Re-Noted: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Wide World"

"Make your own Bible. Select & Collect all those words & sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of a trumpet out of Shakespear [sic], Seneca, Moses, John, & Paul."

With the January Commonplace Book Club (CBC) upon us, I’m reposting this essay on one of history’s greatest commonplacers—and one of my favorite writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I hope you’ll join us for the CBC. I’ll be back on the 31st to get the club started!

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) began life as a minister’s son. Determined to make his own way in the church, he attended Harvard’s Divinity School. But after his young wife’s death from tuberculosis, he found himself disagreeing with the Church’s methods. He confided in his journals: “in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated.”¹ Ultimately, Emerson did just that; he took his oratory talents and became one of the most influential secular lecturers in early America.

Unlike his contemporaries, Emerson didn’t produce a single literary work to cement his fame—he wrote no Walden (as his disciple Thoreau did), nor does he have a Leaves of Grass (as Whitman did). Instead, Emerson’s ideas pervade the very idea of Americanness. The central themes permeating American literature and thought originated with Emerson. As the great Harold Bloom put it, Emerson was the “prophet of the American religion.”²

Emerson’s ideas of self-reliance, of our internal world’s importance, and the interconnections among nature and spirit feel as fresh and relevant today as they must have two-hundred years ago.

I cannot resist sharing a few of my favorite Emerson quotes:

Some favorite quotes from Emerson that I transcribed while writing this post.

All these ideas unfold in Emerson’s remarkable notebooks—263 of them remain, housed by Harvard’s Houghton Library:

Emerson’s Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earlier this month, I wrote about the names we give our collections of quotes. This week I have another title to add: Emerson’s “The Wide World”—which aptly summarizes his generous and expansive intellect.

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Emerson’s Wide Worlds

Emerson began his lifelong habit of keeping regular journals in January of 1820, during his Junior year at Harvard College. He titled this inaugural collection “The Wide World”—a name he would use for the next four years, filling thirteen editions. After that, he moved on to designating his notebooks with roman numerals and then alphabetic letters.

At the beginning of the first “Wide World,” Emerson describes his goals as follows:

These pages are intended at their commencement to contain a record of new thoughts (when they occur); for a receptacle of all the old ideas that partial but peculiar peelings at antiquity can finish or furbish; for tablet to save the wear & tear of weak Memory & in short for all the various purposes & utility real or imaginary which are usually comprehended under that comprehensive title Common Place book. O ye witches assist me!³ 

Emerson’s first “The Wide World,” p.1, Houghton Library, Harvard University

By the third edition of “The Wide World,” Emerson declares his experiment successful. Or, at the very least, he determines commonplace books to be “useful and harmless things”:

After a considerable interval I am still willing to think that these commonplace books are very useful and harmless things,—at least sufficiently so, to warrant another trial.⁴

Emerson continues to muse that we write differently when just for ourselves, without the expectation of an outside audience. Indeed, the pleasure of reading Emerson’s notebooks is in watching a young man mature into one of the most popular lecturers of his day—to see him turn over ideas that he would immortalize under titles like “Self-Reliance” or “The American Scholar.”

In the fourth edition, Emerson exclaims:

I love my Wide Worlds!⁵

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Emerson’s Signs

Emerson’s “Wide Worlds” contain quotations, but entries skew towards original content typical of a diary. For this reason, Emerson felt he needed his own symbol—a sign to differentiate his original ideas from those he borrowed.

After a wonderful manicule (☞), Emerson directs himself to sort through his notes and improve lines that contain something “remarkable.” He explains that he will signal an original thought with “the letter ‘o’ or ‘Junio’” or the symbol you can see at the bottom of this image:

The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, Vol. I, plate VII

At the end of his Junior year, Emerson concludes the first “Wide World,” and reflects that it has been “an improving employment decidedly.” As he bids the term and this particular notebook “adieu,” he draws his college dorm room and signs the page with that youthful pen name, Junio.

Emerson illustrates his college room at the end of “Wide World” I, Houghton Library

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Emerson’s Dedications and Epigraphs

Emerson designed his notebooks as though they were printed books. Accordingly, he added prefatory material like epigraphs and dedications. But he doesn’t dedicate his notes to people, but to ideals.

For example, he dedicates his seventh “Wide World” to his country, to“the Spirit of America.”⁶

This dedication, written over a decade before he gave his lecture “The American Scholar,” anticipates a central concern of Emerson’s career: America is a new country and should separate itself from Europe’s antique traditions. He writes:

I dedicate my book to the Spirit of America. I dedicate it to that living soul, which doth exist somewhere beyond the fancy, to whom the Divinity hath assigned the care of this bright corner of the Universe. I bring my little offering, in this month, which covers the continent with matchless beauty, to the shrine, which distant generations shall load with sacrifice, and distant ages shall admire afar off. ⁷

By the end of this particular notebook, Emerson confesses he did not write much about America at all. So, he concludes by noting the most recent congressional election’s results.

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Emerson’s Quotations

Emerson’s pithy sayings are ripe for commonplacing—perhaps because he was also an avid compiler of quotations.

A page of quotations from Journal XV. He crossed out quotations as he used them in his own writing, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, Vol. II

In fact, Emerson delivered an entire lecture titled “Quotation and Originality,” praising the art of quotation. After all, in the annals of history, Emerson is among the most quotable—and among the most in love with quotation. In a journal, Emerson wrote the following directions to himself, which deserve to be inscribed in all of our commonplace books:

Make your own Bible. Select & Collect all those words & sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of a trumpet out of Shakespear [sic], Seneca, Moses, John, & Paul.⁸

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Notes on Emerson’s Notes

Name your notebooks: the names we give our notebooks designate a relationship—sometimes aspirational—with literature and the world of ideas. I wonder how my relationship to my notebooks might change if I named them “The Wide World.” Would my ideas become more expansive?

Nothing’s truly new, but you should still develop a symbol for your personal thoughts: Emerson lectured that new material is really just a recomposition of old matter—much like

…Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition.⁹

When you recompose material in such a way that it becomes your own, you might as well designate it with your unique symbol.

Dedicate your pages to an ideal: We turn to our notebooks with hope—to remember quotations, to produce new writing, to document our lives. Perhaps a dedication page to focus that hope might be beneficial.

What ideal would you dedicate your notebooks to?

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Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I’d love to know your thoughts!

Yours in note-taking,

P.S.

Many of you asked for tips on how to remember quotations we’ve written in our notebooks. Paid subscribers can read the P.S. that delved into Emerson’s answer to that very question.

P.P.S.

There are just a few days left to take advantage of the Holiday Sale!

1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Harvard University Press, 1960, IV. 27.

2. Bloom, Harold. “Grandfather Emerson.” London Review of Books, vol. 16, no. 07, 7 Apr. 1994. www.lrb.co.uk, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n07/harold-bloom/grandfather-emerson.

3. Emerson, The Journals, I, 3-4.

4. Emerson, The Journals, I. 59.

5. Emerson, The Journals, II. 134.

6. Emerson, The Journals, II. 3.

7. Emerson, The Journals, II. 3.

8. Emerson, The Journals, V. 186.

9. Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” in the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.