Thoreau was a great musician, not because he played the flute but
because he did not have to go to Boston to hear "the Symphony." The
rhythm of his prose, were there nothing else, would determine his value
as a composer. He was divinely conscious of the enthusiasm of Nature,
the emotion of her rhythms and the harmony of her solitude. In this
consciousness he sang of the submission to Nature, the religion of
contemplation, and the freedom of simplicity--a philosophy
distinguishing between the complexity of Nature which teaches freedom,
and the complexity of materialism which teaches slavery. In music, in
poetry, in all art, the truth as one sees it must be given in terms
which bear some proportion to the inspiration. In their greatest
moments the inspiration of both Beethoven and Thoreau express profound
truths and deep sentiment, but the intimate passion of it, the storm
and stress of it, affected Beethoven in such a way that he could not
but be ever showing it and Thoreau that he could not easily expose it.
They were equally imbued with it, but with different results. A
difference in temperament had something to do with this, together with
a difference in the quality of expression between the two arts. "Who
that has heard a strain of music feared lest he would speak
extravagantly forever," says Thoreau. Perhaps music is the art of
speaking extravagantly. Herbert Spencer says that some men, as for
instance Mozart, are so peculiarly sensitive to emotion ... that music is
to them but a continuation not only of the expression but of the actual
emotion, though the theory of some more modern thinkers in the
philosophy of art doesn't always bear this out. However, there is no
doubt that in its nature music is predominantly subjective and tends to
subjective expression, and poetry more objective tending to objective
expression. Hence the poet when his muse calls for a deeper feeling
must invert this order, and he may be reluctant to do so as these
depths often call for an intimate expression which the physical looks
of the words may repel. They tend to reveal the nakedness of his soul
rather than its warmth. It is not a matter of the relative value of the
aspiration, or a difference between subconsciousness and consciousness
but a difference in the arts themselves; for example, a composer may
not shrink from having the public hear his "love letter in tones,"
while a poet may feel sensitive about having everyone read his "letter
in words." When the object of the love is mankind the sensitiveness is
changed only in degree.
But the message of Thoreau, though his fervency may be inconstant and
his human appeal not always direct, is, both in thought and spirit, as
universal as that of any man who ever wrote or sang--as universal as it
is nontemporaneous--as universal as it is free from the measure of
history, as "solitude is free from the measure of the miles of space
that intervene between man and his fellows." In spite of the fact that
Henry James (who knows almost everything) says that "Thoreau is more
than provincial--that he is parochial," let us repeat that Henry
Thoreau, in respect to thought, sentiment, imagination, and soul, in
respect to every element except that of place of physical being--a
thing that means so much to some--is as universal as any personality in
literature. That he said upon being shown a specimen grass from Iceland
that the same species could be found in Concord is evidence of his
universality, not of his parochialism. He was so universal that he did
not need to travel around the world to PROVE it. "I have more of God,
they more of the road." "It is not worth while to go around the world
to count the cats in Zanzibar." With Marcus Aurelius, if he had seen
the present he had seen all, from eternity and all time forever.
Thoreau's susceptibility to natural sounds was probably greater than
that of many practical musicians. True, this appeal is mainly through
the sensational element which Herbert Spencer thinks the predominant
beauty of music. Thoreau seems able to weave from this source some
perfect transcendental symphonies. Strains from the Orient get the best
of some of the modern French music but not of Thoreau. He seems more
interested in than influenced by Oriental philosophy. He admires its
ways of resignation and self-contemplation but he doesn't contemplate
himself in the same way. He often quotes from the Eastern scriptures
passages which were they his own he would probably omit, i.e., the
Vedas say "all intelligences awake with the morning." This seems
unworthy of "accompanying the undulations of celestial music" found on
this same page, in which an "ode to morning" is sung--"the awakening to
newly acquired forces and aspirations from within to a higher life than
we fell asleep from ... for all memorable events transpire in the morning
time and in the morning atmosphere." Thus it is not the whole tone
scale of the Orient but the scale of a Walden morning--"music in single
strains," as Emerson says, which inspired many of the polyphonies and
harmonies that come to us through his poetry. Who can be forever
melancholy "with Aeolian music like this"?
This is but one of many ways in which Thoreau looked to Nature for his
greatest inspirations. In her he found an analogy to the Fundamental of
Transcendentalism. The "innate goodness" of Nature is or can be a moral
influence; Mother Nature, if man will but let her, will keep him
straight--straight spiritually and so morally and even mentally. If he
will take her as a companion, and teacher, and not as a duty or a
creed, she will give him greater thrills and teach him greater truths
than man can give or teach--she will reveal mysteries that mankind has
long concealed. It was the soul of Nature not natural history that
Thoreau was after. A naturalist's mind is one predominantly scientific,
more interested in the relation of a flower to other flowers than its
relation to any philosophy or anyone's philosophy. A transcendent love
of Nature and writing "Rhus glabra" after sumac doesn't necessarily
make a naturalist. It would seem that although thorough in observation
(not very thorough according to Mr. Burroughs) and with a keen
perception of the specific, a naturalist--inherently--was exactly what
Thoreau was not. He seems rather to let Nature put him under her
microscope than to hold her under his. He was too fond of Nature to
practice vivisection upon her. He would have found that painful, "for
was he not a part with her?" But he had this trait of a naturalist,
which is usually foreign to poets, even great ones; he observed acutely
even things that did not particularly interest him--a useful natural
gift rather than a virtue.
The study of Nature may tend to make one dogmatic, but the love of
Nature surely does not. Thoreau no more than Emerson could be said to
have compounded doctrines. His thinking was too broad for that. If
Thoreau's was a religion of Nature, as some say,--and by that they
mean that through Nature's influence man is brought to a deeper
contemplation, to a more spiritual self-scrutiny, and thus closer to
God,--it had apparently no definite doctrines. Some of his theories
regarding natural and social phenomena and his experiments in the art
of living are certainly not doctrinal in form, and if they are in
substance it didn't disturb Thoreau and it needn't us... "In proportion
as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less
complex and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor
weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air your work need
not be lost; that is where they should be, now put the foundations
under them." ... "Then we will love with the license of a higher order
of beings." Is that a doctrine? Perhaps. At any rate, between the lines
of some such passage as this lie some of the fountain heads that water
the spiritual fields of his philosophy and the seeds from which they
are sown (if indeed his whole philosophy is but one spiritual garden).
His experiments, social and economic, are a part of its cultivation and
for the harvest--and its transmutation, he trusts to moments of
inspiration--"only what is thought, said, and done at a certain rare
coincidence is good."
Thoreau's experiment at Walden was, broadly speaking, one of these
moments. It stands out in the casual and popular opinion as a kind of
adventure--harmless and amusing to some, significant and important to
others; but its significance lies in the fact that in trying to
practice an ideal he prepared his mind so that it could better bring
others "into the Walden-state-of-mind." He did not ask for a literal
approval, or in fact for any approval. "I would not stand between any
man and his genius." He would have no one adopt his manner of life,
unless in doing so he adopts his own--besides, by that time "I may have
found a better one." But if he preached hard he practiced harder what
he preached--harder than most men. Throughout Walden a text that he is
always pounding out is "Time." Time for inside work out-of-doors;
preferably out-of-doors, "though you perhaps may have some pleasant,
thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house." Wherever the
place--time there must be. Time to show the unnecessariness of
necessities which clog up time. Time to contemplate the value of man to
the universe, of the universe to man, man's excuse for being. Time FROM
the demands of social conventions. Time FROM too much labor for some,
which means too much to eat, too much to wear, too much material, too
much materialism for others. Time FROM the "hurry and waste of life."
Time FROM the "St. Vitus Dance." BUT, on the other side of the ledger,
time FOR learning that "there is no safety in stupidity alone." Time
FOR introspection. Time FOR reality. Time FOR expansion. Time FOR
practicing the art, of living the art of living. Thoreau has been
criticized for practicing his policy of expansion by living in a
vacuum--but he peopled that vacuum with a race of beings and
established a social order there, surpassing any of the precepts in
social or political history. "...for he put some things behind and
passed an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws
were around and within him, the old laws were expanded and interpreted
in a more liberal sense and he lived with the license of a higher
order"--a community in which "God was the only President" and "Thoreau
not Webster was His Orator." It is hard to believe that Thoreau really
refused to believe that there was any other life but his own, though he
probably did think that there was not any other life besides his own
for him. Living for society may not always be best accomplished by
living WITH society. "Is there any virtue in a man's skin that you must
touch it?" and the "rubbing of elbows may not bring men's minds closer
together"; or if he were talking through a "worst seller" (magazine)
that "had to put it over" he might say, "forty thousand souls at a ball
game does not, necessarily, make baseball the highest expression of
spiritual emotion." Thoreau, however, is no cynic, either in character
or thought, though in a side glance at himself, he may have held out to
be one; a "cynic in independence," possibly because of his rule laid
down that "self-culture admits of no compromise."
It is conceivable that though some of his philosophy and a good deal of
his personality, in some of its manifestations, have outward colors
that do not seem to harmonize, the true and intimate relations they
bear each other are not affected. This peculiarity, frequently seen in
his attitude towards social-economic problems, is perhaps more
emphasized in some of his personal outbursts. "I love my friends very
much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them
commonly when I am near." It is easier to see what he means than it is
to forgive him for saying it. The cause of this apparent lack of
harmony between philosophy and personality, as far as they can be
separated, may have been due to his refusal "to keep the very delicate
balance" which Mr. Van Doren in his "Critical Study of Thoreau" says
"it is necessary for a great and good man to keep between his public
and private lives, between his own personality and the whole outside
universe of personalities." Somehow one feels that if he had kept this
balance he would have lost "hitting power." Again, it seems that
something of the above depends upon the degree of greatness or
goodness. A very great and especially a very good man has no separate
private and public life. His own personality though not identical with
outside personalities is so clear or can be so clear to them that it
appears identical, and as the world progresses towards its inevitable
perfection this appearance becomes more and more a reality. For the
same reason that all great men now agree, in principle but not in
detail, in so far as words are able to communicate agreement, on the
great fundamental truths. Someone says: "Be specific--what great
fundamentals?" Freedom over slavery; the natural over the artificial;
beauty over ugliness; the spiritual over the material; the goodness of
man; the Godness of man; have been greater if he hadn't written plays.
Some say that a true composer will never write an opera because a truly
brave man will not take a drink to keep up his courage; which is not
the same thing as saying that Shakespeare is not the greatest figure in
all literature; in fact, it is an attempt to say that many novels, most
operas, all Shakespeares, and all brave men and women (rum or no rum)
are among the noblest blessings with which God has endowed
mankind--because, not being perfect, they are perfect examples pointing
to that perfection which nothing yet has attained.
Thoreau's mysticism at times throws him into elusive moods--but an
elusiveness held by a thread to something concrete and specific, for he
had too much integrity of mind for any other kind. In these moments it
is easier to follow his thought than to follow him. Indeed, if he were
always easy to follow, after one had caught up with him, one might find
that it was not Thoreau.
It is, however, with no mystic rod that he strikes at institutional
life. Here again he felt the influence of the great transcendental
doctrine of "innate goodness" in human nature--a reflection of the like
in nature; a philosophic part which, by the way, was a more direct
inheritance in Thoreau than in his brother transcendentalists. For
besides what he received from a native Unitarianism a good part must
have descended to him through his Huguenot blood from the
"eighteenth-century French philosophy." We trace a reason here for his
lack of interest in "the church." For if revealed religion is the path
between God and man's spiritual part--a kind of formal
causeway--Thoreau's highly developed spiritual life felt, apparently
unconsciously, less need of it than most men. But he might have been
more charitable towards those who do need it (and most of us do) if he
had been more conscious of his freedom. Those who look today for the
cause of a seeming deterioration in the influence of the church may
find it in a wider development of this feeling of Thoreau's; that the
need is less because there is more of the spirit of Christianity in the
world today. Another cause for his attitude towards the church as an
institution is one always too common among "the narrow minds" to have
influenced Thoreau. He could have been more generous. He took the arc
for the circle, the exception for the rule, the solitary bad example
for the many good ones. His persistent emphasis on the value of
"example" may excuse this lower viewpoint. "The silent influence of the
example of one sincere life ... has benefited society more than all the
projects devised for its salvation." He has little patience for the
unpracticing preacher. "In some countries a hunting parson is no
uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd dog but is far
from being a good shepherd." It would have been interesting to have
seen him handle the speculating parson, who takes a good salary--more
per annum than all the disciples had to sustain their bodies during
their whole lives--from a metropolitan religious corporation for
"speculating" on Sunday about the beauty of poverty, who preaches:
"Take no thought (for your life) what ye shall eat or what ye shall
drink nor yet what ye shall put on ... lay not up for yourself treasure
upon earth ... take up thy cross and follow me"; who on Monday becomes a
"speculating" disciple of another god, and by questionable investments,
successful enough to get into the "press," seeks to lay up a treasure
of a million dollars for his old age, as if a million dollars could
keep such a man out of the poor-house. Thoreau might observe that this
one good example of Christian degeneracy undoes all the acts of
regeneracy of a thousand humble five-hundred-dollar country parsons;
that it out-influences the "unconscious influence" of a dozen Dr.
Bushnells if there be that many; that the repentance of this man who
did not "fall from grace" because he never fell into it--that this
unnecessary repentance might save this man's own soul but not
necessarily the souls of the million head-line readers; that repentance
would put this preacher right with the powers that be in this
world--and the next. Thoreau might pass a remark upon this man's
intimacy with God "as if he had a monopoly of the subject"--an intimacy
that perhaps kept him from asking God exactly what his Son meant by the
"camel," the "needle"--to say nothing of the "rich man." Thoreau might
have wondered how this man NAILED DOWN the last plank in HIS bridge to
salvation, by rising to sublime heights of patriotism, in HIS war
against materialism; but would even Thoreau be so unfeeling as to
suggest to this exhorter that HIS salvation might be clinched "if he
would sacrifice his income" (not himself) and come--in to a real
Salvation Army, or that the final triumph, the supreme happiness in
casting aside this mere $10,000 or $20,000 every year must be denied
him--for was he not captain of the ship--must he not stick to his
passengers (in the first cabin--the very first cabin)--not that the
ship was sinking but that he was ... we will go no further. Even Thoreau
would not demand sacrifice for sacrifice sake--no, not even from Nature.
Property from the standpoint of its influence in checking natural
self-expansion and from the standpoint of personal and inherent right
is another institution that comes in for straight and cross-arm jabs,
now to the stomach, now to the head, but seldom sparring for breath.
For does he not say that "wherever a man goes, men will pursue him with
their dirty institutions"? The influence of property, as he saw it, on
morality or immorality and how through this it mayor should influence
"government" is seen by the following: "I am convinced that if all men
were to live as simply as I did, then thieving and robbery would be
unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more
than is sufficient while others have not enough--
Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum
Scyphus ante dapes--
You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ
punishments? Have virtue and the people will be virtuous." If Thoreau
had made the first sentence read: "If all men were like me and were to
live as simply," etc., everyone would agree with him. We may wonder
here how he would account for some of the degenerate types we are told
about in some of our backwoods and mountain regions. Possibly by
assuming that they are an instance of perversion of the species. That
the little civilizing their forbears experienced rendered these people
more susceptible to the physical than to the spiritual influence of
nature; in other words; if they had been purer naturists, as the Aztecs
for example, they would have been purer men. Instead of turning to any
theory of ours or of Thoreau for the true explanation of this
condition--which is a kind of pseudo-naturalism--for its true diagnosis
and permanent cure, are we not far more certain to find it in the
radiant look of humility, love, and hope in the strong faces of those
inspired souls who are devoting their lives with no little sacrifice to
these outcasts of civilization and nature. In truth, may not mankind
find the solution of its eternal problem--find it after and beyond the
last, most perfect system of wealth distribution which science can ever
devise--after and beyond the last sublime echo of the greatest
socialistic symphonies--after and beyond every transcendent thought and
expression in the simple example of these Christ-inspired souls--be
they Pagan, Gentile, Jew, or angel.
However, underlying the practical or impractical suggestions implied in
the quotation above, which is from the last paragraph of Thoreau's
Village, is the same transcendental theme of "innate goodness." For
this reason there must be no limitation except that which will free
mankind from limitation, and from a perversion of this "innate"
possession: And "property" may be one of the causes of this
perversion--property in the two relations cited above. It is
conceivable that Thoreau, to the consternation of the richest members
of the Bolsheviki and Bourgeois, would propose a policy of liberation,
a policy of a limited personal property right, on the ground that
congestion of personal property tends to limit the progress of the soul
(as well as the progress of the stomach)--letting the economic noise
thereupon take care of itself--for dissonances are becoming
beautiful--and do not the same waters that roar in a storm take care of
the eventual calm? That this limit of property be determined not by the
VOICE of the majority but by the BRAIN of the majority under a
government limited to no national boundaries. "The government of the
world I live in is not framed in after-dinner conversation"--around a
table in a capital city, for there is no capital--a government of
principles not parties; of a few fundamental truths and not of many
political expediencies. A government conducted by virtuous leaders, for
it will be led by all, for all are virtuous, as then their "innate
virtue" will no more be perverted by unnatural institutions. This will
not be a millennium but a practical and possible application of
uncommon common sense. For is it not sense, common or otherwise, for
Nature to want to hand back the earth to those to whom it belongs--that
is, to those who have to live on it? Is it not sense, that the average
brains like the average stomachs will act rightly if they have an equal
amount of the right kind of food to act upon and universal education is
on the way with the right kind of food? Is it not sense then that all
grown men and women (for all are necessary to work out the divine "law
of averages") shall have a direct not an indirect say about the things
that go on in this world?
Some of these attitudes, ungenerous or radical, generous or
conservative (as you will), towards institutions dear to many, have no
doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and
personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they
say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced
Yankee--a kind of a visionary sore-head--a cross-grained, egotistic
recluse,--even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than
prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who
make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often
comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle or
ideal. He was rude and unfriendly at times but shyness probably had
something to do with that. In spite of a certain self-possession he was
diffident in most company, but, though he may have been subject to
those spells when words do not rise and the mind seems wrapped in a
kind of dull cloth which everyone dumbly stares at, instead of looking
through--he would easily get off a rejoinder upon occasion. When a
party of visitors came to Walden and some one asked Thoreau if he found
it lonely there, he replied: "Only by your help." A remark
characteristic, true, rude, if not witty. The writer remembers hearing
a schoolteacher in English literature dismiss Thoreau (and a half hour
lesson, in which time all of Walden,--its surface--was sailed over) by
saying that this author (he called everyone "author" from Solomon down
to Dr. Parkhurst) "was a kind of a crank who styled himself a
hermit-naturalist and who idled about the woods because he didn't want
to work." Some such stuff is a common conception, though not as common
as it used to be. If this teacher had had more brains, it would have
been a lie. The word idled is the hopeless part of this criticism, or
rather of this uncritical remark. To ask this kind of a man, who plays
all the "choice gems from celebrated composers" literally, always
literally, and always with the loud pedal, who plays all hymns, wrong
notes, right notes, games, people, and jokes literally, and with the
loud pedal, who will die literally and with the loud pedal--to ask this
man to smile even faintly at Thoreau's humor is like casting a pearl
before a coal baron. Emerson implies that there is one thing a genius
must have to be a genius and that is "mother wit." ... "Doctor Johnson,
Milton, Chaucer, and Burns had it. Aunt Mary Moody Emerson has it and
can write scrap letters. Who has it need never write anything but
scraps. Henry Thoreau has it." His humor though a part of this wit is
not always as spontaneous, for it is sometimes pun shape (so is Charles
Lamb's)--but it is nevertheless a kind that can serenely transport us
and which we can enjoy without disturbing our neighbors. If there are
those who think him cold-hearted and with but little human sympathy,
let them read his letters to Emerson's little daughter, or hear Dr.
Emerson tell about the Thoreau home life and the stories of his
boyhood--the ministrations to a runaway slave; or let them ask old Sam
Staples, the Concord sheriff about him. That he "was fond of a few
intimate friends, but cared not one fig for people in the mass," is a
statement made in a school history and which is superficially true. He
cared too much for the masses--too much to let his personality be
"massed"; too much to be unable to realize the futility of wearing his
heart on his sleeve but not of wearing his path to the shore of
"Walden" for future masses to walk over and perchance find the way to
themselves. Some near-satirists are fond of telling us that Thoreau
came so close to Nature that she killed him before he had discovered
her whole secret. They remind us that he died with consumption but
forget that he lived with consumption. And without using much charity,
this can be made to excuse many of his irascible and uncongenial moods.
You to whom that gaunt face seems forbidding--look into the eyes! If he
seems "dry and priggish" to you, Mr. Stevenson, "with little of that
large unconscious geniality of the world's heroes," follow him some
spring morning to Baker Farm, as he "rambles through pine groves ... like
temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs and
rippling with light so soft and green and shady that the Druids would
have forsaken their oaks to worship in them." Follow him to "the cedar
wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees covered with hoary blue
berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla."
Follow him, but not too closely, for you may see little, if you do--"as
he walks in so pure and bright a light gilding its withered grass and
leaves so softly and serenely bright that he thinks he has never bathed
in such a golden flood." Follow him as "he saunters towards the holy
land till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever it has
done, perchance shine into your minds and hearts and light up your
whole lives with a great awakening, light as warm and serene and golden
as on a bankside in autumn." Follow him through the golden flood to the
shore of that "holy land," where he lies dying as men say--dying as
bravely as he lived. You may be near when his stern old aunt in the
duty of her Puritan conscience asks him: "Have you made your peace with
God"? and you may see his kindly smile as he replies, "I did not know
that we had ever quarreled." Moments like these reflect more nobility
and equanimity perhaps than geniality--qualities, however, more
serviceable to world's heroes.
The personal trait that one who has affection for Thoreau may find
worst is a combative streak, in which he too often takes refuge. "An
obstinate elusiveness," almost a "contrary cussedness," as if he would
say, which he didn't: "If a truth about something is not as I think it
ought to be, I'll make it what I think, and it WILL be the truth--but
if you agree with me, then I begin to think it may not be the truth."
The causes of these unpleasant colors (rather than characteristics) are
too easily attributed to a lack of human sympathy or to the assumption
that they are at least symbols of that lack instead of to a
supersensitiveness, magnified at times by ill health and at times by a
subconsciousness of the futility of actually living out his ideals in
this life. It has been said that his brave hopes were unrealized
anywhere in his career--but it is certain that they started to be
realized on or about May 6, 1862, and we doubt if 1920 will end their
fulfillment or his career. But there were many in Concord who knew that
within their village there was a tree of wondrous growth, the shadow of
which--alas, too frequently--was the only part they were allowed to
touch. Emerson was one of these. He was not only deeply conscious of
Thoreau's rare gifts but in the Woodland Notes pays a tribute to a side
of his friend that many others missed. Emerson knew that Thoreau's
sensibilities too often veiled his nobilities, that a self-cultivated
stoicism ever fortified with sarcasm, none the less securely because it
seemed voluntary, covered a warmth of feeling. "His great heart, him a
hermit made." A breadth of heart not easily measured, found only in the
highest type of sentimentalists, the type which does not perpetually
discriminate in favor of mankind. Emerson has much of this sentiment
and touches it when he sings of Nature as "the incarnation of a
thought," when he generously visualizes Thoreau, "standing at the
Walden shore invoking the vision of a thought as it drifts heavenward
into an incarnation of Nature." There is a Godlike patience in
Nature,-in her mists, her trees, her mountains--as if she had a more
abiding faith and a clearer vision than man of the resurrection and
immortality! There comes to memory an old yellow-papered composition of
school-boy days whose peroration closed with "Poor Thoreau; he communed
with nature for forty odd years, and then died." "The forty odd
years,"--we'll still grant that part, but he is over a hundred now, and
maybe, Mr. Lowell, he is more lovable, kindlier, and more radiant with
human sympathy today, than, perchance, you were fifty years ago. It may
be that he is a far stronger, a far greater, an incalculably greater
force in the moral and spiritual fibre of his fellow-countrymen
throughout the world today than you dreamed of fifty years ago. You,
James Russell Lowells! You, Robert Louis Stevensons! You, Mark Van
Dorens! with your literary perception, your power of illumination, your
brilliancy of expression, yea, and with your love of sincerity, you
know your Thoreau, but not my Thoreau--that reassuring and true friend,
who stood by me one "low" day, when the sun had gone down, long, long
before sunset. You may know something of the affection that heart
yearned for but knew it a duty not to grasp; you may know something of
the great human passions which stirred that soul--too deep for animate
expression--you may know all of this, all there is to know about
Thoreau, but you know him not, unless you love him!
And if there shall be a program for our music let it follow his thought
on an autumn day of Indian summer at Walden--a shadow of a thought at
first, colored by the mist and haze over the pond:
Low anchored cloud,
Fountain head and
Source of rivers...
Dew cloth, dream drapery--
Drifting meadow of the air....
but this is momentary; the beauty of the day moves him to a certain
restlessness--to aspirations more specific--an eagerness for outward
action, but through it all he is conscious that it is not in keeping
with the mood for this "Day." As the mists rise, there comes a clearer
thought more traditional than the first, a meditation more calm. As he
stands on the side of the pleasant hill of pines and hickories in front
of his cabin, he is still disturbed by a restlessness and goes down the
white-pebbled and sandy eastern shore, but it seems not to lead him
where the thought suggests--he climbs the path along the "bolder
northern" and "western shore, with deep bays indented," and now along
the railroad track, "where the Aeolian harp plays." But his eagerness
throws him into the lithe, springy stride of the specie hunter--the
naturalist--he is still aware of a restlessness; with these faster
steps his rhythm is of shorter span--it is still not the tempo of
Nature, it does not bear the mood that the genius of the day calls for,
it is too specific, its nature is too external, the introspection too
buoyant, and he knows now that he must let Nature flow through him and
slowly; he releases his more personal desires to her broader rhythm,
conscious that this blends more and more with the harmony of her
solitude; it tells him that his search for freedom on that day, at
least, lies in his submission to her, for Nature is as relentless as
she is benignant.
He remains in this mood and while outwardly still, he seems to move
with the slow, almost monotonous swaying beat of this autumnal day. He
is more contented with a "homely burden" and is more assured of "the
broad margin to his life; he sits in his sunny doorway ... rapt in
revery ... amidst goldenrod, sandcherry, and sumac ... in undisturbed
solitude." At times the more definite personal strivings for the ideal
freedom, the former more active speculations come over him, as if he
would trace a certain intensity even in his submission. "He grew in
those seasons like corn in the night and they were better than any
works of the hands. They were not time subtracted from his life but so
much over and above the usual allowance." "He realized what the
Orientals meant by contemplation and forsaking of works." "The day
advanced as if to light some work of his--it was morning and lo! now it
is evening and nothing memorable is accomplished..." "The evening train
has gone by," and "all the restless world with it. The fishes in the
pond no longer feel its rumbling and he is more alone than ever..." His
meditations are interrupted only by the faint sound of the Concord
bell--'tis prayer-meeting night in the village--"a melody as it were,
imported into the wilderness..." "At a distance over the woods the
sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the
horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept... A vibration of the
universal lyre... Just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant
ridge of earth interesting to the eyes by the azure tint it imparts."
... Part of the echo may be "the voice of the wood; the same trivial
words and notes sung by the wood nymph." It is darker, the poet's flute
is heard out over the pond and Walden hears the swan song of that "Day"
and faintly echoes... Is it a transcendental tune of Concord? 'Tis an
evening when the "whole body is one sense," ... and before ending his
day he looks out over the clear, crystalline water of the pond and
catches a glimpse of the shadow--thought he saw in the morning's mist
and haze--he knows that by his final submission, he possesses the
"Freedom of the Night." He goes up the "pleasant hillside of pines,
hickories," and moonlight to his cabin, "with a strange liberty in
Nature, a part of herself."