Ralph Waldo Emerson battles dementia while debating whether to intercede in a Black soldier’s unjust arrest
In 1879, toward the end of his life, the Sage of Concord has lost his words. Beset by aphasia and grief, Ralph Waldo Emerson is scarcely recognizable as America’s foremost essayist and orator. To the dismay of his wife, he frequently entertains the specters of his fellow transcendentalists, including Whitman, Thoreau, John Muir, and Margaret Fuller, and frets about the future of humankind and the natural world. Does the present displace the past? Do ideas always precede actions? What responsibility does each of us bear for the downtrodden, the preservation of liberty, and the Earth itself? These metaphysical concerns become concrete when Emerson meets a Black soldier accused of killing a white man who abused him. The soldier’s presence demands a response from Emerson, an action outside the parlors of philosophy and beyond the realm where language and logic hold sway.
The Ice Harp, the tenth stand-alone book in The American Novels series, is a poignant portrayal of a literary luminary coming to terms with the loss of memory, the cost of inaction, and the end of life.
- ISBN10 1954276176
- ISBN13 9781954276178
- Publish Date 17 August 2023 (first published 4 July 2023)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Bellevue Literary Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 240
- Language English