Margaret Fuller's 150-year-old wisdom on what makes a great political leader, a watercolor love letter to mornings, Liz Gilbert reads a favorite poem

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[Margaret Fuller on What Makes a Great Leader: Timeless Political Wisdom from the Founding Mother of American Feminism]( [figuring_jacket_final.jpg?fit=320%2C486]( At six, Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810–July 19, 1850) was reading in Latin. At twelve, she was conversing with her father in philosophy and pure mathematics. By fifteen, she had mastered French, Italian, and Greek, and was reading two or three lectures in philosophy every morning for mental discipline. In her short life, Fuller — one of the central figures in my book [Figuring]( and the person whom Emerson considered his greatest influence — would go on to write the foundational treatise of the women’s emancipation movement, author the most trusted literary and art criticism in America, work as the first female editor for a major New York newspaper and the only woman in the newsroom, advocate for prison reform and African American voting rights, and become America’s first foreign war correspondent, trekking through war-torn Rome while seven months pregnant. In her advocacy for African American, Native American, and women’s rights, Fuller would ardently espouse the simple, difficult truth that “while any one is base, none can be entirely free and noble.” All of this she would accomplish while bedeviled by debilitating chronic pain at the base of her neck — the result of a congenital spinal deformity that made it difficult to tilt her head down in order to write and was often accompanied by acute depression. [margaretfuller_daguerreotype.jpg?resize=680%2C880] The only known photograph of Margaret Fuller In her thirty-third year, in the midst of heartbreak, Fuller left her native New England to journey westward into the largely unfathomed frontiers of the country. She returned home transformed, awakened to new social, political, and existential realities. Eager to supplement her observations with historical research, she persuaded the Harvard library to grant her access to its book collection — the largest in the nation. No woman had previously been admitted for more than a tour. She then set about relaying her impressions and insights, ranging from a stunning portrait of Niagara Falls to a poignant account of the fate of the displaced Native American tribes with whom she sympathized and spent time. This became Fuller’s first book, [Summer on the Lakes]( — part travelogue, part anthropological study, and part political treatise. At the heart of the book — which greatly inspired the astronomer [Maria Mitchell]( anther key figure in Figuring — was the search for truth of a higher order. Punctuating Fuller’s lyrical prose are sentiments worn all the truer by time. In a passage that should be emblazoned on every voting ballot (and composed before what Ursula K. Le Guin wryly termed [“the invention of women,”]( when every woman was “man”), Fuller observes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]This country… needs… no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens, while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and dexterous for the use of human implements… a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others; a man who hives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures, nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, the gift which discerns tomorrow — when there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed. Find more of Fuller’s towering, prescient, yet tragically forgotten genius in [Figuring]( then revisit Walt Whitman, who admired her greatly, [on democracy and resistance](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider supporting my labor of love with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [Dawn: A Vintage Watercolor Serenade to the World Becoming Conscious of Itself]( [dawn.jpg?fit=320%2C268]( “In the name of daybreak / and the eyelids of morning / and the wayfaring moon / and the night when it departs,” Diane Ackerman wrote in her wondrous [poem-prayer for presence](. There is a singular and deeply assuring beauty to the prayerful optimism that daybreak brings. On the darkest of days, the knowledge that the sun will rise is the sole certainty we can hold on to. And when it does rise, it ignites the splendor of a world becoming conscious of itself — the first birdsong, the first breath, the first catlike stretch, the first cup of tea. That splendor is what the great Polish-American children’s book author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz (b. February 27, 1935) celebrates with uncommon tenderness of heart and brush in his 1974 masterpiece [Dawn]( ([public library]( — a watercolor serenade to the world as it becomes conscious of itself. The book opens with a splash of quiet stillness in the final stretch of night. [dawn21.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( [dawn1.jpg?resize=680%2C569]( [dawn2.jpg?resize=680%2C571]( [dawn3.jpg?resize=680%2C534]( Under a tree on the shore of the moonlit lake, an old man and a small boy sleep curled beneath their blankets. In spare words and soft watercolors, Shulevitz unspools the new day across the pages. The mountain stands solemn guard over the lake, its reflection shivering under the gentle touch of the breeze. [dawn4.jpg?resize=680%2C528]( [dawn24.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( [dawn5.jpg?resize=680%2C517]( [dawn6.jpg?resize=680%2C504]( [dawn22.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( [dawn7.jpg?resize=680%2C581]( [dawn23.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( We see creatures slowly come awake. [dawn8.jpg?resize=680%2C721]( [dawn10.jpg?resize=680%2C613]( [dawn11.jpg?resize=680%2C611]( Radiating from Shulevitz’s paintings is the aura of absolute, unassailable presence as the old man wakes his grandson and the two begin the quiet ritual of morning — drawing water from the lake, making fire, rolling up their blankets. With the landscape still blue under the unrisen sun, they push their boat onto the water and row it to the middle of the lake to witness that magical moment when the first rays turn the sky, the mountain, the lake, the whole world from blue to green — the diurnal ignition spark of aliveness. [dawn12.jpg?resize=680%2C570]( [dawn26.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( [dawn13.jpg?resize=680%2C611]( [dawn27.jpg?resize=680%2C440]( [dawn20.jpg?resize=680%2C456]( Complement [Dawn]( the analog loveliness of which cannot be even half-conveyed on this screen, with Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown’s little-known vintage celebration of the coming of the new day, [The Quiet Noisy Book]( then revisit Ohara Hale’s splendid [Be Still, Life](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [Elizabeth Gilbert Reads “The Early Hours” by Adam Zagajewski]( [adamzagajewski_withoutend.jpg?fit=320%2C494]( “The most regretful people on earth,” Mary Oliver wrote in her beautiful reflection on [the central commitment of the creative life]( “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” There is something lovely about this notion of giving time — a generous counterpoint to our culture of taking time, snatching it from the river of being with the fist of disciplined demand, only to see it slip through. The discipline of showing up is an absolutely necessary condition for all creative work, yes, but it is not a sufficient one. Sometimes — often — we show up, only to find nothing happens. Whatever it is we are showing up for — art, love — cannot be willed, cannot be wrested from the hour or the soul. We learn then that the work is the work, but the work is also the waiting — the exasperation, the surrender to despair, and the swell of joy on the other side of the surrender. That is what the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski explores with great subtlety and great warmth in his poem “The Early Hours,” found in his collection [Without End: New & Selected Poems]( ([public library]( translated by Clare Cavanagh (also the translator one of my favorite poets, the Polish Nobel laureate [Wisława Szymborska]( who lauded Cavanagh’s work as “that rare miracle when a translation stops being a translation and becomes… a second original.”) What an honor to have the wonderful [Elizabeth Gilbert]( masterly [serenader of and surrenderer to the muse]( read the poem for Brain Pickings: [0138115e-09ab-49c5-b0dc-1c8f451909e5.png]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]THE EARLY HOURS by Adam Zagajewski The early hours of morning; you still aren’t writing (rather you aren’t even trying), you just read lazily. Everything is idle, quiet, full, as if it were a gift from the muse of sluggishness, just as earlier, in childhood, on vacations, when a colored map was slowly scrutinized before a trip, a map promising so much, deep ponds in the forest like glittering butterfly eyes, mountain meadows drowning      sharp grass; or the moment before sleep, when no dreams have appeared, but they whisper their approach from all parts of the world, their march, their pilgrimage, their vigil at the sickbed (grown sick of wakefulness), and the quickening among medieval      figures compressed in endless stasis over the cathedral; the early hours of morning silence                                                             — you still aren’t writing, you still understand so much.                                         Joy is close. Complement with Gilbert’s profoundly moving [reflection on love and loss]( then savor more great artists reading great poems: Amanda Palmer reading [“Possibilities”]( and [“Life While-You-Wait”]( by Wisława Szymborska and [“Humanity i love you”]( by E.E. Cummings, James Gleick reading [“At the Fishhouses”]( by Elizabeth Bishop, Terrance Hayes reading [“cutting greens”]( by Lucille Clifton, Rosanne Cash reading [“Power”]( by Adrienne Rich, and Janna Levin reading [“A Brave and Startling Truth”]( by Maya Angelou, then revisit Rilke on [inspiration and the nature of creativity](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider supporting my labor of love with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings PLEASE DO NOT USE AS A MAILING ADDRESS 47 Bergen Street, 3rd floorBrooklyn, NY 11201 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](