It’s one of the
most remembered phrases of American literature (even if we don’t remember
exactly where it came from) – “the shot heard round the world.” It refers to
the beginning of the American Revolution at the Battle of Lexington and
Concord, and it was written some 60 years after the battle.
The poet was Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1830-1882). The poem was “Concord Hymn,” written in 1836 for spoken delivery
in 1837 for the dedication of the Concord monument to the American Revolution
(full text of the poem is below).
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Today, Emerson
is less known as a poet and more as the philosopher who articulated transcendentalism,
with its core belief that man (and nature) were inherently good. In many ways,
it was a reaction to the religion of New England, both in its Calvinist and Unitarian
forms. Emerson, raised in the Calvinist church (with at least one aunt hoping
he would become a minister), rejected religion and embraced natural man and
nature.
In 1932, the
literary historian Van
Wyck Brooks wrote a biography of Emerson, simply titled The
Life of Emerson. It’s written in the Brooks style – rather breathless
prose, plenty of exclamation marks, and an emphasis upon understanding the
emotion and the context of the subject’s life (Brooks was more traditional in
how he approached his own autobiography). The work was part of Brooks’
career-long project of writing about American writers and American literature,
and the details he provides make a work like one both informative and
entertaining.
Emerson had an
aunt, for example, who had a powerful influence on his life; she was best known
for already wearing a funeral shroud, as if she couldn’t wait to greet death
(she lived to a very old age). She even wore a shroud when she went rode her
horse.
Brooks argues
that Emerson was not a scholar; his performance at school and Harvard
University was lackluster if acceptable. What he loved was writing, and writing
poetry.
Emerson’s career
was helped mightily by the creation of the Lyceum movement. The first lyceum
was organized and held at Millburn, near Worcester, Massachusetts, and grew to
more than 100 places in New England alone. Lyceums provided entertainment in
the forms of speakers, who subjects included everything from philosophy and
religion to history and current events. Lyceums attracted laborers and the
well-to-do alike. Emerson became a familiar on the lyceum circuit, with Brooks
suggesting it offered him an alternative pulpit.
In 1836, Emerson
published his famous essay “Nature,” in which he
articulated the tenets of transcendentalism. The essay helped catapult him to
fame, a fame that was forever fixed the following year when he spoke to a
packed audience at the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He enthralled
his listeners. “At a stroke,” Brooks says, “Emerson had become the prophet of
the new age.” (This was the same year he delivered the poem at Concord.)
Emerson’s fame
was lifelong. In 1850, appalled by the passage of the Fugitive Slave
Act, he hitched himself to the cause of abolition, becoming as ardent a foe
of slavery as could be found anywhere.
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| Van Wyck and Gladys Brooks about 1960 |
The list of his
friends and acquaintances reads like a Who’s Who of 19th century
American and British letters – William Wordsworth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman
(Emerson’s championing of Whitman and his poetry helped make the poet’s
reputation).
The Emerson that
Brooks describes in his biography is Emerson the very human being who, while he
became the first man of American letters, remained a very human being. His fame
would reach around the world (and he was especially influential in Europe) and
yet he remained that citizen of Concord, a man who cared about his extended
family and the people in his day-to-day circles.
The Life of Emerson is an enjoyable biography, very true to
the period in which it was published, and it is vintage Van Wyck Brooks.
Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1836)
By
the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their
flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here
once the embattled farmers stood,
And
fired the shot heard round the world.
The
foe long since in silence slept;
Alike
the conqueror silent sleeps;
And
Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down
the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On
this green bank, by this soft stream,
We
set to-day a votive stone;
That
memory may their deed redeem,
When,
like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit,
that made those heroes dare,
To
die, and leave their children free,
Bid
Time and Nature gently spare
The
shaft we raise to them and thee.
Related:
Top photograph: The Emerson House in
Concord.
