Emerson:  The Ideal in America
written and directed by David A. Beardsley
Video Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jim Manley, Director

Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute
680 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Tel: 212-354-2277

In the mid 19^th century, the small town of Concord, Massachusetts, was home to a remarkable group of authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May. One of their most prominent neighbors was Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, and orator, whose ideas became an essential part of the American identity.

On Thursday, February 1, at 6:00 PM, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute will present the world premiere of a one-hour video biography entitled “Emerson: The Ideal in America.” Bringing Emerson to life in his own words, the film also features interviews with leading Emerson scholars, including Robert Richardson Jr, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire; Richard Geldard, author of God In Concord and The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson; Barbara Solowey, teacher and lecturer; Sarah Wider, Professor of English at Colgate University and President of the Emerson Society; and Richard Grossman, author of A Year With Emerson and the forthcoming The Tao of Emerson. Following the screening, there will be a panel discussion and a question-and-answer period. Admission is free. The event will take place at All Souls Unitarian Church, 1157 Lexington Avenue (at 80th Street), New York City. For information on the film, contact the Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute (212-354-2277). For travel directions, contact All Souls (212-535-5530).

A tireless lecturer and writer, Emerson traveled widely, spreading the gospel of individual promise and faith in the future. It was he who famously said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.” Back home in Concord, Emerson was true to his own aphorism that “the only way to have a friend is to be one.” Over the years, he was intellectually, spiritually, and financially supportive of his illustrious, yet often impoverished, neighbors. For example, it was on Emerson’s land that Thoreau lived in a tiny cabin for two years and two months, a sojourn that inspired him to write Walden.

Emerson believed that we are all part of a universal spirit, an “over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.” He also believed in the sanctity of every person and everything in nature—a sanctity that he found lacking in formal religion, as demonstrated by the fact that he was a Unitarian minister who renounced the pulpit after serving only three years.

Those who knew Emerson remarked on his tremendous personal appeal. Henry James Sr tried to solve “the mystery of his immense fascination,” while Walt Whitman experienced “a flood of light” about him, and Hawthorne said that he “wore a sunbeam in his face.” But Emerson was not a mystic. He was a clear-eyed observer of the human condition who concluded that we must not “bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.” This enduring idealism is Emerson’s message to us today.

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s founding thinker. The Institute does this through its website, newsletter, and public programs. The Institute's affiliations with The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association help to further this mission.

Written by Paula Trushin, member of the Emerson Reading Circle ( All Souls Church, NYC)