Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays--First and Second Series
Reading notes--Adam Kissel
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pp. 110-123 (in Riverside = R, 167-188)
[Riverside reports that, like several essays or parts of essays in First Series, this was presented earlier as a lecture in a series; this one stood almost unchanged, suggesting less continuity with the other essays in the matter of details, but overall thematic consistency]
- natural assumption of benevolence is in the first
sentiment of kindness, 110
- love not just of the young; it becomes universal, 110-11, 121
- love needs an account not from history but hope; not from intellect but
experience, 111-12
experience/love is about particulars; all
understand it somehow already, 112
- on respect, 112
- love is an enduring memory, 113-14
- makes all things new, 114-15; expresses heightened sensibility and energy,
115-16
- influence of love comes from Beauty; it seems self-reliant, 116
it is destroyed by analysis; it is transcendent;
requires imagination, like the renderings of true art, 117;
it is ongoing, 118
- we love a beautiful thing for its expression of the transcendent beauty, or
ought to, 118;
- eros transfer: one moves from love of body to love of soul, then to
all true and pure souls, 119
then to divine beauty: to love and knowledge of
the Divinity
all this vs. low sensualism; love (after
experience!) becomes always more impersonal as it moves higher and deeper, 120
romantic love resolves into understanding of
humanity, 122
purification of intellect and heart is the basis
of true marriage, 123
it is a training in order
to blend into the infinitude of God
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pp. 124-42 (R, 189-217)
We are connected to all through love, 124-25
One stands for all, until we are betrayed by his flawed
particularity, 125;
yet we can see God in our friends, and weave a new world with
those of mutual understanding, 126--many into one, anywhere, 127
We aspire through overestimating our friends, respecting the
soul beyond individuals, 127-28
Universal success only in thought, lesser success in
particular: particulars have less of Being than such as Truth or Justice,
128-29
One should alternate friendship with solitude, 129
One cannot easily understand others, except by long perseverance, 129-31
Friendship exists in the sincerity of joy and peace; it is
sacred and solid, 131
Friends share a kernel of nature and thought and exists through the equal
elements called Truth and Tenderness, 132:
truth: sincerity, simplicity, wholeness, uncovered
thought
like the result of a religious frenzy where
courtesy and social forms are stripped away, 132-33
the friend seems as another self, 133
tenderness: real-life appreciation, 134; real virtues,
real company in life, making the mundane fresh [celebrating particulars too]
Fp. is very difficult, rare; exists mainly between two
people at a time, or perhaps a circle sharing a lofty intelligence, but 1-to-1
interactions are best for sincerity’s sake especially, 135
dialogue is key, vs. the social soul, which is unfree,
limited to the common thought of all, 135
friends find each other by affinity; each must be also
purely himself: the not-mine becomes mine in this enlargement, 136
mutual self-sufficiency, yet united by deep identity; share
magnanimity, 136
on reverence: pure, poetic, universal, great--like nature,
137
do not rush into fp, but first know thyself; only then may
each stand for all, 137-38; first be virtuous, 139.
Love: we recognize the virtue of which we can conceive when we see it in
another, 139
Choose only the best.
Become independent: turn our ties away from the social to the spiritual,
for the temporal is merely ruled by the law of compensation and there one gains
naught, 139-40
Emerson dedicates himself to presentiments [cf. Foreworld?], to his
visions on the great days; these mostly obviate the need for fp, 140-41. Look above the friend to the eternal, but through
the friend entire: share total magnanimity and trust, as though the friend
is already God, 142