Lesson 151: Thoreau, Walden, Part 21
Reading assignment: “Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors,” “Winter Animals”
We are told by experts in literature that Thoreau was a great writer. Here is my view. Great writers do not write sentences like this one:
When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like that early settler’s family in the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole which the chimney’s breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family.
This was not random. He kept writing sentences just as bad.
But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters.
Thoreau spent eight years writing and editing this book. Yet in eight years, he could do no better than this in describing a squirrel in one sentence.
One would approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his “trotters,” as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on him–for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl–wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance– I never saw one walk–and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time–for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect.
Here is an lengthy example of utter irrelevance. He tells us about an unnamed visitor.
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers–Connecticut gave him to the world–he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice.How blind that cannot see serenity!
A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitableable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the world’s highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, “Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road.” He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him.
Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o’-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night’s Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of–we three –it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds’ weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;–but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.
A genius! A master! No one like him! Who was he? He did not say. What had he written? He did not say. What was his area of expertise? He did not say. What influence did he have? He did not say.
This man was not employed. He visited a 27-year-old former tutor at the ex-tutor’s shack. He had nothing better to do.
Of what benefit is this information to a reader? None. The reader cannot verify whether this intellectual giant was a giant at all. Just because a 27-year-old pencil-maker says so is hardly proof.
“Ah! such discourse we had,hermit and philosopher. . . .” If the visitor was a philosopher in the way that Thoreau was a hermit, then it was best for his reputation that Thoreau did not mention his name.
Skim these two chapters. If you find anything even vaguely interesting, slow down and read it. If you find something that will help you write your autobiography, take some notes. But don’t waste your time on piffle. In the book’s final four chapters, there is a lot of piffle.