real change comes about emerson was a very generous minded mentor and the thorough was a very cantankerous disciple in time thoreau reacted against emerson and they developed very different bodies of
• 29:00 - 29:30 writing for one thing emerson wrote in a very abstract style of moral essays thoreau wrote in a much more hands-on fashion about the natural history of his local region for another thing politics divided them emerson was a leading citizen of the town of concord and proud of being a part of its civic
• 29:30 - 30:00 order thoreau was a kind of willful dropout and his political theory showed that he became the leading spokesperson of his day for civil disobedience and for resistance to the state they fell out at times they argued at times at one time when thoreau was finishing a week on the concord merrimack rivers he showed the manuscript to emerson emerson failed to criticize it when it
• 30:00 - 30:30 was published emerson said something about the book and thorough exploded in anger even calling emerson my enemy [Music] much has been made of the antagonism between them but i'm not sure that it was ever really more than the kind of antagonism you find in a family because thorough really was almost a member of the emerson family he was called upon for family engagements when emerson's mother died thorough was deputed to look after buckley the feeble-minded brother at the funeral
• 30:30 - 31:00 he was really a member of the household and i think he was a little sweet on emerson's wife as well what went on between them on balance was more a kind of mutual approval although it's sometimes more interesting to follow the lines of anger and discontent but they always made it up thorough made it up he once said that the stalk of the lotus may be broken but its fibers remain intact and so it was with their friendship [Music] i heartily accept the motto that
• 31:00 - 31:30 government is best which governs least i believe that government is best which governs not at all and when men are prepared for it that will be the kind of government which they will have but to speak practically i ask for not at once no government but at once a better government if a thousand men would not to pay their tax bills this year
• 31:30 - 32:00 that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood this is in fact the definition of a peaceable revolution if any such is possible if the tax gatherer or any other public officer asks me as one has done but what shall i do my answer is if you really wish to do anything resign
• 32:00 - 32:30 your office when the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned then the revolution is accomplished it was the great genius of thorough to see that wildness is the raw material out of which civilization out of which everything is made in the great last chapter of walden he says we need the tonic of wildness we need to know that someplace there is life going on that we can't reach we need to be refreshed
• 32:30 - 33:00 by these titanic floods he had a wonderful sense of what it was that the wild gave us and rather than see it as the opposite as the opponent of civilization he saw it as the necessary building stuff out of which it came the scenery of walden is on a humble scale yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity it is a clear and deep green well half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference and contains about 61 and a half acres
• 33:00 - 33:30 a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods i surveyed it carefully in 46 with compass and chain and sounding line the greatest depth was exactly 102 feet this is remarkable for so small an area a lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature it is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his
• 33:30 - 34:00 own nature it is the mirror which no stone can crack in which all impurity presented to it sinks [Music] when tharo died emerson wrote a funeral eulogy and later published it in the atlantic monthly as an essay on thorough and i think nothing better has ever really been written on thorough emerson describes thorough's genius for nature
• 34:00 - 34:30 and how he could stand still and the snakes would wreath around his legs and the fish would swim into his hand he was content to lead a huckleberry party when he should have been engineering for all america this is sometimes held against emerson as a sort of slap at thorough i think you only have to look at when the essay was written 1862 and what's going on the civil war when everybody who can is down fighting for emerson to have wondered if at that moment thoreau had been leading
• 34:30 - 35:00 more of a private life than the people who were giving their lives in public but most of that wonderful piece that emerson wrote about his young friend is in fact a very moving apology in the old sense of explanation for why he led his life and why he did what he did and he ends up by saying that he was of all the sons of the country engaged upon so great a project that we do not even yet understand what it was
• 35:00 - 35:30 when i was teaching at berkeley thoreau was in everybody's back pocket everybody had a copy of the writings of thoreau and to a certain extent he was a political figure in the 60s civil disobedience was a bible of a lot of those
• 35:30 - 36:00 activists and only secondarily [Music] were they interested in the natural world that was depicted in walden i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if i could not learn what it had to teach students can understand um
• 36:00 - 36:30 the value of cleansing oneself of um of simplifying one's life simplicity simplicity simplicity i say let your fears be as two or three and keep your accounts on your thumbnail [Music] let us settle ourselves
• 36:30 - 37:00 and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion and prejudice and tradition and delusion many passages in thoreau where you can see the change taking place from a literal thing to a figurative and then symbolic venture almost always going from the mundane or the earthly to some kind of spiritual
• 37:00 - 37:30 level no wonder that the earth expresses itself in leaves it so labors with the idea inwardly the atoms have already learned this law and are pregnant by it the feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves thus also you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly
• 37:30 - 38:00 what is man but a mass of thawing clay the ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed the fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of nature
• 38:00 - 38:30 and the notion of purity the ice is exquisitely pure and and and walden uh at various times is referred to as bottomless it's a it's a bottomless uh pond in by which we measure our own natures it is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature
• 38:30 - 39:00 it is a mirror which no stone can crack in which all impurity presented to it sinks it is remarkable that we can look down thus on its surface we shall perhaps look down thus on the surface of air at length i've spent many an hour when i was younger floating over its surface as the zephyr willed having paddled my boat to the middle and lying on my back across the seats
• 39:00 - 39:30 in a summer for noon dreaming awake teaching you dot your eyes with pumpkins i always try to dot my eyes with pumpkins in other words make it big and bold in order to compete for with all that other stuff that is going on in their world music and video and
• 39:30 - 40:00 the things that are outside of school how many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book no wonder that alexander carried the iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket a written word is the choicest of relics it is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art
• 40:00 - 40:30 the symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech books are the treasured wealth of the world time is but the stream i go of fishing in i drink at it but while i drink i see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is its thin current slides away but eternity remains i would drink deeper fish in the sky
• 40:30 - 41:00 whose bottom is pebbly with stars i cannot count one i know not the first letter of the alphabet i have always been regretting that i was not as wise as the day i was born it discerns and riffs its way into the secret of things i do not wish to be any more busy with my hands that is necessary my head is hands and feet i feel all my best faculties
• 41:00 - 41:30 concentrated in it my instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing as some creatures use their snout and forepaws and with it i would mine and burrow my way through these hills i think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts and so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors i judge and here i will begin to mine
• 41:30 - 42:00 [Music] margaret fuller was born in cambridge massachusetts in may in 1810 she was educated at home the eldest of eight children when she was 10 years old she went for a year and a half to a very good school in boston called the dr park
• 42:00 - 42:30 school later she was sent to a boarding school for fashionable training in groton massachusetts for another year and a half but from then on she was mostly self-educated she's most famous for her book length argument supporting women's rights her career included work as an editor for the dial and is a journalist for the new york tribune now why was this controversial woman so respected in her time
• 42:30 - 43:00 and why is she still studying today the dial began publication in 1840 and its editor was the margaret fuller a brilliant intellect of uh the transcendental movement was a close friend of ralph waldo emerson's often visited the concord uh for weeks at a time staying in the emerson household a close friend of emerson's wife as well lydian and in her editorship of the
• 43:00 - 43:30 uh dial she was able to uh attract such contributors as alca himself with his so-called orphic sayings that are published in the dial and henry david thoreau another close friend of emerson's and emerson as well wrote for the dial no concession made to to popular taste and yet people read the dial ravenously the magazine influential in
• 43:30 - 44:00 its time survived for four years margaret fuller gave up the editorship after a couple of years to take a job in new york city and emerson took over then for a magazine that was actually in print for only four years it had an enormous influence i discovered margaret fuller in italy
• 44:00 - 44:30 about 15 years ago and began to read about her and found that she was an extremely interesting woman a feminist an author a writer a teacher she started the debate in america in the 1840s about what women's destiny should be in an american democracy for instance in the 19th century at the time that she was a young woman women's sphere was a phrase that was
• 44:30 - 45:00 being constantly used by both sexes she implored women to take time out to study their own inner directions before they took cultural ordering from the outside she begged women to look deeply into their inner feelings and their inner needs before they establish their way in life the growth of man is twofold masculine and feminine as far as these two methods
• 45:00 - 45:30 can be distinguished they are so as energy and harmony power and beauty intellect and love or by some such rude classification for we have not language primitive and pure enough to express such ideas with precision [Music] in 1843 when she was editor of the dial the very first literary magazine in america that was dedicated entirely to american writings
• 45:30 - 46:00 she wrote an essay called the great lawsuit in which she first approached the concept of women's rights and it was the first draft of what later became her book woman in the 19th century in which she established many of the issues that have been discussed ever since so that her book woman in the 19th century is considered a landmark manuscript in american history whether much or
• 46:00 - 46:30 little has been done or will be done whether women will add to the talent of narration the power of systematizing whether they will carve marble as well as draw and paint is not important but that it should be acknowledged that they have intellect which needs developing that they should not be considered complete if beings of affection and habit alone is important in the early 1840s margaret fuller gave
• 46:30 - 47:00 a series of conversations in boston their purpose was to enlighten young women and enable them to show their intellectual abilities most of these conversations were restricted to women though on occasion men were allowed to attend on one occasion though emerson attended and participated so fully in the conversation that one of the participants wrote in her journal that he had forgotten that we came here to hear margaret and not to hear mr emerson they discuss questions of life of women's rights
• 47:00 - 47:30 of fine arts of myths using some of these concepts in order to plumb deep into the meanings of life she was trying to teach women to think for themselves and to think about their lives deeply we believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages and that no discordant collision but a ravishing harmony of the spheres
• 47:30 - 48:00 would ensue yet then and only then will mankind be ripe for this when inward and outward freedom for woman as much as for man shall be acknowledged as a right not yielded as a concession before leaving concord i should point out that there's still a strong magnetic pull for visitors to
• 48:00 - 48:30 this quaint town with hundreds of thousands coming to the walden pond or north bridge or emerson's home there is a strong sense of the literary legacy living on what then is the reason for their immense popularity that began in the 1840s and still continues into the 21st century most of the transcendentalists were avid keepers of journals emerson particularly has journals which
• 48:30 - 49:00 in published form are approaching 20 volumes journals and notebooks and he himself called them his savings bank he went back to them repeatedly to find sources drafts anecdotes for lectures which often he crafted into essays and then collected into books there's a wonderful line in one of his essays where he says that inspiration comes once we have laid laid siege to the shrine he also recommended to henry thorough as a young college student that he keep a journal and this habit was very important to his development as
• 49:00 - 49:30 a writer these people were once very young men and young women who wrote to other young men and young women about ways in which they could change the world the contemporary response to transcendentalism was to a great part based upon the fact that people who were young the people who were the future of the country were reading works of literature were hearing lectures that told them how they could be different themselves how they could break from what they
• 49:30 - 50:00 consider to be the change of the past and therefore make their own future they're notorious even for concentrating on the individual life but it's also a fact that every single one of the transcendentalists turned to some kind of social interest in action emerson became interested in interested in the anti-slavery movement also in the women's rights movement he also was active in the anti-cherokee removal
• 50:00 - 50:30 business he wrote a protest to president van buren saying you can't move these people this was before the trail of tears thoreau was interested in anti-slavery margaret fuller was interested in the roman republic and also in feminism elizabeth peabody was interested in the kindergarten movement in american indian rights theodore parker was interested in anti-slavery george ripley founded brook farm and it goes on and on and on it was not a single one of the transcendentalists that didn't follow its logic
• 50:30 - 51:00 out because what they believed was that what's true for me must be true for others so if i require freedom i can't deny it to anybody else and if i really want it and work for it for myself i must work for it for others as well so this very high-minded and very self-centered philosophy ended up with a legacy of social involvement that every single one of them had and then we still have now henry david thoreau who once said with a
• 51:00 - 51:30 single thought you could float the british empire like a chip on the ocean and in a sense that's what thoreau himself did because with his thought of civil disobedience non-resistance that thought literally floated um the british empire out of india when gandhi used thoreau's kind of civil disobedience to protest against british imperialism there emerson began in the 1830s by saying
• 51:30 - 52:00 american writers must develop an original relation to the universe even if there's a lesser american writer we have to prize our own geniuses our native writers [Music]
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