We’ve come to the final anecdote of Walden. A year of blog posts about this book and here we are. The end of the trail. The last roundup. The final lines are to be delivered, and then it’s roll credits and cue the theme song.
So what does Henry have for us today? What is his grand summation of his magnum opus?
He’s going to talk about the eggs of a bug.
That’s it. That’s his grand sendoff. But listen to it: Continue reading
“There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
When you read Thoreau’s long rants against civilization, against triviality, against conventional thinking, remember this: his big concern is that we’re missing the best stuff. He thinks we tend to settle for lesser lives, and that we drive ourselves crazy thinking about all the wrong things. There’s a better world out there, he’s saying, and it’s all around you. It’s right in front of you. All you have to do is reach out and there it is.
We come to the book’s closing words in the next post.
(About “A Year in Walden”)
The book is drawing to a close, with Thoreau back living in a large house with others. You can hear his irritation as he talks about the small-talk, the daily news, the ephemera of “this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century.”
He is looking for something solid on which to rest his mind. He talks about bogs and quicksands and looking for a solid bottom. He talks about not wanting to drive nails into plaster and lath only, but into the solid stud that lies beneath: Continue reading
“If you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
This is a remarkable thing for a writer to say, particularly in the conclusion of the book he’s been working on for several years. Moreover, it’s a remarkable thing for such an avid reader to say, a man who read voraciously, deeply, and in several languages — often going back and re-reading books to learn more from them.
But this brings us back to what Walden is about. It’s a book about experience. That’s what’s most important. Thoreau isn’t being dismissive books or of education so much as he’s emphasizing the value of paying attention to your surroundings, both internal and external. After all, what are books without a contemplative spirit? The most valuable book is the book of the world, and it is always near at hand, always open.
(About “A Year in Walden”)
Milky Way Galaxy Stars West Virginia Mountain Sky. Wikimedia Commons
“Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”
— Henry David Thoreau, from “Conclusion,” Walden
(About “A Year in Walden”)
“No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.”
I found this part confusing and had to read it several times and look up “case.” What does Thoreau mean? Does he mean a case as in a box or container, or a case as a set of circumstances or conditions? I think he means both. This looks like another instance of Thoreauvian wordplay. The circumstances which you suppose then become a box in which you confine yourself, and at that point it doesn’t matter that the box is imaginary. You’re trapped just the same. That’s what he means by being in two cases at the same time — you’re confined not only by reality itself, but also by your assumptions about reality. It reminds me of a saying I heard: “Most of life is imaginary.”
It’s best, Henry believes, to be honest about our circumstances and find joy in them: Continue reading
Near the end of Walden, Thoreau tells a story, a parable of an artist who decides to make a perfect staff. “Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life.”
And so he spends years and years on the project, and “As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him.” His friends grow old and die, but he labors on patiently. His city of Kouroo crumbles, dynasties fall, ages pass, and still he persists.
“When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions….”
The part about time is hyperbole, of course. Though our perception of time is altered when we are deeply involved in something, time will not stop for you, and whatever time you devote to one passion is necessarily subtracted from everything else. Henry recognized this when he left Walden Pond because he had “several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
But here he’s telling us that the slow pursuit of perfection is a worthwhile project. He lived in an age — like ours — in which people were perpetually busy making a living, getting ahead, and dealing with all the crises and demands of their lives. In such a world it’s worthwhile, he believed, to do something slowly and well.
“The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful?”
(About “A Year in Walden”)
Shall we with pains
erect a heaven of blue glass
over ourselves,
though when it is done
we shall be sure to gaze still
at the true ethereal heaven far above,
as if the former were not?
— Henry David Thoreau, from “Conclusion,” Walden
Tonight, a political rant, but this time I’m going after many of my fellow liberals: I’m against the expulsion of University of Oklahoma students involved in the recent racist video. I’m not defending these guys. (And I think the closing of their frat house is another matter; one could make a case for it based on nondiscrimination laws.)
What I’m talking about is the expression of ideas, good or bad. There’s an important reason to support free speech as a principle, and not just when we agree with the content, and this reason is amply illustrated by history: Once people get used to prohibiting speech they find offensive, they soon ban the defense of many good ideas and the criticism of many bad ones.
Speech codes have no place at a university. Aside from libel and threats of violence, the only rule should be, “If you say it, you will be called upon to defend it.” Open prejudice is its own worst enemy.
Thoreau lived in an age in which learned people were still in awe of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which were seen as representing a golden age of civilization that the modern world had yet to recover. Similarly, the United States was often seen as a young and backwards nation that was culturally inferior to Europe. But Henry, though he loved the classics as much as anyone, was unconcerned:
“Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.” Continue reading
The Curious People 