"There is properly no history, only biography...." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is properly no history, only biography.
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More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.”
“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all.”
“But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.”