Read Emerson

Not uncritically, but not selectively either. Read him in full for the vigor of his prose: prose powered by erudite conviction. Erudite, but not academic.

Read him devotionally, as Nietzsche read him.

Read him for a map to the road not taken.



Read him and recognize in his poems, essays, and journals what Rilke recognized as he gazed at an archaic torso of Apollo.

Read Emerson and stop imagining that anybody buys your alibis.