We all have guilty pleasures. Mine is Ralph Waldo Emerson.
A proud Southerner, I’m not supposed to like him. His Southern contemporaries William Gilmore Simms and Edgar Allan Poe lambasted him. Later, Southern poet and literary critic Allen Tate called him the “Lucifer of Concord” rather than his usual moniker, the “Sage of Concord.” Emerson’s Yankee sensibilities—his capitalism, metaphysical idealism, individuality, and spontaneity—contrast sharply with the Southern agrarian values of rootedness, tradition, hierarchy, and religion.
But I can’t help myself. Emerson is exhilarating.
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