Finding a personal relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson
James Marcus had long been fascinated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it wasn’t until he found himself at a low point, both professionally and personally, that he began to see the great Transcendentalist as a source of solace. “I’ve since discovered that that’s a time when Emerson seems to speak to a lot of people,” says Marcus.
“Even though what he offers is not traditional consolation, [reading his essays] really cheered me up.”
“I started digging into the biographies; I read the letters and the journals, which are by themselves just an amazing literary monument,” Marcus recalls. “But it was more like my weird hobby. I wasn’t preparing to write a book.”
It took a nudge from Marcus’s now-agent for him to embark on the project that became “Glad to the
Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Rather than duplicate the “capacious and complete” biographies already published on Emerson, Marcus says he wanted to explore in writing the question “How does a person like me connect with a person like Emerson?” The result is an intimate and often moving book, lively with ideas. “Emerson said every human being should have an original relation to the universe,” Marcus says, “and I wanted to have an original relationship with Emerson.”
The research was daunting, as Marcus wanted to understand Emerson in the context of his intellectual influences, from Unitarianism to German Idealism to abolitionism. He had to leave a lot out. “I could write another entire book out of the stuff I didn’t put into this book!” Marcus says, but adds, “I think I ended up with the book I wanted to write, which you can’t always say.” Even as he moves on to other projects, Marcus believes Emerson will always be with him. “There is an intimacy that springs up between a biographer and a biographical subject. I came to find Emerson an extremely lovable figure in the course of writing this book.”
James Marcus will speak at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Boston Athenaeum.