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In February of 1857, Ralph Waldo Emerson received a letter from Peter Kaufmann of Canton, Ohio, initiating what was to become a rather intensive correspondence that led eventually to a meeting of the two men in New York, which Emerson recorded in his journal. In all, Kaufmann, a Hegelian philosopher and self-styled Reformer, wrote ten letters to Emerson, including a "lengthy Epistle" of some eighty pages, designed to introduce Emerson to his life and thought, and Emerson replied with five letters to Kaufmann. In Emerson's five brief responses, his large, uniformly generous nature is exhibited; these letters to Kaufmann underscore Emerson's inimitable ability to fill the important and rather peculiar position of literary and philosophical midwife to nineteenth-century America, from which he never ceased to encourage the development of his contemporaries, from Thoreau and Alcott and Margaret Fuller to the likes of men such as Kaufmann. But no less important is the extremely fascinating portrait the letters paint of a little-known Midwestern philosopher holding forth on the frontier, vigorously asserting an affinity with Emerson's thought that, in fact, was more perceived than actual. Kaufmann's is one of the "other minds" Emerson might have been more inclined to explore, had he been given half a chance, but Kaufmann instead revealed all of himself, and this revelation, perhaps, was simply too much, too soon. However abortive the Emerson-Kaufmann correspondence may have been, it stands, nevertheless, irrespective of the immediate concerns of either of the correspondents, as a link in the continuity of American Idealism, a way station in the gradual westward movement of a philosophical heritage that was to culminate after the Civil War with the succession of New England Transcendentalism by St. Louis Hegelianism. This annotated edition of the correspondence of Emerson and Kaufmann is a transcription of the original manuscripts based upon photocopies and microfilms supplied by Columbia University Library and The Houghton Library at Harvard University. Within the limitations of typescript, the literal text is reproduced insofar as possible. The edition is prefaced with a critical introduction, tracing the development of the correspondence and discussing it in detail, and it is concluded with a comprehensive bibliography and appendices reprinting Emerson's letter to his brother William informing him of the forthcoming meeting with Kaufmann, and Emerson's two journal entries reflecting on Kaufmann. |
