Henry Thoreau

Walden (Ch. 2)

On Walden Pond
(Henry, You Old Poop!)

After a Thoreau reading, I must say I am not a huge fan of Mr. T. While he has some wonderful things to say, I'm just not particularly taken with the way he says them. Perhaps it's a "Mars" thing and men will like this type of reading more than women.

I found it interesting that Thoreau would rather resign from his teaching position than administer corporal punishment. If it is as he says it is, then I hardly think corporal punishment was the whole reason for his resignation. Instead, I think it more likely that he simply wanted to live in the fullest sense of the word and this did not involve a "nine to five" gig, although the writer did eventually run his father's pencil factory. A writer in the pencil industry... too precious for words.

Passages I underlined:

1. "...a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

2. "The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated..."

3. "It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail."



One can hear conversations between Emerson and Thoreau in Mr. T's picture of wind howling through the walls of his abode:
"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it."

Emerson: Many have not seen the sun.
Thoreau: Few have heard the wind.

I note a curiosity: while everyone is sleeping these two transcendentalists are not content with what they see and hear but must observe that others do not. Emerson is gentle in his surmisings while Thoreau is less so, which, I suspect is partly where the latter gets his surly reputation.

The biography for Thoreau incorrectly states that he was never married. But of course we know that he was married quite obviously to the natural environment. At times darling was diety. The man was content. Are any? ha-HA! Now I join the Emerson/Thoreau dialogue with "None are content." Let's turn our gaze away from the sun, our ears away from the wind, our hearts away from contentment and spend one better (bitter?) second grumbling! Sigh...

One who heard and captured the "celestial music" of Walden.
Click on 12.2mb to feast your ears on the fourth movement, AKA "Thoreau", of Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2 of "Concord, Mass 1840-60".

More underlined passages:
"There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden."
Something chilling and real about that even so.

"Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air-to a higher life than we fell asleep from..."
The stay-at-home, homeschooling mother has the advantage! Suddenly the lottery is mine!

"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary."
...unless pencil-purveying Pops kicks off and those ten-and-a-halfs need filling.

"...somewhat hastily..."
I resist the temptation to take umbrage at this, but I do contend that some of us were looong in coming to the conclusion (that the chief end of man is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever"). ...long, lean, languishing and lost.

"...tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense..."
He doesn't know the half of it I suppose.

"The rails are laid on them..."
Terrific metaphor!

"...he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man had had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself."
Not wholly parallel but brought to mind Matthew 7:3-5.

"If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets."
That exactly.

"For my part, I could easily do without the post-office."
Life before Ebay.

"If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or..."
I laughed. Like myself, one example is not enough, but ten of the same beats it well into the reader. It transcends didacticism and becomes a frothing at the mouth. Ah, Thoreau! And yet he says:

"One is enough."

ha-HA!

And more:
"If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip."
How in the world did this news man (in his own write) get his sullen reputation? It can't be fathomed.

"...Nilometer, but a Realometer..."
Some semblance of humor; I hope he meant it.

Lastly,
"If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities..."
Amen and amen.

All in all, knowing much nothing about Thoreau, I hold the image of an anti-social chap who spent a great deal of time in the company of trees. A minimalist yet a steward of the earth, I dare say the "pencil prophet" might have spent some of his pencil profit on items such as these:

Thoreau's Home Depot Reciept
item one
item two
item three
item four (Please forgive me.)
item five
item six
item seven
and he wouldn't have had a car, but if he did: item eight

Visit Thoreau's Cabin at Walden (be sure to click the "next" buttons for a tour)
Visit Thoreau's grave in summer.
Visit Thoreau's grave in winter.