The Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute Newsletter

  
Volume I, number 1

 For registered visitors and Members only. You may send articles or news of interest in the Submit News window of the User Menu. All submitted material will be read by the Staff prior to posting. 

Welcome

The webmaster, staff and advisors welcome you to the new rwe.org website. Also, we welcome new members to the Institute community. As we say in the Membership section, we like to think of the new site as similar to a public radio station in that you can log on for free and take advantage of most of the content of the site, but eventually, if you visit often, we hope that you will take the important step of becoming a member.

The Content

For the first time on the Internet, all of the published works of Ralph Waldo Emerson have been made available. You are free to copy and save content to your computer. If you use the material from the site, we ask that you acknowledge the source in any published work. In addition, we are grateful to Prfessor Michael Preston of the University of Colorado, who has kindly given us permission to post the Eugene Irey Emerson Concordance, a most valuable tool for research.

Other Features

In addition to the Complete Works of the Centenary Edition, the site contains other resources for those interested in Emerson's life and work. IN addition to a biography, a time line, and many references to the thinkers of the past who inspired Emerson, we have included a page of events and conferences, especially for those scholars and general readers who might wish to take advantage of them.

News of the Emerson Society

On occasion, rwe.org will report on the activities of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society (www.emersonsociety.org). In a recent communication to members, the Society announced a series of programs for 2005, among them the annual business meeting at the American Literature Association convention in Boston, May 26-29, 2005, at the Copely Place Hotel. The Society will sponsor two panels: "Reconsidering The Conduct of Life" and :Emersonian Dilemmas: Individual and Community."

In addition, the Society announced a new program of awards to support research, presentations, and pedogogical or community-based projects that foster an appreciation of Emerson. These awards, up to $500 each, emerge from the 2003 Bicentennial initiative. Those interested in these awards are invited to contact Roger Thompson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). Last, the Society is planning a conference at Oxford University in England in collaboration with the Hawthorne Society and Poe Studies Association. People interested should log on to the Society web site (above) for further information. 

 Growth of RWE.org

Since its inception in 1996, RWE.org has grown into the most prominent site devoted to the life and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The site statistics tell the story. In the last nine months of 2004 (when more accurate figures were made available) the site attracted over 130,000 unique visitors from 82 different countries. Those visitors in turn visited over 2,300,000 pages of material on the site.

 Reading Emerson - Commentary by Richard Geldard

Emerson read for what he called "lusters" or moments of insight in the works of others. For us, reading Emerson is a similar activity. He is to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and never for "information." When he wrote, Emerson first listened in solitude to his inner voice and what he termed the "Over-Soul." It was a process always of inspiration from sources very deep within, and he has to be read in the same way.

When I began to work with these essays, I conducted a reading group. We met at 7 AM on Wednesdays and for three years we read the essays, sometimes spending an hour on one paragraph, but always reading aloud and letting the words penetrate slowly into our awareness. We read this way because the words demanded it, not because we were trying some new idea or because we couldn't  understand the work in any other way.

As RWE.org develops, we plan on recording most of the essays and making them available on CDs. Listening to Emerson brings the essays alive in new and fresh ways. I recommend getting together with others interested in Emerson to read aloud and discuss what you hear. We here at RWE.org will help to form such reading groups, which already exist in several cities and towns across the country. Just let us know you would like a start a group and we'll publicize on the site and help you get it started.

Emerson and Left/Right Brain Research

This excerpt from an article in Wired Magazine by Daniel Pink points out the shifting tendencies in human brain function in our own times. It would seem that Emerson was strongly right-brained. See below

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.