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Проза Эмерсона
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| readeralexey | Дата: Среда, 30.09.2020, 10:06 | Сообщение # 1 |
 Генерал-майор
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| Как можно охарактеризовать религиозность Эмерсона исходя из его биографии и содержания речи к выпускникам Богословского факультета Гарварда (Divinity School Address)?
Как соотносятся статьи (лекции) Эмерсона с европейской (имеющей истоки в античности) традицией рационального дискурса?
Что составляет "я" в эссе "Доверие к себе"?
Близки ли вам идеи Эмерсона? Есть ли мысли, которые захотелось выписать при чтении?
***
Прокомментируйте:
"Самая правдивая правда окажется ложной, если в ней упорствовать. Стоит лишь чуть-чуть ее передержать, как она скиснет, и назавтра придется искать новую" [The journals, v. 5, p. 38].
"Нам нужна философия, которую отличали бы подвижность и текучесть, которая была бы нам не домом, а кораблем на волнах жизни. Любую угловато догматическую теорию расходившиеся стихии разнесут в щепы" [CW, v. 12, p. 405].
"Если сознание живет только частностями и видит только различия (не имея силы увидеть в каждом явлении целое, увидеть - все), то мир адресует ему вопросы, на которые оно не способно ответить, каждый новый факт рвет его в клочки и оно терпит в конце концов неизбежное поражение под напором их бесконечного разнообразия" [CW, v. 9, p. 412].
"Метод природы - кто мог бы подвергнуть его анализу? Стремительный поток не остановится для того, чтобы мы его рассмотрели. Мы никогда не сможем загнать природу в угол, - найти конец нити, - нащупать камень фундамента. Птица спешит отложить яйцо, яйцо торопиться стать птицей ... Если бы нечто замерло неподвижно, оно было бы тут же сокрушено и разбросано потоком, которому проотивится; если бы это было сознание, оно обратилось бы в безумие, ибо безумцы - как раз те, кто цепляется за одну какую-то мысль и не плывет в потоке природы" [CW, v. 1, p. 199].
"Вначале в нас просыпается инстинкт, потом мнение, потом знание, подобно тому, как растение сначала пускает корни, потом почки, потом дает плод. Доверься до конца инстинкту, пусть даже ты не можешь его для себя растолковать, ... со временем он созреет в истину" [CW, v. 8, p. 10].
"Что принуждает нас писать драмы и эпические поэмы, и сонеты, и романы в двух томах? Почему бы не попытаться придать словесному выражению разнообразие, подобное тому, что отличает нашу одежду и мысли? Лекция - вот новый вид литературы, который отбрасывает прочь узы традиции, времени, места, обстоятельства и обращается к просто и только, людям. До сих пор это еще никому не удавалось вполне. Это орган могучей силы, пангармоникум бесконечно разнообразного звучания" (Journals).
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. ("Nature", 1836)
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. ("Nature", 1836)
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. ("Nature", 1836)
We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. [About language.] ("Nature", 1836)
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. “The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible.” The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. ("Nature", 1836)
...the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. ("Nature", 1836)
There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. ("Nature", 1836)
Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. ("Nature", 1836)
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. ("The American Scholar", 1837)
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. ("The American Scholar", 1837)
[About American literature] Perhaps the time is already come, when <...> the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years? (The American Scholar, 1837)
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the <i>divided</i> or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm... (The American Scholar, 1837)
I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and science, through church and state.
One of these signs is the fact, that the same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. That, which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, — is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the leger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; — and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.
This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have differently followed and with various success. (The American Scholar, 1837)
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. (History, 1841)
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, — from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, — if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer’s boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. (History, 1841)
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. <...> In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
...the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. (The Over-Soul, 1841)
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? (Self-Reliance, 1841)
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? <...> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 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 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.(Self-Reliance, 1841)
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. <...> If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. <...> Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. (Self-Reliance, 1841)
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. (Circles, 1841)
Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity. (Circles, 1841)
Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. <...> The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions. (Circles, 1841)
The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour.
Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.
There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. (Circles, 1841)
The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful: it is by abandonment. <...> “A man,” said Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart. (Circles, 1841)
Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. <...> Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. <...> Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again. (Experience, 1844)
An innavigable sea washes with silent waves 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 to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, — neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us. (Experience, 1844)
Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at some time shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh and giggle? or if he apologize? or is affected with egotism? or thinks of his dollar? or cannot go by food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? <...> What cheer can the religious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretly dependent on the seasons of the year, and the state of the blood? I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.
Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth, they are all creatures of given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment it seems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play. Men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Some modifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the individual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of enjoyment. (Experience, 1844)
Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. (Experience, 1844)
Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense when they say, “Children, eat your victuals, and say no more of it.” To fill the hour, — that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them. (Experience, 1844)
We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man, and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe, and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside: it has no inside. (Experience, 1844)
The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. (Experience, 1844)
It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. <...> People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint. Jesus the “providential man,” is a good man on whom many people are agreed that these optical laws shall take effect. By love on one part, and by forbearance to press objection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we will look at him in the centre of the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will attach to any man so seen. But the longest love or aversion has a speedy term. (Experience, 1844)
It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these developments, and will find a way to punish the chemist, who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say too little of our constitutional necessity of seeing things under private aspects, or saturated with our humors. And yet is the God the native of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the capital virtue of self-trust. We must hold hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by more vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of action, possess our axis more firmly. (Experience, 1844)
We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power. (Experience, 1844)
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| mariabrk | Дата: Воскресенье, 20.12.2020, 19:55 | Сообщение # 2 |
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| Для меня Эмерсон - философ, мысли которого потрясают своей простотой и актуальностью. В его книге "Доверие к себе" я открыла для себя много таких доступных и близких, вдохновляющих идей и мыслей, некоторые из которых представляют собой "волшебный пендель". Одна из таких мыслей: "перестанем то жаться по углам, то обращаться в бегство при одной мысли о возможности некоторых превратностей, но с полным благоговением, вручив себя, как благородную глину, деснице Всемогущего, будем благотворить, искупать, воздвигать и все более стеснять области смерти и ничтожества!" Как же актуально это заявление сейчас, в период пандемии, когда некоторых людей охватил страх заражения вирусом, и они перестали жить. Мы живем здесь один раз и у нас есть только один шанс (длинною в жизнь) выбрать свою загробную участь, прожить эту жизнь достойно, а мы (и я в том числе) боимся совершить ошибку, боимся быть собой и т.д.
Но есть в произведении и мысли, которые меня удивили, например, эта: "Другой род ложных духовных вспомогательств составляют наши соболезнования и изъявления участия; в них виден недостаток самоуверенности и недуг воли. Сожалейте о постигшем его бедствии, если вы тем облегчаете страждущего; или принимайтесь
бодро за дело и исправляйте причиненное зло. Но
наше сочувствие так же трусливо, как и наши сожаления. Мы стремглав бежим к тому, кто плачет, — часто из-за пустяков, — потом садимся и громким кликом сзываем к делу утешителей каких ни попало, тогда когда следовало бы наставить его на путь истины и оздоровления хорошими электрическими ударами и тем восстановить снова деятельность его души."
Как мне кажется, данное утверждение применимо не ко всем, но (!) и так бывает. Всё зависит от ситуации, поэтому нам следует быть мудрыми и не бежать сразу жалеть, а с рассуждением подходить к каждому человеку, так как кому-то (как, например, мне) иногда очень даже полезно дать хороший "волшебный пендель", или как сказал Эмерсон "электрические удары".
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| alekssander-com29 | Дата: Пятница, 16.12.2022, 13:39 | Сообщение # 3 |
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| Идеи Эмерсона, как мне кажется, способны пронестись сквозь поколения и сохраниться в веках. Несмотря на то, что он изложил их более века назад, они как минимум актуальны по сей день, и скорее всего, останутся таковыми еще долгое время, если с миром не произойдут колоссальных масштабов изменения. Если бы эссе этого автора были чуть более массовыми (в плане распространенности в обществе) скорее всего, многие цитаты из его сочинений сейчас были бы крылатыми фразами. Если отходить от общих замечаний и переходить к индивидуальному опыту, я могу сказать, что идеи Эмерсона мне во многом близки. Конечно, здесь придется сделать оговорку в сторону веры. Безусловно, Эмерсон был верующим человеком, но не в классическом понимании этого слова. На его веру и мировоззрение сильно повлияли деизм, пантеизм, мистицизм, исходя из которых, и опираясь на собственные размышления, скорее всего он и выстроил свою философию и веру. Однако, некоторые его мысли очень схожи с христианскими, так например, то, что больше всего мне запомнилось из его сочинения "Природа" - это представление о природе как об иной форме бытия божественного. А христианство учит нас тому, что Бог обитает везде и во всем, как мне кажется, эти идеи очень близки друг к другу. Если же говорить о других его эссе, направленных на нечто более человеческое, например "Доверие к себе", там автор тоже транслирует мысли, с которыми очень трудно не согласиться, причем делает он это не в манере "токсичного оптимизма", свойственной многим современным книгам о саморазвитии, а тактично, поступательно и логично. "Доверие к себе" это та книга, которую время от времени просто необходимо перечитывать, хотя бы для того, чтобы напомнить себе изложенные там мысли и укрепиться в доверии самому себе.
А вообще, читая прозу Эмерсона, я постоянно вспоминаю отрывок из "1984" Д. Оруэлла: "Книга заворожила его, вернее вселила в него уверенность. В каком - то смысле она не сказала ему ничего такого, чего бы он не знал, но в этом и была своя прелесть. В книге говорилось то, что он и сам мог сказать, если бы привел в порядок свои мысли. Книга - продукт такого же ума, только более сильного, систематического и лишенного страха".
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Сообщение отредактировал alekssander-com29 - Четверг, 22.12.2022, 22:14 |
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| readeralexey | Дата: Понедельник, 19.12.2022, 19:13 | Сообщение # 4 |
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| Цитата alekssander-com29 (  ) Однако, некоторые его мысли очень схожи с христианскими, так например, то, что больше всего мне запомнилось из его сочинения "Природа" - это представление о природе как об иной форме бытия божественного. А христианство учит нас тому, что Бог обитает везде и во всем, как мне кажется, эти идеи очень близки друг к другу.
Природа как "иная форма бытия божественного" - это все же пантеизм. Бог иной природы, чем творение, хотя и наполняет творение божественными энергиями.
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| bondarenkodv7 | Дата: Понедельник, 16.01.2023, 23:29 | Сообщение # 5 |
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| К сожалению, я не могу с уверенностью сказать, близки ли мне идеи Эмерсона или нет, но одно ясно: Эмерсон – удивительный человек, мысли которого, безусловно, находят свое отражение и в наши дни. Многие его книги дают возможность пересмотреть взгляды на жизнь, на мир, на себя. Некоторые произведения прямо заставляют действовать, побуждают пересмотреть свой кругозор.
Так, мне очень понравилось выражение из книги «Доверие к себе»: «Если мы не можем проанализировать самих себя и определить, в чем состоит наше призвание, от нас не будет никакой пользы». Действительно, в мире важно найти свое предназначение, а к этому ведет понимание и принятие себя. Эту фразу я часто вспоминаю, когда нужно сделать тот или иной выбор: сначала я анализирую свое состояние, желания, пытаюсь выяснить, нужно мне это или нет, а уж потом принимаю решение, чтобы извлечь максимальную пользу для себя и окружающих.
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Daniil Bondarenko
Сообщение отредактировал bondarenkodv7 - Понедельник, 16.01.2023, 23:29 |
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| katyadorniak | Дата: Суббота, 09.12.2023, 12:48 | Сообщение # 6 |
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| We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. [About language.] ("Nature", 1836)
В эссе "Nature", написанном в 1836 году, Ральф Уолдо Эмерсон описывает человеческое применение языка как использование пепла вулкана для жарки яиц. Это очень яркий образ, который передает неоднозначность языка и его повседневного использования.
Метафора путешественников, использующих вулканическую золу для жарки яиц, передает идею о том, что язык, как и зола, является инструментом, используемым людьми для передачи мыслей и общения. Однако выбор вулканической золы подразумевает определенную опасность и непредсказуемость.
Вулканический пепел это не зола камина, хоть и ближайшая к нему по своим свойствам вещь в дикой природе. Пепел - свидетельство извержения, катастрофы, признак былого буйства стихии. Однако мы, как путешественники, видим в нем средство для выживания, не принимая во внимание былую опасность. Человек способен приспособиться ко всему и все обратить себе во благо.
Метафора Эмерсона предполагает, что язык, подобно золе, является потенциально опасным средством выражения глубоких мыслей. Процесс запекания яиц подразумевает утилитарное и банальное использование языка, подчеркивая его повседневную, практическую природу. В этом контексте язык служит средством общения для повседневных целей, сродни запеканию яиц для пропитания путешественников. В своем эссе Эмерсон выражает беспокойство тем фактом, что язык - инструмент действительно божественный и мощный настолько, что человек не сможет воплотить его потенциал в жизнь.
Итак, сравнивая язык с вулканическим пеплом, которым пользуются путешественники для запекания яиц, Эмерсон приглашает читателей задуматься о двойственной природе языка – как практического инструмента общения и как потенциально изменчивой, необузданной силы, способной формировать и трансформировать наше понимание мира.
EkaterinaDolzhenkova
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| tsumskaa30 | Дата: Воскресенье, 10.12.2023, 17:15 | Сообщение # 7 |
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| Близки ли вам идеи Эмерсона? Есть ли мысли, которые захотелось выписать при чтении?
Эмерсон интересен мне как писатель, раскрывающий нетрадиционные для своего времени идеи: это и идея доверия к себе, и необычное понимание истины, ее рождение в процессе взаимообмена между читателем и поэтом.
Произведение Эмерсона «Доверие к себе» поначалу показалось мне слишком самонадеянным: его обожествление личности, безусловно, романтическое. Однако некоторые идеи я полностью поддерживаю. Так, мне запомнилась следующая мысль:
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude”.
Идея того, что человек сам должен решить, чего он хочет в жизни, остается актуальной и в наши дни. Сейчас существует множество психологических тренингов, которые начинаются именно с того, что человек должен определиться, кем является он сам, чего хочет именно он, к чему он стремится, какие у него цели (как материальные, так и душевные, духовные). В настоящее время высказывается мысль, что люди подчас живут не своей жизнью, а чужой. Ходят на работу, достигают карьерных высот, однако при этом чувствуют нереализованность, потому что выполняют лишь то, что предписано обществом, а голос сердца остается неуслышанным. Именно эта проблема волнует и Эмерсона. Прислушаться к себе — вот главный посыл писателя.
Вторая же часть высказывания обращает наше внимание на то, что жить в миру и следовать мирским установкам не представляет трудности, как и жить в уединении и прислушиваться к своим мыслям. Однако находиться среди мирских людей и при этом сохранять в себе внутреннего человека со своими убеждениями — непросто. Я думаю, что можно понимать эту мысль следующим образом: непросто быть настоящим христианином в миру, вокруг подстерегают искушения, однако наша задача — сохранить в себе то семя, которое посеяно в нас, тот свет, который в нас горит, следуя голосу совести.
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| abalakinan27 | Дата: Суббота, 16.12.2023, 20:54 | Сообщение # 8 |
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| "Я" в "Доверии к себе" - это плен. Поэтому нужно выйти за грани этого "я". В этом и заключается суть романтика. Если истина согласно Эмерсону находится где-то посредине, в промежутке между двумя правдами, то важной становится срединная сущность.
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