EMERSON: AMERICA'S FIRST PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?

Extract

As most readers of this journal will already know, 2003 marked the bicentennial of Ralph Waldo Emerson's birth in Boston on May 25, 1803. The occasion did not generate quite the hoopla that characterized the celebration of the centennial of his birth; then, as Lawrence Buell notes in his own generous tribute to Emerson, children in Concord were let out of school for the day, and there were major celebrations both there and in Boston. To the chagrin of some of Emerson's admirers, the bicentennial passed without official recognition: as one complained on a website, “It's Emerson's 200th Birthday—and there's no postage stamp,” an important indicator of cultural currency in the United States. In 1967, for example, the Post Office issued a stamp to commemorate the mere 150th anniversary of the other most famous Transcendentalist, Henry Thoreau. Nonetheless, like Thoreau, Emerson retains a tenacious foothold in American popular culture, though he is probably known there primarily for the inspirational aphorisms—usually collected under headings such as “action,” “confidence,” and “conformity”—on websites with names like Brainy Quote and Wisdom Quotes. Despite challenges from both the left and the right, Emerson also remains a central figure in American literary and cultural history; and he has been the focus of sustained scholarly attention, especially since the so-called “Emerson Renaissance,” the resurgence of interest in his life and writings beginning around 1980.