"Walden; Or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau (1854)

"I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as a chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up."
- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden; or Life in the Woods" (Dover Thrift Editions, 1995), p55

The time I spent reading Thoreau was truly a pleasure; it was following perhaps six weeks of reading text books and never a prolonged moment of being outside though it was the middle of the summer season. In the middle of those studies I received a text message which informed me of a spare ticket to the Indietracks festival in Derbyshire (it was the festival of 2009). Peculiarly I was in the middle of a chapter of Scottish history which recounted the Jacobite march down to Derbyshire and there swift turning back of their army to Scotland. Of course I replied at once that I would come, personally being particularly fond of coincidences and such.

So having and attitude that could've only been gathered from a novel by Melville I left to meet my friends and took with me only few provisions, a change of clothes and a copy of Thoreau's Walden which I had left aside whilst a studied for a resit Reformation and Renaissance examination. See, this is the crucial factor with Thoreau; the reader must be facing a struggle, down on his luck or without a penny to his name. The author introduces with good humor:

"Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits."
- Ibid, p1-2

One must imagine what it feels like to the readers whom have struggled through the past few years, due to want of food or new ideas. The author does not simply state that this is a book written for poor folks, but for poor folks who want to learn despite how hungry and set apart from society they may feel. Reading this particularly introduction was reminiscent of Melville's Moby Dick, except for the manner in which the author engages with the reader and draws them into his way of thinking directly rather than indirectly.

Just like his fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau sets out to empower and awaken the reader. He sets out to do this by recounting his experiences at Walden Pond; his experiment of self-reliance and philosophical development. Brilliantly, he sums up most of the key ideas Walden seeks to elaborate upon in the initial paragraph on Economy:

"I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may also say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does he not drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, , how vaguely all day he fears, not being mortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of fancy and imagination, -what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
- Ibid, p4

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

My heart must have stopped beating at that moment. The words were familiar as if I had thought them before but never acted upon them. The work in general that we do, especially nowadays, isn't for ourselves and there is no actual profit or purpose for ourselves. Where is our sense of divinity and our sense of liberty? It is denied to us by our opinions which are unconsciously fashioned by our societies; our opinions about the importance of meaningless and fruitless work are rivets in a machine which works precisely because we think nothing of ourselves. We are gears, levers, rubber belts; we are going fast and we have all manner of different luxuries; but it is not enough, what is preferable is simplicity and time for reflection.

I will allow myself to trail onto my own personal insight. Humans are animals and animals are similar in respect to vegetation and plants. It is my opinion that nature has accorded us vegetation and means of sustenance as a compliment to our own animal society. The life of animals corresponds with the development of plants and vegetation because of this natural harmony. The problem and the source of unhappiness to most people tends to be the lack of contact and familiarity with that patient and earthier lifestyle. Precisely what Thoreau advocates throughout this journal is that humans can be self-reliant, can keep themselves well fed, warm and underneath a roof without being a part of an awfully dehumanizing machine.

The author reflects upon the cheapness and, at the same time, pricelessness of home-spun clothing and proceeds to write about shelter, producing a wonderful- and very transcendentalist in spirit- indictment against the society of his time, which is a recurring theme of the text:

"In the course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of the luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come into contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with."
- Ibid, p25

Why gambol through life without integrity or finding a part of yourself that you think has meaning? What did Thoreau's age lack? It was the spirituality that was to be more present in the past; when life was difficult and bread difficult to obtain, life was dear to its bearer. Life was becoming too mechanized, too distant from philosophy, diligence and taking one's time for Thoreau to tolerate so he wrote this work, a work that celebrates human potential and the value that should be placed on nature that surrounds the species. Thoreau attributes qualities such as education, self-reliance, thoughtfulness and community to the wealthy spirit; not grandiose buildings and access to a plethora of luxuries.

Thoreau proceeds through his account of constructing and provisioning himself with tools, seeds for farming, and various necessary items for his stay at Walden. It is during these practical activities that Thoreau reflects on such things as the way a university college education tends to have little bearing on real life:

"To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!- why, if I had taken one turn down one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably."
- Ibid, p33

And again on the lapsing usefulness of the human species as industry moves on, and this the more serious of the two reflections:

"As with out colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements;' there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be petty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object was to talk fast and not to talk sensibly."
- Ibid, p33-34

Upon reaching this particular passage in the text one can perceive what Thoreau is primarily concerned with: self discipline and the importance of making sure that as industry improves, human integrity improves with it. The issue has always been present: why must people focus on having convenience, industry and high speed communication if people themselves do not improve. The deliberate and shared experience of life is lost in the blur of modern developments and Thoreau asks the reader to think for a moment: to what avail is technology if we do not have the discipline or humanity to use it? Philosophy is the counterpart of knowledge and living; it gives our lives bearing and fulfillment. Thoreau asks the reader to slow down and witness the changes and ask himself: are these useful? Are these the sort of changes that we have worked for centuries to obtain? Thoreau, like the chanticleer, sits upon his morning roost and declares that he is in love with deliberate, reflective living. He is in love with life and so he loves his neighbor, and he is compelling.

Brilliantly, a thrust at history follows:

"One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life."
- Ibid, p37

Thoreau writes this celebration of the frugal, homespun life whilst he tallies the economy he has maintained over living at Walden. He recounts figures of costs and commodities he needed to buy from other people and in the process invigorates an interest in such economy in the reader. Thoreau constructs his own furniture, and lives by his own labor and at his own expense. On the whole, he tries to rely upon himself. However, like Cicero's On the Good Life, his philosophy is not always practical. I recall moments in Cicero's writings in which he would say that all he required was literature and a space to think. There was no reference to the means by which he would sustain such an existence. As with Cicero, Thoreau does not quite explain how one might go about liberating oneself from social constraints. But, at the very least, the idea is there, and an idea is comparable to a seed that will one day blossom and become fruitful.

The interest I have in Thoreau is much as though he were a farmer planting seeds; his ideas have bearing on newer, more influential ideas epitomized in the writings of Tolstoy and the life and actions of Ghandi. And he is more of a prophet than a man of direct practical influence, seeking to liberate those who he believes constrained by society and to confound society itself:

"... millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor... Every man is tasked to make his life... worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I cam to die, discover that I had not lived. 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. I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it..."
- Ibid, 59

It might strike the reader- my reader that is- that these quotations are long-winded, but the truth is that they are the core of Thoreau's writings. They are the fundamental ideas that I have learned from and been encouraged by. The most inspiring idea being that to be awake is to be alive. When Thoreau describes his reasons for living it is as though the world has not yet opened half as much for him; but he is reassured by his great potential and forms the most wonderful thought: deliberate living. From here he demonstrates a passion for truth and honesty, and his determination to, so to quote Bob Dylan in Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?, "peel the moon an expose it" is quintessentially transcendental. The love of life evolves into a love of truth and of shared experience; Thoreau becomes the standard bearer for the onwards march of truth and liberty.

There is a pretty chapter on the merits of reading classic literature and then meditations on the sounds of nature. Personally I am not fond of Greek literature or the classics but perhaps it is the generation I come from. Usually it is with the great writers on the nineteenth century that we are most enamored; but I digress. Thoreau, simply put, advocates a personal learning experience and the quality of time spent next to wildlife and nature. He simply asks the reader to go out and communicate with the world, to understand it better; time spent deliberately living. This is where it gets interesting, and like a stone cast into a lake, the ripples and movements begin to inspire other movements; the description of nature is a renewal of man's love for a forgotten neighbor:

"Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, withing five minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever before and about dawn."
- Ibid, p81

One can sense the inspiration of the author; it is woven in subtle language that compares the song of birds as keeping with our own time, and thus evokes a gentle harmony between the human and bird species. The careful and measured description of what is surrounding him as he listens evokes in the text an image of a solitary man looking up at the trees and the sky and reflecting upon existence. His answer is in the trees, the plant life, the vegetation and the soil and its seeming simplicity; but truly it is rich but in such a subtle aspect that time must be taken. Similarly inspired, J.R.R. Tolkien makes similar meditations in his later works.

To continue, Thoreau reflects upon solitude and then on the society of friends. He proceeds to describe his Bean Field and his practise of cultivating these evidently favored and sustaining crops and the passage is surprisingly thrilling. His devotion to sustaining himself and being a better man is inspirational. His text becomes less philosophical and more scientific with his chapter of the Ponds of Walden but gains momentum (in my own opinion) with his later chapter on Higher Laws. This is where Thoreau becomes a true speaker of the transcendentalist movement in America:

"It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilised, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to the flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way,- as any one who will go on snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn,- and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practise may be, I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came into contact with the more civilised."
- Ibid, p139-140

I believe that this ethical reasoning is substantial; the less we focus on our appetite the less inclined will we be to eat animal meat. Tolstoy gathered as much during his life; that if we ate for the sake of appetite alone, did that not make us just another common animal? True, this extract may not seem significant to everyone, but to those who are either vegetarian or vegan, or particularly swayed towards the understanding that intellect is a priority and not physical pleasure. The higher pleasures are prioritized as the overall expense of a luxurious diet; frugal living advocated to raise the man's intellect higher, and make him a more moral being. And Thoreau certainly seems to have gained by it:

"The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."
- Ibid, p140

I do not wish to prolong this commentary on Thoreau's Walden too much longer, wonderful though it is. Meditative, instructive and timeless, it is a text that could benefit many if only they were exposed to it. It is almost a re-awakening or a reminder to the spirit; there is much left to explore and much to be learned from life. It is a celebration of this earth and its seemingless complexity and richness, and when- after a long winter- Thoreau reaches the Spring-time, he visits the Walden ponds again and comes alive with what he witnesses on its bank:

"The whole bank..., or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on one side the inert bank , -for the sun acts on one side first,- and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made this world and me,- had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, if so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it."
- Ibid, p198

And then:

"These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like a slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is 'in full blast' within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, - not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic."
- Ibid, p199

The earth is alive like living poetry and it is for everyone to learn and be inspired by it. Thoreau greets this neighbor- nature, that is- with abundant awe and respect. If there is anything Thoreau seeks to teach us through these reflections is that the divine surrounds us in the form of nature which is the source of all sustenance and beauty. He searches for that elusive understanding therein. Ethics and morals are explored in relation to the patience with which man comes into contact with nature and the lessons in humility that it ought to teach. Interestingly whilst gearing towards his conclusion, Thoreau states thats vice usually stems from not allowing the germ of virtue to expand with the day; not allowing the beauty and tranquility take any sort of hold over your individual self is a sure way to lose virtue.

Thoreau's conclusion is outstandingly reassuring. Allow me to present some of his most wonderful concluding passages:

"It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you should speak so that they should understand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and who, which Bright can understand, were the best English. As if there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?"
- Ibid, p210

And then the roof is torn off, the illusion is shattered; liberation is encountered in the most beautiful philosophical statement I have so far had the pleasure of reading:

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?"
- Ibid, p211

And finally:

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board..."
- Ibid, p214

Walden; or, Life in the Woods is a remarkable work of philosophy, literature, self expression and acts as the penultimate manifesto of the Transcendentalist movement that was alive in nineteenth century America. Thoreau inspired Tolstoy and Ghandi and though his actions in the book were not necessarily so in reality, his ideas and expressions have become timeless. His criticism of government and industry are striking, and his suggestion of self-reliance inspirational. He weaves through subjects with masterful ability: ecology, scientific practice, philosophy, art, literature and practical skills.

Through reading Thoreau I was inspired to delve deep into literature, care more for what surrounded me, and become much more morally conscientious that I was before. It appears to be true that a man can wake himself from idleness and become dazzlingly useful to the world he loves and becomes devoted to. Thoreau calls for patience, diligence, effort and empathy. His ideas are absolutely inspirational and in a sense his religion is a belief in the universe and its countless possibilities of becoming brighter and more wonderful. Thoreau will inspire for years to come, I am sure of it.