The American Transcendentalists documentary
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- Опубликовано: 30 янв 2021
- The ideas and ideals of three American Transcendentalists-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller-initially given expression through The Dial continue to shape the discourse of literature, philosophy, and religion worldwide. This program, hosted by James H. Bride II and divided into eight chapters, traces the origins and defines the concept of Transcendentalism. It also spotlights key landmarks in and around Concord, where the Transcendental movement began, while profiling Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller in depth through readings, interviews, and dramatizations from significant Transcendentalist texts. Scholarly commentary is provided by Richard Baker, Lawrence Buell, Burnham Carter, Philip McFarland, Joan von Mehren, Joel Myerson, Wesley Mott, Robert Richardson Jr., and David Reynolds. Several dramatic passages are reenacted by Jeffrey Hyatt as Thoreau at Walden Pond. Some audio segments are slightly substandard due to limitations at the time of recording. (54 minutes)
2008
![Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson [Audiobook] #individualism #freedom #classicliterature](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/F4to8V4j65g/mqdefault.jpg)
Imagine the podcast guests Emerson would have had.
Or...have such conversations in his name. I'm in 😉
@@hawkarae zaqqzsz sz AA
Wow!
What a beautiful thought, love that idea
My goal: nonconformity, simplicity. Society's framework really degrades the individual. Discovering Thoreau as a very young person was life changing.
The highlights for me were 1:00 The transcendental men and women were idealists who believe that the individual held the key to understanding the universe 2:10 Emerson once said, "I have only one doctrine - the infinitude of the private man." 5:35 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 in the surface of the things that our eyes see and our ears here each passing day. 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.
Emerson: 15:24 Transcendentalism really started when its major figure, Ralph Waldo Emerson, broke with the Unitarian Church in Boston, where he was a minister and became a freelance lecturer and writer.
19:00 In 1831, he was a minister in a Boston church, recently married to a very beautiful young woman - a poet - and she died tragically of tuberculosis. It completely destroyed his world. He quit the ministry he quit preaching. He really left Christianity behind, got on the first ship he could find and he went to Europe. 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 his whole life is about, what it really means, is how you remake yourself after some kind of disaster.
Theroux: 32:00 It was the great genius of Theroux 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
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. 38:00 "It is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. 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 in a summer afternoon dreaming awake."
"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. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Books are the treasured wealth of the world."
So there is an Unseen world. Isn’t that what Christianity had been teaching for 2,000 years? Emerson was dealing with grief & thought he knew better than God? And Thoreau was a complete phony. I guess you can tell, I am a Southerner, steeped in Southern literature, that comes closer to describing the human condition than this guff. Emerson was a typical New Englander-I am smarter than everyone else, no one has ever felt this way before, look at me! Please….
Well, you made me laugh and I appreciate that. What you said could be said of anyone though, right? There are plenty people throughout history that wrote and did art, obviously, and they put it out there for us to observe and enjoy/ appreciate or not. I don’t get from Emerson that he thought so highly of himself. Maybe I’m wrong about him and he wasn’t humble. Anyway, hope you’re doing well today. Aloha. 🤙🏽
Imagine what they would make of society today. America is broken, socially we are lost.
Very well done. Thank you for describing the importance of Thoreau's contrasting society and nature, and the delicate dance of living within the two. Bravo.
This is pure gold. Thanks.
Really enjoyed this and learned a lot! It appears the transcendentalists were way ahead of their time, and speaking to universals where the soul is concerned, freedom, self-exploration, connection to nature, a simple life, social improvement, etc. Very inspiring! Thank you!
Either ahead of their time or maybe we are just stuck in the past 😅
My father bought a bunch of books just for display when I was about 11. No one else in the house was a reader so I got to enjoy Styrbiorn the Strong by E.E. Edmondson and also Emerson's Essays. By the time people were talking about Thoreau I was so steeped in Emerson that I thought Thoreau rather simplistic and still can't read him. I always turn to Emerson for positivity, Schopenhauer for clarity of thought and Giordano Bruno for his acentric universe and his determination to not recant.
I think you meant E R Eddison.
we watched this in class and it made me really tired so when i got home i watched it to help me fall asleep and i had the strangest dreams bc of it
Thoreau once saved my life.
How?
@@TR-lb4om How?! By reading his works, ofcourse!
👍🏾 anything specific he wrote that positively impacted you?
Thanks for uploading
Welcome!
I just found this channel and can’t thank you enough for it. Concord is a very unique place to visit. You feel the nearly 400 years of its existence as you walk around the town, visit the homes of the Transcendentalists and visit Walden Pond just 1 mile away. If you should go to visit both Concord and Walden Pond give yourself plenty of time, especially the Pond which gets overcrowded on the weekends. Visit it during the week if possible when it’s quieter like it was when Thoreau lived there.
You're welcome. The way you talk about it makes me want to go soon. Thanks for the tips. It's on my bucket list for sure.
Excellent! 🙏
love it. need more like it. gotta force myself to read more
"The genius which preserves and guides the human race indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason." - Emerson
great video!
Thank you!
4:42 - 4:55 -Ideal Society of Citizens.
Has anyone read the books of former Harvard prof. Joel Porte ?
He wrote several books about these authors back in the 60s and 70s. If so which of his books did you most like ?
I have not but will look for them.
In my opinion, Emerson has not been well served by the English departments of America’s finest universities. There is a certain flatness in their readings - the pedantry of received categories & classifications leading to judgments that have a certain hollow ring to them. Not an actual quote, but it looks something like this: “during this period Emerson’s worldview was overly optimistic, but later it becomes increasingly tempered by personal tragedy, which teaches him the limits of wide-eyed idealism, and the consolations of solitude in a world out of joint.”
I’m no Christian, but it’s probably akin to theologians trying to parse out whether Jesus is divine or human, without really grasping the revolutionary nature of the Word become flesh. (Incidentally, Emerson wishes us to recognize that each individual is the word become flesh).
David S. Reynolds appears in this video. He is a notable exception insofar as he tells the social history of 19th-century America in a way that brings to life the animating concerns of Emerson - and of his greatest protege, Walt Whitman.
Apologies if that’s unfair, vague, or oblique. It’s been years since I last read Porte, et al, but that captures something of my aversion to their scholarship - & my dismay that this country’s greatest writer will not soon be understood as the forerunner of its greatest philosophic movement, the pragmatism of CS Peirce, William James, & especially John Dewey.
When I tried to read the Walden, it gives me headache. Listening to excerpts here, it's clearly understood 🤷🏿♂️
William James adds to this with Am Pragmatism
Yes, that's a good sequence to follow: Transcendentalism==>Pragmatism==>Phenomenology . . .
Helpful entrées into their work. 🤔
Precisely!!!
We are part and particle of God. -Emerson. The kingdom of God is what lies within.
There is no depth to man’s mind, space and time are without limits
I wish that I am able to PURCHASE this documentary on my device🤔!
Why, it is free online
'I am able to' - if true, you wouldn't be wishing.
I wish that I could purchase...
I wish that I was able to purchase...
Emerson and Nietzsche both expounded the individual. but there styes are very different. Money makers and thralls of a commercial culture, narrow minded zealots of revisionist forms of American Protestantism abounded. the transcendentalists came out of the Enlightenment as the most important sect of the Romantic movement. counterpoint to a necessary materialism, they were like a 1st version of psychology, addressing the value of inner powers.
Everyone please notice, all these people were Yankees.
@@nativevirginian8344meaning they were anti-slavery?
Does any one know i found out about this threw and Eminem old school video called mosh
'threw and'?
It seems that leading a life of transcendentalism was also a choice made out of privilege. Henry didn't really go "alone" into the woods and it was Emerson that "paid" for his stay essentially. He knew his community and they knew he was there. He could hear the train near by constantly reminding him that society was not far but was always at a "safe" distance. He would also make visits to his aunt on a weekly basis. I'd rather have American Society give greater acknowledgement to the indigenous knowledge and relationship with nature over the transcendentalists as second generation European Americans who were raised in Puritan thought which often overlooked, shunned, and did their best to kill native ways yet wouldn't have survived without them. Thoreau knew well of the decline of native American societies and this documentary lacks the lens that even Thoreau acknowledges and recognizes that there was a native American lens even documenting the Penobscot nation place names helping to provide a new, more informed view of Native Americans. It wasn't until the last three minutes of this documentary its mentioned only a a mere footnote. Outdated documentary and done at a time that under represented other historical views. Is there a documentary that is more current and inclusive I wonder?
Thoreay says in the beginning of Walden that he wad less than a mile from civilization - he wasnt trying to prove that he could survive all alone. He openly admits in the book that he bought supplies and went i to town regularly during his stay at the pond - that is not the point. The point is that he wanted to trmporarily remove himself from the hustle and bustle of society so that he could think and figure out his questions about the contrast between human nature and society. You dont need to be 100 miles into the Alaskan bush to do this- just go camping for a week or two - anything to get away from all the noise.
I do completely agree with you that Native American nations, who Thoreau was also influenced by and admired, should be more appreciated and admired than transcendrntalists because thry ACTUALLY lived in harmony with nature permanently - not just for a couple years on owned land. It is a shame the sheer amoumt of knowledge that has likely been lost from the indigenous people of the world.
With that being said though, I also think Thoreau deserves his place in literary history because he was brought up in "civilized" society, but was still able to see how it conflicted with human nature and brought out thr worst in people, a perspective that could not be found among thr indigenous.
Overall I think Thoreau, Emerson, etc. are a good stepping stone for getting into true self reliance.
EFIT: typos, dont care
Out of all replies you could have typed, you chose this one. You could have talked about Emerson’s very interesting view on the functioning of the human mind. However, you chose to go on a virtual political mini-crusade. I guess that’s what modern universities make out of their students
@@Sintinx2 It's a legitimate question and out of all the responses you could have written, you chose racism.
@@donyoung7874 Have not said anything racist, maybe it's just your schizophrenic mind?
@@Sintinx2 Haven't you? It's right there in your whine, little one.
The thumbnail made me think this would turn into a rap battle
4:50 nation of thinkers/ creators conspicuous consumption
❤❤❤❤
35:33
20 min, self reliance is a relative idea. in true self reliance are we really? can we just up a go into the woods with nothing and survive?
Thoreau didn’t, he was funded and backed up all the way. He was a nut.
@@nativevirginian8344 he was a nut?
@@nativevirginian8344 why is that?
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A maneira como é interpretada estes pensamentos transcendentais e os pensamentos tradicionalistas ou materiais, interpretam superficialmente ou intelectualmente dois lados de uma questão que na verdade é única, uma só: o desenvolvimento integral do Homem. Os transcendentalistas olhando para dentro de si encontram uma vida plena como seres humanos, seu mestre é a Natureza. Não possuem desejos egoístas para consigo ou para com as outras pessoas, procuram sempre passarem às pessoas a grandiosidade de suas naturezas intrínsecas. Seus poderes de pensamento provém de uma consciência mais ampla, superior, divina, de vôos de imaginação criativa, o silêncio, e estases de jorrarem lágrima de alegria, de grande alcance e percepção da Vida, e que só quem as experienciou pode compreender, não há como explicá-las, e pode crer: são inerente a todos, são a vanguarda da sabedoria humana. Daí vêm as grandes invenções, grandes descobertas, teoremas matemáticos, artes, tudo, que enleva o gênio humano.
O pensamento tradicionalista ou materialista já foca seu conhecimento na instrução, no aprendizado, nas informações que acumulam em suas memórias, no raciocínio mental, calculado, extraídos dos livros, para conviverem na sociedade que dizem ser "desenvolvida", pela Ciência, pelo tecnológico. Mas isso acaba por faze-lo escravo, do dinheiro, do trabalho, do estudo ( para ser alguém na vida ) das circunstâncias que lhes oferecem a sociedade. Causa de tantas males, como pobreza ( tanto de Espírito como de dinheiro, e posses ) vícios, maus hábitos, prostituição, vagabundagem, estresse e muitos outros que só a sociedade oferece. As "comodidades" que a Ciência oferece, mas esta, até tem um certo valor intrínseco quando bem aplicada e fornecida pela Consciência Superior, antes mencionada , porém, muitas das vezes, desviadas para o lucro fácil, a ganância, o supérfluo, o criminoso, pois é sempre dirigida "para fora" ( isto é difícil do materialista entender ) não vem de "dentro"!
Este, é um assunto que quanto mais desenvolvemos maior fica, e menos nos expressamos como deveríamos... Espero ter me saído bem esclarecendo meu entendimento sobre este assunto, tão apaixonante! Grato por lerem!
10:30
Why do these 'educated' people not know how to pronounce Thoreau's name??????
Merriam-Webster has thə-ˈrō What do you hear? How would you have us pronounce his name? You also might review the discussion of this issue at 24:24
They liked John Brown.
Such badassery mandates admiration.
@ No Heroes: Ha! You are right. COMMANDS ADMIRATION. Brown was a freedom fighter.
Min 17:00) Richard Baker claims that "Emerson anticipated postmodern theory on how society constructs our gender." This is intellectually misleading at best and there are zero evidence to that. Emerson had nothing to do with postmodern ideologies of 2024. While Emerson saw the tree and the fish as manifestations of the same nature, he never suggested that pretending the tree is actually a fish would lead to any transcendental experience.
The creative vignets & actor were intolerably f bad.
Please feel free to create your own content!
Please feel free to defend garbage.
@@harrietthespy2119
I get pretty annoyed by this mindless worship of Thoreau as some kind of a brave pioneer. He was given land by Emerson, he was safe and secure there and could “ experiment “ all he wanted. I’m more in awe of people who actually have to make it by their own wits , no security and leisurely time unless they carve it out by real struggle.
I love Emerson, can't read Thoreau.
Thoreau was a phony & so were the Transcendentalists. Something a bunch of bored New England Pilgrim descendants thought up, which amounted to nothing except making them known. It also seemed to skew people away from Christianity. Whenever I read of these people I want to scream, Get a job! Look at Louisa May Alcott’s father. He was a little nuts, tried all the current “new age” ideas that basically left his family in poverty. Who needs it? Try Southern literature for humanity’s truth.
Unbelievable. Emerson scholars still can’t read Emerson for shit. All this talk about inwardness, retreat from the material into the spiritual world, mystical oneness with creation, crude optimism, idealism as some kind of triumph of the will over the socially constructed world & the things of ordinary experience, the individual creating his own reality like some kind of aloof Zarathustra. Fiddlesticks all.
What’s your point, please? I’d really like to know🙏
@@harrietthespy2119 My point was that the standard interpretation is simply wrong. Emerson was more of a pragmatist - indeed, an American Pragmatist - than a philosophic Idealist.
Much of the work attributed to Margaret Fuller was actually written by Mathew Franklin Whittier, the younger brother of poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who kept an extremely low profile. It's explained in my paper, "Margaret Fuller's Dishonest Appropriation of Mathew Franklin Whittier's 'Star' Signature," which is downloadable at the following link. It can also be found by searching on the title on Academia.edu.
www.ial.goldthread.com/MFW_Fuller.pdf
All of those people were a bunch a phonies.
@@nativevirginian8344 Cynicism is an imitation of discernment.
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