The craving for literary expression in Thoreau was strong and
constant, but, as he confesses, he could not always select a theme. "I
am prepared not so much for contemplation as for forceful expression."
No matter what the occasion, "forceful expression" was the aim. No
meditation, or thinking, but sallies of the mind. All his paradoxes
and false analogies and inconsistencies come from this craving for a
forceful expression. He apparently brought to bear all the skill he
possessed of this kind on all occasions. One must regard him, not as a
great thinker, nor as a disinterested seeker after the truth, but as a
master in the art of vigorous and picturesque expression. To startle,
to wake up, to communicate to his reader a little wholesome shock, is
his aim. Not the novelty and freshness of his subject-matter concerns
him but the novelty and unhackneyed character of his literary style.
That throughout the years a man should keep up the habit of walking,
by night as well as by day, and bring such constant intellectual
pressure to bear upon everything he saw, or heard, or felt, is
remarkable. No evidence of relaxation, or of abandonment to the mere
pleasure of the light and air and of green things growing, or of
sauntering without thoughts of his Journal. He is as keyed up and
strenuous in his commerce with the Celestial Empire as any tradesman
in world goods that ever amassed a fortune. He sometimes wrote as he
walked, and expanded and elaborated the same as in his study. On one
occasion he dropped his pencil and could not find it, but he managed
to complete the record. One night on his way to Conantum he speculates
for nearly ten printed pages on the secret of being able to state a
fact simply and adequately, or of making one's self the free organ of
truth--a subtle and ingenious discussion with the habitual craving for
forceful expression. In vain I try to put myself in the place of a man
who goes forth into wild nature with malice prepense to give free
swing to his passion for forcible expression. I suppose all
nature-writers go forth on their walks or strolls to the fields and
woods with minds open to all of Nature's genial influences and
significant facts and incidents, but rarely, I think, with the
strenuousness of Thoreau--grinding the grist as they go along.
Thoreau compares himself to the bee that goes forth in quest of honey
for the hive: "How to extract honey from the flower of the world. That
is my everyday business. I am as busy as the bee about it. I ramble
over all fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel
myself heavy with honey and wax." To get material for his Journal was
as much his business as it was the bee's to get honey for his comb. He
apparently did not know that the bee does not get honey nor wax
directly from the flowers, but only nectar, or sweet water. The bee,
as I have often said, makes the honey and the wax after she gets home
to the swarm. She puts the nectar through a process of her own, adds a
drop of her own secretion to it, namely, formic acid, the water
evaporates, and lo! the tang and pungency of honey!