Monday, January 13, 2014
Homer in America
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (October, 1842):
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This feeling I have respecting Homer & Greek, that in this great empty continent of ours stretching enormous almost from pole to pole with thousands of long rivers and thousands of ranges of mountains, the rare scholar who under a farmhouse roof reads Homer and the Tragedies adorns the land. He begins to fill it with wit, to counterbalance the enormous disproportion of the unquickened earth. He who first reads Homer in America is its Cadmus & Numa, and a subtle but unlimited benefactor.
