Henry David Thoreau: Going to Walden A Hero's Journal Master's Thesis by Wendy Buehler Storytellers sustain and create beliefs, and in doing so they leak the magic of the world— and it is, as it has always been. the magic that encourages imagination and delivers hope. —Lady Grace. 3 Table of Contents Journal Entries 4 Author's Note 5 Introduction 6 Synopsis 9 Chapter Summary 12 Chapter 1. The Call of Myth 15 Chapter 2. Poets and Philosophers 23 Chapter 3. The Hero 39 Chapter 4. A Poet-Naturalist's Faeryland 51 Chapter 5. The Storyteller 63 Henry and the Shoemaker 75 Works Cited 75 Bibliography 80 This is the first entry of Henry David Thoreau's collected journals. He was twenty years old. October 22, 1837. "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Do you keep a journal?" So I make my first entry to-day. This entry was written twenty-three days later. November 12, 1837. I yet lack the discernment to distinguish the whole lesson of to-day; but it is not lost,—it will come to me at last. My desire is to know what I have lived, that I may know how to live henceforth. 5 Author's Note For the last fourteen years, I have studied deeply the body's physiology, its muscular connections, and its biomechanics. I have become most curious about the ability of bodies to move and balance, particularly through aging. I have watched the process of health, as well as the process of decay and along the way I realized that I was also learning about the human spirit. It has been my profession to create guidelines for a variety of health concerned reasons. Guidelines about how to move, to eat, to maintain health, or to rehabilitate the unhealthy. Surprisingly, when I began my literary research I was lured towards authors that project deliberately the human physical condition. I was amused and fascinated with Charles Dickens's obsessive walking habits, Edmunds Spenser's enchanted exploration of physical temperance, and John Milton's confirmation of the body as matter from God. I had become acquainted with these European authors and midway, as I studied Milton, I picked up Thoreau from my bookshelf and was struck by the historical similarities and the distinct differences. For three years I have studied the writings of Henry David Thoreau. The Poet-Naturalist was indeed attuned to his physical body, but he was also keenly aware of a spirit that thrived inside the matter. Henry Thoreau's writing evidences a boy who rejoiced in the matter of body and the divinity of soul. Part of his deliberate covenant was to pursue a harmony between the two. It was the practice of self-reliance that Emerson generally proclaimed as genius. Henry Thoreau advanced the reference to nature not as the image of darkness and mortal temptation, but as tangible correspondence with the divine. 6 Introduction In a century when authors were known for reinventing fairytales and Santa Claus, Henry David Thoreau lent his imagination not to fictional writing, but to the genuine expression of his own life. For Henry Thoreau this included, roughly, a twenty-three year commitment to the recording of daily observations that began in the early1800's and was (as were all his subsequent Journals) grounded in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau's journals display the traditions of New England Transcendentalism and a landscape that exposes the essence of his own grace, courage, honor, uncertainty, and temperance. His cumulative experience before, during, and after Walden illustrates the rite of passage from child to adult. Thoreau's coming-of-age expresses the American journey of a man with a heroic imagination and a raw desire to live singularly among the elements of nature. Henry Thoreau was a keen observer of each sense interacting with the world around. The Poet- Naturalist (Thoreau as identified by W. Ellery Channing) accomplished his life's excursion through a habit of being mindful, and through a devoted practice to the implications of health and strength. Henry David Thoreau is best identified with his stay at Walden where he lived for two years, two months, and two days. He built his own small house in the woods on a quiet edge of town, plowed, planted, and hoed his own bean-field, participated with his community through writing and lecturing, traversed familiarly the land and rivers of Concord, and pondered earnestly the ethics, miracles, and tasks of Man's life. At the end of his stay in the woods, he acknowledged the departure with writings in a book he called Walden. 7 From the chapter "Where I Lived and What I Lived For", his words to live deliberately compel a response with the essence of deep memory and a realm of history that is at once behind us and within us. For at least seventeen years, Thoreau clearly marked the process of his journey to Walden woods in his series of journals. Living deliberately, it seems, was a conscious practice of being awake to the past, the present, and the future. On November 12, 1837, during the second month of what was to be his lifelong journal writing collection, Thoreau presents the concept of living deliberately. By April 4,1841 he was better able to articulate the inklings of the Walden experience, and eight months further he entered a plea in his journal that refined his notions even more. Indeed, it was Christmas Eve, 1841 that he declared his wish to live within nature "away by the pond" (Thoreau Journal 1299). However, it was another four years on July 4,1845, before he set upon the reality of Walden. The excursion culminated an entire journey that contained Thoreau's rite-of-passage to manhood. His journal musings illustrate beautifully the process of a man's practice and determination to experience the fullness of life. It would be interesting trivia to know the date Thoreau was able to articulate the concept so precisely, but certainly, the clarity it represents took much longer than a single day. The journey is a beautiful description of a man concurring with the grace of nature, and it has all the beautiful attributes that portray a man's search for heaven on earth. It must be acknowledge that my research is but a stratum in the layers of Henry David Thoreau. The following paragraphs from Walden Where I Lived and What I Lived For contain the core tenets of my Thesis. —Wendy Buehler 3 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 came 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 practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all 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 in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever". Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; (Thoreau Walden 86). J •• The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast (Thoreau Walden 87). Synopsis One morning long ago Henry David Thoreau watched night's darkness evaporate through tiny lacerations of sunrise, and he recorded the majestic entrance of a new day. Nearly two hundred years ago on November 17, 1837 he wrote, Now the king of day plays at bo-peep round the world's corner, and every cottage window smiles a golden smile—a very picture of glee. I see the water glistening in the eye. The smothered breathings of awakening day strike the ear with an undulating motion; over hill and dale, pasture and woodland, come they to me, and I am at home in the world. {Journal 7 11) Henry David Thoreau was born July 12,1817, he entered Harvard in 1833 when he was sixteen, and graduated in 1837; at the age of twenty-one he established an elementary school, Concord Academy (engaging in many fieldtrips with the concept being "learn by doing") where he taught (Louisa May Alcott was his student) from 1838, until "April 1, 1841" (Harding 87) when his brother John became fatally ill and the school closed. He lived at Walden from July 4, 1845 to September 6,1847; and he died of (an ongoing bout with) tuberculosis on May 6,1862 at the age of 44. He was two months shy of forty five. For more than twenty-three years, Thoreau dutifully recorded his everyday experience and observations throughout a series of different journals. The complete journals, which have been available as fourteen separate volumes (fifteen if the index of Thoreau's catalogue is counted) for just over twenty-five years now, are a gift from collective scholars who have persevered since Thoreau's death to compile and publish them. Thoreau's journals are memorable because they deliver (in accordance with his additional published works) a clear and passionate plea to live unto the highest human realm, which he imagined contained the principles of truth, honor, compassion, and participation. Thoreau's commitment was to the mythic adventure of life and his journals read with the beauty of a master storyteller. He valued the texture of the fleshy earth with its internal organic ticking and its external evidence of time and change. It is plainly evident within his entries that he attentively compared the processes of nature and man. His most aspiring goal in life was to master equally, the parameters of the physical body and the infinite mystery of the mind. He wrote, "We should (0 strengthen, and beautify, and industriously mould our bodies to be fit companions of the soul" {Journal 1176). His keen sensitivity towards the five senses equaled his keen sensitivity to the innermost workings of his spiritual quest. He was unlike the more pious men of the nineteenth century who rejected the physical senses, instead, Thoreau rejoiced in acknowledging the practice of each one. He thought it essential to coordinate the psychological and the physiological rhythms (Cook 157). Thoreau was convinced that his earthly existence was on a parallel path with the spiritual. More than anything else, as states the esteemed Thoreau scholar Bradley Dean, "He was a profoundly introspective man, and he identified himself at the most fundamental level as a spirit. That is who he was" (Dean 20). Thoreau inherited a sense of freedom and for him it offered the gift of an imagination capable of soaring into the furthest corners of time. On March 3, 1838 Thoreau wrote, "Three thousand years and the world so little changed! The Iliad seems like a natural sound which has reverberated to our days. Whatever in it is still freshest in the memories of men was most childlike in the poet" (Journal 131). He revered the old poets and their primitive dark unknown world that possessed a mysterious force yet to be explained by human genius. Thoreau energetically roamed with some of the ancient poets, such as Aeschylus, Pindar, Homer, Persius, Virgil, and Buddha. He became acquainted with the realms of Dante's Inferno, Milton's emblematic Paradise, Spenser's faeryland, Chaucer's heroes, and Schoolcraft's Indians. He was introduced to Pan, Prometheus, Wordsworth's Peter Bell, Ruskin, and Goethe. Although Thoreau's reading list is abundantly longer than the small list I offer, these few are representative for the discussion at hand. As Thoreau commanded a productive body, he also worked at cultivating the human spirit and it was nature that thrust him into the reaches of his own thought (Cook 127). Cook writes, "It was his art to speak the language of nature without accent. It was his mother tongue" (161). From the time he was a young boy, it seems as if Thoreau's motivation to read, write, observe, and exert, graced him with the deliberate purpose of illuminating the very presence of life. Thoreau spent his days and nights recording the peculiar rhythm of nature's life. He persevered to live as a contributing voice in expanding the consciousness of humankind. His poetic descriptions and occasional melancholy imprint a heroic sense of character that is a rich source for imagination. And even though he wrote with more of a scientist's agenda near the end m of his life, he never lost the poetic impression that life is wholly what we imagine and exactly what we create. Thoreau, The Poet-Naturalist, can certainly be described as one of the most exquisite voices for nature. His gift was to describe nature in a language that elevated the spirit and connected the human heart to the rich process of seasons and cycles. From the beginning of his journal to the end, Thoreau demonstrated himself as a man whose mind aspired to heaven, and whose body remained rooted to the daily pledge of a man living unto the earth. One theme consistent in Thoreau from boyhood to death is that of Truth, Honor, Bravery, and Courage. He found eternity in the rotation of the seasons and in the return each year of the huckleberry, the song-birds, the oak trees, and the bees. From youth David Henry Thoreau lived with an unfailing drive for intelligence, and from here, forever more, Henry David Thoreau lived with a deliberate faith in intuition. He believed in the earth that sustained him—the soil, the animals, the trees, vegetables and fruit, and he believed in the quiet joy of existence. In our current age his voice resonates with humble simplicity and his romance with the earth is haunting still. CHAPTER SUMMARY Throughout my years of studying Henry David Thoreau what initially struck me and what still strikes me most today is the myth and the faery1 lore that layer the details of his daily excursions and encounters. The subject of Thoreau's mysticism is acknowledged by nearly every Thoreau scholar; however, it is a subject somewhat unusual and distinct from the more common perception of him as the father of the modern environmental movement, or as an ardent abolitionist, or as a writer passionate about ethical government and admired by men such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was Thoreau's style to write with deliberate intention to the moment, and much of his writing chronicled the essential facts of the day. In addition, his writing engaged the imagination and illustrated the leisure he prioritized to ponder each day in a vibrant body and a thought-filled mind. For the majority of his life, Henry Thoreau exposed his beliefs and opinions in journals that exemplify at once a unique as well as representative portrait of a nineteenth century man. In the nearly two hundred years that he has been gone, academics have sought to continuously preserve his writing. In the process they have conjured the poet-naturalist and quite respectfully pieced him together. Dedicated for twenty-four years to daily writing, Thoreau purposely left his journals as an offering of himself. In light of this, there is opportunity for readers to sift through the treasure, and through a lingering source of perpetual youth and with a poetical expectation of wild delight, it is possible to polish the jewels and imagine the hero. My thesis begins with Poets and Philosophers because Thoreau's fascination with the heroic life stems, simply, from the authors of antiquity and their heroic characters. He was enchanted with gods, honorable men, and the wildness of Indians. He was amused by the passion of poets, such as the ancient Greek Anacreon and the Renaissance poet Chaucer, for their fanciful imaginings and documentation of the common man. He admired most insistently the intellect and steadfastness of Milton and Goethe, and during his most formative years he aspired to emulate the greatness of all these men. Thoreau was a fluent translator of several languages, and he sought interpretation through the very origin of their antiquated language. Thoreau fully 1 The spelling/aery is purposely used to depict Thoreau's descriptions as more mystic and less contemporary. Thoreau predates modern fairy tales and his imagery illustrates a nature deeply defined by a mystic and ancient past, whereas the present day fairy has evolved from the nineteenth century tales into a commercial depiction that seems to hold a less significant position of power. 9 confronted the tendency to mistake poets of the past as [idols] gods' immortal and immune to fault, and he made it a point to address their limits of knowledge. Notably, however, he did not seek the confidence of or guidance from religious men, indeed, it was from the old poets and philosophers, in conjunction with his Transcendentalist mentors that he sought wisdom and identified truth. The second chapter, The Call of Myth, illustrates Thoreau's curiosity of examining the cultures and peoples of an older time, as well as the Nature that they both worshipped and feared. He suggested myth was a relic that reflected life most closely. The Call of Myth describes not so much our modern development of myth as archetypes, but rather, a much older representation. Myth was an opportunity to explore the other faces of God and it countered a strict nineteenth century Christianity. For Thoreau mythology was a representation of history, specifically, the ancient Greeks, the Eastern Hindu, and the savage Indian who honored above all, gods and the forces of nature. The realm of myth that Thoreau admired placed the common man among the spheres of gods for the purpose of ascertaining a realm of higher living. It should be definitively noted that although Thoreau scowled at Christian dogma, and admittedly was most constant at Pan's shrine, he fully embraced God as the ultimate authority. He attributed the final destination of a life above or below the firmament, faithfully, to the hands of God. The third chapter, The Epic Hero, illustrates Thoreau's preponderant desire for attaining the status of a most virtuous and honorable man. Although often at odds with the culture he lived, and bold and outspoken in his beliefs for a just and humane world, Thoreau often wrote about humility and grace being essential for the attainment of eternity. Indeed, Thoreau's commitment to journal writing became testament to the journey of the epic hero because it supposed an acute awareness to each moment of the day. Through writing simply upon daily observations and occurrences, he renewed his determination of the heroic destiny. Wherever he may have been and in whatever state of mind the day brought, Thoreau never failed in his belief to keep the eternal journey at the forefront of his day. The fourth chapter, Mystic Faeryland, is by all accounts peculiar to the directness of Thoreau's usual writing of nature's literal descriptions. But, to those so inclined to the enchantment of faery-lore, Henry Thoreau's descriptions of raw nature contain mystical presentations. In the twenty-first century, we are rooted in a culture riddled with nursery rhymes and fairytales, and it should not be surprising that it is my inclination to veer towards the fantastic world of fays, faerie, and fairyland. So as not to seem too oblique and random, a bit of history may offer some relevance to this perspective. Faery lore and folk tales (of which I am too limited to speak at length upon) come from various geographies with a history as old as time. Faerie arrived, most notably, during the medieval period of limited science but bold and creative expression. From the sixteenth century's domain of Spenser's The Faery Queen, we may begin the modern immersion with Charles Perrault introducing the fairytale in the seventeenth century with such tales as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. And while the Brothers Grimm collection expanded the genre further in the early nineteenth century, it was not until the late nineteenth century that the fairytale earned a distinction beyond the handmaids' tales for children. English authors such as Wordsworth, Chesterton, Dickens, Ruskin, and the like all experimented with the genre, and succeeded in making it immensely popular in their country. By most accounts, it was just before the twentieth century that the popular fairytale drifted towards the American consciousness. Finally categorized outside the confines of pagan worship, it began a reign that endures enthusiastically today. The last chapter, Storyteller, portrays Thoreau as a man living a singular life whose writing became his progeny. As a storyteller, Thoreau embodied the very essence of his nature. His writing represents themes of both the mortal body and the eternal soul as essential to a man's journey. Certainly it seemed, he was most curious about the tendril between life and death, and through an intuitive imagination he deliberately sharpened his senses to better understand each stage of life. As a student of the Romantics and a participant of the Transcendentalist philosophy, Thoreau was among the most genius scribes of his present day because he understood that words were emblems of time and place. It was this skill that enabled him to describe landscapes with poetic detail that included texture, sound, color, and intimations of God. He was a storyteller who described, with the attentive eye of an artist, the details of his surroundings and the impact of the environment on his life. Thoreau acknowledged earth as the greatest storyteller, the oldest sage, and the wisest mother. Alongside Mother Nature and throughout his own seasons on earth, Thoreau sought deeply to distinguish his own character. Thoreau chose to unlock the secrets of a virtuous life and through the telling of his own story he learned to question the deepest nature in himself. Henry and the Shoemaker The Shoemaker lived in the depths of a mountain near Indian Trail and at the base of the Ladybug Tree. Hers roots secure the only trunk in the valley with enough strength to hold the branches of five trees. The Tree had ushered many travellers along their journey, and it was the Shoemaker, that everlasting inhabitant and gatekeeper of the Tree, who offered a little boy named Henry a door to the otherworld. The little boy loved to run in the mountains so much that he began to wear out his only brogans — the sturdy hand-sewn work boots made by the hands of his mother. He acquired many blisters as he chased after birds and huckleberries traveling the entire eye's distance measuring fields, meadows, and mountains. This activity lent his mother to constant mending. So it was that on his fourteenth birthday she acquainted him with the Shoemaker. The local cobbler was a little elf of a man, for he even had white hair and long fingers. Short little thing but strong as a mule, and she knew it was he that her little boy needed. And in the years to follow, the Shoemaker's boots would carry the little boy like magic through the woods. The bookish little boy learned early to take his education outdoors in order to exercise equally his body and mind. He knew the country as any fox or bird and commonly he had a standing appointment with a certain White Pine. Bookwork in the morning and romping in the afternoon, up the mountain or through the meadows of the Minott farm to wilder areas for notetaking, chartmaking, and pathmaking before making his way back home. The little boy grew up with an academic education and the afforded luxury of Time to acquire a Harvard degree. In later years, inside Lady bug's forest he wouldfind a higher education from the very hands of nature. The little boy learned. Through arithmetic he could measure the distance and angles of land, through the design of letters and lines he could translate older languages, through texture and taste he mastered species of trees, leaves, fruits, insects, birds, and through words he translated their beauty and truth. He learned to write by articulating colors, patterns, dimensions, textures, and the thoughtful meditations of his mind. At age twelve he became a member of the Lyceum. At age seventeen he changed his first name from David to Henry. He learned about God from Dante and Milton, the Bible, the Greeks and Romans, Chaucer, Spenser, Ellery Channing, George Ripley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, of course, the beautiful and immaculate Mother Nature herself. He acquired a deep respect of the seasons, and as he compared notes with William Howitt, he inherited the divinity of snowfall from the Minister Cotton Mather. But for the components of truth, compassion, honor and humility he learned wholly from the Shoemaker, indeed, it was the old sage who first introduced the little boy to Lady Grace. The little boy who liked to wander the hills, yes, that little boy has learned to make his own shoes now. He wanders still, more quietly though, now with his own thin skin and earned wrinkles. Even now he follows the cobbler, as he opens the door to a new adventure in the mountains or Walden Woods and always towards the exploration of a new day. So, when the still air of nature sings greater than you, fisten for the Shoemaker's melody, and in the tintinnabulum of Pan's flute you will hear the echo of Henry Thoreau invite you to every season. WORKING CITATIONS Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005. Blake, H.G.O., ed. Autumn: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892. Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Movers. Ed. Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Canby, Henry Seidel. Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939. Channing, William Ellery. Thoreau: The Poet Naturalist. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873. Coleridge, Henry Nelson. Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets Designed Principally for the use of Young Persons at School and College. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1834. Cook, Reginald. Passage to Walden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. Crawford, Bartholow V. Henry David Thoreau. New York: American Book Company, 1934. Dean, Bradley P. Letters to a Spiritual Seeker: Henry David Thoreau. New York: Norton, 2004. Gohdes, Clarence. "Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Arts." Classical Journal 23 (1928): 323-36. Although dated, this article is a confirmation of Thoreau's classical studies and informative as it lists specific courses that he took at Harvard. Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography. New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1982. Walter Harding is one of the most eminent Thoreau scholars and his credibility is as helpful as the information he supplies. 2 Hough, Henry Beetle. Thoreau of Walden: The Man and His Eventful Life. New York: Simon, 1956. Lebeaux, Richard. Thoreau's Seasons. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1984. Marx, Leo. Introduction. Excursions. By Henry David Thoreau. New York: Corinth Books, Inc., 1962. 5-14. Meyerson, Joel, Ed. Transcendentalism A Reader. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Sanborn, F.B. The Life of Henry David Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917. —. American Men of Letters. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1897. Sherman, Paul. The Shores of America: Thoreau* s Inward Exploration. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1972. Stoller, Leo. "Thoreau's Doctrine of Simplicity." New England Quarterly 29 (1956): 443-61. Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal of Henrv David Thoreau: 1837/1847. Volume 1. Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1984. This is my main source and indispensable in gathering evidence in Thoreau's beliefs, actions, and writings. Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau. Ed. by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. 14 vols. Salt Lake City: Smith, 1984. —. A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. New York: Hurst and Company, (no date). —. Walden and Other Writings. New York: The Modern Library, 1992. —. Walden. New York: Houghton, 2004. Cape Cod [Writings]. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893. Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings. Ed., Bradley P. Dean. Washington, DC: Island P, 1993. The Maine Woods. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996. The Natural History Essays. Introduction by Robert Sattelmeyer. Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith, 1980. Bibliography Master's Thesis: Henry David Thoreau Abercrombie, John. Intellectual Philosophy. Boston: Otis, Broaders, and Company, 1845. Allen, Judy, ed. Fantasy Encyclopedia: A Guide to Fabulous Beasts and Magical Beings—From Elves and Dragons to Vampire and Wizards. Boston: Kingfisher, 2005. Andersen, Hans Christian. The Fairy Tale of Mv Life, an Autobiography. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000. Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005. Baym, Nina, general ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Seventh Edition Volume B (1820-1865). New York: Norton, 2007. Baum, Rosalie Murphy. "Thoreau's Concept of the Wild." Concord Saunterer 17 (1984): 39-44. Blair, John G., and Augustus Trowbridge. "Thoreau on Katahdin." American Quarterly 12(1960): 508-17. Bosco, Ronald A. Nature's Panorama: Thoreau on the Seasons. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. Branch, Michael P., and Jessica Pierce. "Another name for health: Thoreau and Modern Medicine." Literature and Medicine 15 (1996): 129-45. Broderick, John C. "The Movement of Thoreau's Prose." American Literature 33 (1961): 133- Burton, Robert. The Essential Anatomy of Melancholy. New York: Dover, 2002. Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Movers. Ed. Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Doubleday, 1988. 2 Coleridge, Henry Nelson. Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets Designed Principally for the use of Young Persons at School and College. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1834. Cook, Reginald. Passage to Walden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. Daugherty, James. Henry David Thoreau. A Man For Our Time. New York: Viking, 1967. Dean, Bradley P. Letters to a Spiritual Seeker: Henry David Thoreau. New York: Norton, 2004. Epstein, Robert and Sherry Phillips, eds. The Natural Man: Henry David Thoreau. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books, 1978. Annotation: The bold in the headline for Chapter 2 Mythology, is illustrated by Epstein and Phillips (94) in their collection of Thoreau's and Basho's expressions about living, titled Morning Mist. Frazer, James. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Oxford: Macmillan, 1969. Friesen, Victor Carl. "Thoreau's Sauntering: The 'Adventure of the Day'". The Concord Saunterer2 (1994): 21-31. Harper, William. "Thoreau on Leisure: A Wide Halo of Ease." Popular Culture Review 1.8(1997): 121-37. Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: Norton, 2000. Hearn, Michael P. The Victorian Fairy Tale Book. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Hough, Henry Beetle. Thoreau of Walden: The Man and His Eventful Life. New York: Simon, 1956. Inglis, Rewey Belle and Josephine Spear, eds. Adventures in English Literature. New York: Harcourt, 1958. Lewis, C.S. George MacDonald: an Anthology 365 Readings. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1973. 3 Lifton, Frederick C. "Henry Thoreau's Cult(ivation) of Nature: American Landscape and American Self in 'Ktaadn' and 'Walking'." A merican Transcendental Quarterly 12 (1998): 67-86. MacDonald, George. Phantastes. Introduction by C.S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000. —. At the Back of the North Wind. London: Octopus Books Limited, 1979. Manguel, Alberto and Gianni Guadalupi. the dictionary o/Imaginary Places. New York: Macmillan, 1980. Martin, Richard P. Myths of the Ancient Greeks. New York: New American Library, 2003. Meyerson, Joel, Ed. Transcendentalism A Reader. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. Pinkola Estes, Clarissa, Ed. Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1999. Sanborn, F.B. The Life of Henry David Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917. —. American Men of Letters. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1897. Sherman, Paul. The Shores of America: Thoreau's Inward Exploration. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1972. Rossi, William. "'The Limits of an Afternoon Walk': Coleridgean Polarity in Thoreau's 'Walking'." ESQ 33 (1987): 94-109. Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Simpson, Jeffrey E. "Thoreau 'Dreaming Awake and Asleep'." Modern Language Studies 14.3 (1984): 54-62. 4 Smith, David C. "Walking as Spiritual Discipline: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey." Soundings 74 (1991): 129-40. Stoller, Leo. "Thoreau's Doctrine of Simplicity." New England Quarterly 29 (1956): 443-61. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings. New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 150th Anniversary ed. New York: Houghton, 2004. —. Faith in a Seed. Bradley Dean, ed. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993. —. A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. New York: Hurst and Company, (no date). —. The Natural History Essays. Introduction by Robert Sattelmeyer. Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith, 1980. —. The Maine Woods. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit. Illustrated by Michael Hague. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. —. A Tolkien Miscellany. New York: SFBC, 2002. —. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London: HaperCollins, 1983. Wacker, Grant. Religion in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Wallace, Anne D. Walking. Literature, and English Culture: The Origins and Uses of Peripatetic in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Thoreau SOS Works Cited Adamson, Joseph. "The Scattered Body: Thoreau's Satiric Vision." English Studies in Canada 16 (1990): 75-90. Baum, Rosalie Murphy. "Thoreau's Concept of the Wild." Concord Saunterer 17 (1984): 39-44. Black, David. "Henry David Thoreau: The Life of the Body." Thoreau Society Bulletin 179 (1987): 1. 5 Blair, John G., and Augustus Trowbridge. "Thoreau on Katahdin." American Quarterly 12 (1960): 508-17. Branch, Michael P., and Jessica Pierce. "Another name for health: Thoreau and Modern Medicine." Literature and Medicine 15 (1996): 129-45. —. Reading the Roots: American Nature Writing before Walden. Athens: Georgia UP, 2004. Broderick, John C. "The Movement of Thoreau's Prose." American Literature 33 (1961): 133- 42. Charming, William Ellery. Thoreau: The Poet Naturalist. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873. Cook, Reginald L. Passage To Walden. Boston: Houghton, 1949. Conrad, Randall. "I Heard a Very Loud Sound" Thoreau Processes the Spectacle of Sudden, Violent Death." American Transcendental Quarterly 19 (2005): 82-94. Dobrin, Sidney I. and Kenneth B. Kidd, eds. Wild Things: Children's Cultural and Ecocriticism. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004. Egan, Kenneth V. Egan. "Thoreau's Pastoral Vision in "Walking"." American Transcendental Quarterly 57 (1985): 21-30. Finch, Robert and John Elder, eds. The Norton Book of Nature Writing. New York: Norton, 2002. Friesen, Victor Carl. "Thoreau's Sauntering: The 'Adventure of the Day.'" Concord Saunterer 2 (1994): 21-31. Harper, William. "Thoreau on Leisure: A Wide Halo of Ease." Popular Culture Review 1 (1997): 121-37. Hough, Henry Beetle. Thoreau of Walden: The Man and His Eventful Life. New York: Simon, 1956. Kormandy, Edward J. "Ecology/Economy of Nature—Synonyms?" Rev. of Nature's Economy, by Donald Wooster, Ecology. 59 (1978): 1292-94. 6 Lebeaux, Richard. Thoreau's Seasons. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1984. Lifton, Frederick C. "Henry Thoreau's Cult(ivation) of Nature: American Landscape and American Self in 'Ktaadn' and 'Walking'." American Transcendental Quarterly 12 (1998): 67-86. Marx, Leo. Introduction. Excursions. By Henry David Thoreau. New York: Corinth Books, Inc., 1962. 5-14. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. Rossi, William. "'The Limits of an Afternoon Walk': Coleridgean Polarity in Thoreau's 'Walking'." ESQ 33 (1987): 94-109. Ruland, Richard, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Walden: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968. Simpson, Jeffrey E. "Thoreau 'Dreaming Awake and Asleep.'" Modern Language Studies 14 (1984): 54-62. Smith, David C. "Walking as Discipline: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey." Soundings 74 (1991): 129-40. Smith, Lorrie. "Walking" from England to America: Re-Viewing Thoreau's Romanticism." New England Quarterly 58 (1985): 221-41. Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. Washington D.C.: Shoemaker, 2004. Stoller, Leo. "Thoreau's Doctrine of Simplicity." New England Quarterly 29 (1956): 443-61. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Houghton, 2004. —. Walden and Other Writings. Ed. Brooks Atkinson. New York: Random, 2000. —. Cape Cod [Writings]. Boston, 1893. —. Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings. Ed., Bradley P. Dean. Washington, DC: Island P, 1993. —. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau. Ed. by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. 14 vols. Salt Lake City: Smith, 1984. —. Letters to a Spiritual Seeker. Ed. Bradley P. Dean. New York: Norton, 2004. Wallace, Anne D. Walking. Literature, and English Culture: The Origins and Uses of Peripatetic in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. —. '"Inhabited Solitudes': Dorothy Wordsworth's Domesticating Walkers." Nordlit: Arbeidstidsskrift i litteratur 1 (1997): 99-126. White, E.B. "A Slight Sound at Evening." Ed. Ruland, Richard. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Walden: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968. —. "Henry Thoreau." Ed. Richard Ruland. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Walden: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968. White, Gilbert. The Natural History of Selborne. London, 1887. Worster, Donald. "Thoreau and the American Passion for Wilderness." The Concord Saunterer 10 (2002): 5-14. Miller, Angela L. "Nature's Transformations: The Meaning of the Picnic Theme in Nineteenth- Century American Art." Winterthur Portfolio 24 (1989): 113-38. Webb, Jean. "Walking into the Sky: Englishness, Heroism, and Cultural Identity: A Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Perspective." Children's Literature and the fin de sie'cle 51 -56, 2003. (This is a chapter from a book!) [this is from Tracing Grace: Milton to Thoreau]. Bibliography Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005. Karen Armstrong's intricate observation of historical mythology creates a contemporary vision for the study of myth. Barr, James. "The Meaning of „Mythology" in relation to the Old Testament*)." Vestus Testamentum 9 (1959): 1-10. This article argues faith and mythology of the Old Testament, and an elaborate definition of mythology. Bishop, Jonathon. "The Experience of the Sacred in Thoreau's Week. ELH 33 (1966): 66-91. This is a good article that depicts specific aspects of Thoreau's knowledge and tradition of Greek literature. Blake, H.G.O., ed. Autumn: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892. Bloom, Harold. Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. New York: Warner, 2002. This book lists highlights of Bloom's favorite genius's. It gives clips of useful information, but not enough to influence the direction of my argument. Bode, Carl. "A New College Manuscript of Thoreau's." American Literature 21 (1949): 311 -20. This article gives more evidence of Thoreau's extensive writing of the Greek classics and because Bode is an acclaimed Thoreau scholar it can be upheld as credible information. Broadbent, J.B. "Milton's Hell." ELH2\ (1954): 161-192. Broadbent's article seems to be the authoritative voice of Milton's description of a physical fall and a psychological Hell. Butler, George F. "The Fall of Tydeus and the Failure of Satan: Statius' Thebaid, Dante's Commedia, and Milton's Paradise Lost." Comparative Literature Studies 43 (2006): 134- 52. This article illustrates the important aspects of the difference between the pagan aspect of fear and the more modern aspect of the mind as hell. Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Movers. New York: Doubleday, 1988. This book is an invaluable bridge connecting myth to our modern day beliefs. —. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Mvth and as Religion. Novato, California: New World Library, 2002. Joseph Campbell clarifies many concepts that bind theology and mythology. Because he writes with clarity, I find his instruction essential for a comprehensive illustration of mythology, philosophy and literature. —. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Princeton UP, 1973. This book by Campbell is more of a psychological analysis of the mythological hero in the realm of the ancient and modern world. Collett, Jonathon H. "Milton's Use of Classical Mythology in "Paradise Lost"." PMLA 85 (1970): 88-96. This article confirms and illustrates the aspect of Greek mythology and Milton's frequent use of them to display the Christian theme. Coogan, Michael D., ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. This book is a fantastic dictionary of reference material that is an anthology of articles from early biblical information that illustrates chronologies and gives important bibliographies. Duncan, Joseph E. "Milton's Four-in-One Hell." Huntington Library Quarterly 20 (1957): 127- 136. This is a good article that solidifies Broadbent's argument but on a smaller and more concise scale. Gohdes, Clarence. "Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Arts." Classical Journal 23 (1928): 323-36. Although dated, this article is a confirmation of Thoreau's classical studies and informative as it lists specific courses that he took at Harvard. Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and Compnay, 1942. Hamilton's book is essential and as prominent as any scholarly and timeless piece of literature. Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography. New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1982. Walter Harding is one of the most eminent Thoreau scholars and his credibility is as helpful as the information he supplies. Hughes, Merritt Y. "Myself am Hell." Modern Philology 54 (1956): 80-94. A credible and scholarly argument based on hell as a psychological state. Kerrigan, William, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon, eds. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. New York: Modern Library, 2007. This is the most current scholarly edition of Milton's works and illustrates, if nothing new, confirmation that scholarship on Milton is still thriving. Leeming, David. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. This book is an encyclopedia of information that caps the overall definition of all mythology. Though not extensive, it gives insight to obscure names, places, and characters. Martin, Catherine Gimelli. "What If the Sun Be Centre to the World?" Milton's Epistemology, Cosmology, and Paradise of Fools Reconsidered." Modern Philology 99 (2001): 231-265. This article is a fascinating look at Milton's scientific intention and understanding. It is one of the few "new" critical arguments that I have found. Musa, Mark, ed. The Portable Dante. New York: Penguin, 1995. This book has great information concerning the historical aspect of theology, politics, and mythology that I found important when comparing Milton to Dante. Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1974. This is an important book as Matthiessen is an admired and one of the first scholars to acknowledge the importance of the authors of the American Renaissance. Pettigrew, Richard C. "Emerson and Milton." American Literature 3 (1931): 45-59. This article mostly deals, obviously with Emerson, but it extracts some beautiful (and very transcendental) characteristics from Milton's work. Poore, Charles. Ernest Hemingway: The Hemingway Reader. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953. This article was helpful with the idea of the biblical and Greek idea of the heroic character. Revard, Stlla P. "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso": Classical Tradition and Renaissance Mythography." PMLA 3 (1986): 338-350. This article was helpful with mythology. It touches upon genealogy, birthplace, and at times the importance of birthplace or dwelling. The article reiterates the importance of history and tradition from the ancients to the Renaissance. Revard also mentioned some of the patterns of poetry, which were helpful and new to me. Richardson Jr., Robert. Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986. This is an invaluable book into an entire picture of Thoreau's life and mode of action. Rumrich, John. "Milton's God and the Matter of Chaos." PMLA 110 (1995): 1035-1046. This is a great article that presents chaos with examples from Milton's peers and illustrates a history of the word. It also illustrates Milton's precise thoughts on chaos as he describes them in Christian Doctrine as ultimately, "the necessary basis of a good creation" (1037). Sena, John F. "Melancholic Madness and the Puritans." Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 293-309. This is a good article that examines the history and the evolution of melancholy. This article will be useful for my longer paper. Stoll, Elmer Edgar. "Milton a Romantic." Review of English Studies 8 (1932): 425-36. This was an appealing article that tried to bridge Milton to the Romantics. It highlights some interesting points but fails to convince me that Milton had the same experience as the men of the Romantic period. Suggs, M. Jack, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Mueller, eds. The Oxford Bible. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau: 1837/1847. Volume 1. Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1984. This is my main source and indispensable in gathering evidence in Thoreau's beliefs, actions, and writings. —. A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. New York: Hurst and Company, [1890]. This book is crucial in identifying the value that Thoreau heaps upon the Greek tradition. Van Anglen, K.P. The New England Milton: Literary Reception and Cultural Authority in the Early Republic. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993. This book is pertinent to the idea of Milton and the influence of the seventeenth century upon nineteenth century society. a Poets and Philosophers The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshippers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world. ("Friday" A Week 425) From the beginning, Henry David Thoreau lived through the words of the ancient poets as though their essence mingled with the air he breathed. As a boy he began to imitate the brave Indian, and throughout his schooling he read insatiably to gather the wisdom of great men. Early on Thoreau revealed the vulnerability of his Journal as a mixture of spontaneous thoughts arising from curiosity and imagination. In between paragraphs, regarding the journey towards grace and infinity he whispers: My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I send of this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening transfer the account from day¬book to ledger. It is a leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as public a le^f as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn. The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the leaves a far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and mud, then I write with a reed. {Journal 1206) During the nineteenth century the library at Harvard, then called Harvard Hall, hummed with a collection of "fifty-thousand volumes" (Harding 38) that contained whispers of ancient authors, their secrets, and their thoughtful idcao and ruminations. Henry David Thoreau arrived at Harvard on August 30,1833 (Harding32) at the age of sixteen and graduated four years later in 1837. Upes-*eflecti©n~o£his education, Thoreau advised a young Edward Emerson that "the 1 \ l 2 library was the best gift" (Harding 38); and certainly it is evident through examination of his journals, letters, and essays that the most memorable aspect of his college experience lay among the shelves of Harvard Hall. Thoreau often roamed the aisles of the dusty wood-carved alcoves that he describes as having oriel {Journal 1289) windows stained with color. And being away from Walden, the hallowed rooms and the contents of the library shelves grounded in the old world became his home. Thoreau read carefully the old poets' words so as to embody their very spirit, and in the process he began deliberately (Walden 86) to create his own philosophy of life. As a writer, Thoreau would aspire to the epic poets of history who under any era are considered gifted writers, seers in their day, who portray, and indeed, cultivate the honor of nations and the bravery of great men. Henry David Thoreau lived his life in the spirit of the epic poet and within his journals are recorded a poignant excursion of a man during the early nineteenth century writing passionately in regard to the infinite world of Nature, Time, and Man. A consistent theme throughout Thoreau's work is an account of the inextricably mysterious correlation between body and soul. Accordingly, this nineteenth century man takes into account the health not only of the soul and the mind, but also, and to an equal degree, the health and decline of the body. Henry David Thoreau lived deeply within his head, but most notably unique is the evidence detailing his desire to illustrate that he lived just as deeply through the physiology and the five senses of his body. He was a man ahead of his time recognizing and contemplating some of the most important components of a healthy body, and within any random page of his early journals there are sure to be components of strength, movement, nutrition, breath, and stillness. To the brave soldier the rust and leisure of peace are harder than the fatigues of war. As our bodies court physical encounters, and languish in the mild and even climate of the tropics, so our souls thrive best on unrest and discontent. He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate" (Journal 718) February 11, 1840. Thoreau often reported on the importance of being active, for even if a writer should wish to put pencil to paper all day long, Thoreau contended there would be more to write about at having actively participated. Aspiring to brawn and reading about the heroes of history, Thoreau 3 wrote, "The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort without a corresponding energy of the body" (A Week 126). So go the bravest of warriors, and like the epics of Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's (Coleridge calls him "the Tuscan Homer" 77) Divine Comedy that start in the midst of chaos, Thoreau's journal begins also, in media res, and with his boyhood gone and college just behind him, it was a relatively peaceful period that Thoreau's epic begins. After graduating from Harvard, Thoreau began his journal writing in earnest and for the rest of his life he continued to call upon the old poets that he had come to know so well through his years of education. From the beginning, Thoreau acknowledged poets and philosophers such as Homer, the Greek major and Minor poets (A Week undated 202), Hesiod, Virgil, Persius, Bacon, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Spenser, and Montaigne as being among the men of history (the epochs of B.C. and A.D.) who influenced him with their ideas of honor, justice, truth, bravery, beauty, and God. They seemed to support his preference for tranquility, science, honest hard labor, faith, and grace. The journals illustrate an appropriately complicated epic account of Henry David Thoreau's life with the earth. I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever At the bottom of my dream. (Journal 143$) It is legend that Thoreau introduces his journal with the muse of Emerson in his ear, but long before Emerson became Thoreau's object of inspiration, the ancient stoics, the philosophers, the poets and the playwrights offered a seemingly relevant and particularly beautiful and historical snapshot of a time long gone-by. They were the original epic makers and, like the stories of the Greeks and their gods, these immortal authors became Thoreau's inspiration and he took it upon himself to explore their morality, and their mortality. The student may read Homer or iEschylus in the original Greek; for to do so implies to emulate their heroes—the consecration of morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, though printed in the character of our mother tongue, are 4 always written in a foreign language, dead to idle and degenerate times, and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than the text renders us, at last, out of our own valor and generosity. August 6, 1845 {Journal nil) Similar to the old poets, Thoreau searched for meaning and explored the very depths of origin. His method of exploration lay in the observation and documentation of the seasons and cycles of the natural habitat in Concord. Timeless words encouraging the very seeds of consciousness cultivate the old poets' immortality and Thoreau humbly aspired to be his own kind of poet genius. He wrote with the suggestion that all old poets walk with those who succeed them, because each generation is simply another layer of a much older story. Although it is a story forever intangible, with the human imagination it retains the magic of eternity. As Thoreau created his own path he had only to follow the trail of bread crumbs to pursue the heroes that had gone before him. From the generation and Romantic movement prior to Thoreau, Samuel Coleridge (1772— 1834), one of the Romantic Movements founder's, describes epic in relation to the "Homeric epic", that of being "purely external and objective", in which "the poet is a mere voice" (OED). The Homeric epic "demands action" (Martin 6) and illustrates the Greek tradition of heroes and battles. It has a theme central not only to the man's journey but also to the nation or culture, in which an evolution through particular phases that collectively form a whole is depicted through glorious ancestors and origin. Following in the Romantic movements tradition, Henry Coleridge as a teacher of "young persons", established the importance of language in his book Introductions to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets (1834) and he wrote, "Great genius, indeed, generally gives, or compels the acquisition of, a mastery over language : it is the organ necessary for its manifestation" (Coleridge 3). He argued the essence of language was only partly defined by diction and the rules of authority; equally important, was the correct impression of literature as "a logical harmony of expressions with the thoughts, so that the exact image or conception intended by the writer may be conveyed to the mind of the reader" (Coleridge 4). Students in the nineteenth century learned that a heroic character of the Greek tradition was a most admirable trait, and equally appropriate for the men of a new America eager to stamp their own identity. "Words", 5 Coleridge argued, "are not only the signs of all thoughts, but seem originally, though subject to several exceptions, to have been the very mental pictures of all visible things" (4). Educators of the past especially, suggest that the extraordinary poet or philosopher of any age seems to be of a more civilized mind and that his aim, to use a phrase of Coleridge's, was "to soften the ferocity of the common herd" (75). Much of Thoreau's writing conformed to the teaching of Coleridge and his peers, and in a manner similar to their instruction, Thoreau wrote on January 29,1840: The Greeks, as the Southerns generally, expressed themselves with more facility than we in distinct and lively images, and as to the grace and completeness with which they treated the subjects suited to their genius they must be allowed to retain their ancient supremacy. But a rugged and uncouth array of thought, though never so modern, may rout them at any moment. It remains for other than Greeks to write the literature of the next century. Journal 7116 When writing of the sixth century B.C. playwright and warrior ^schylus, Thoreau acknowledged that the poet (older than Aristotle) was "a seer in his day" (Journal 193), but, he also warned that should a reader desire an idol for "real wisdom" he should expect to be disappointed. However, suggested Thoreau, a reader would be wise if "he could solace himself for the most part, with the poet's humanity and what it was in him to say. He will discover that, like every genius, he was a solitary liver and worker in his day" (Journal 193). Thoreau held a strong belief that a man who found comfort in solitude was a man better able to hear his call to duty and that the ancient poets' genius remained a sufficient guide for the contemporary man. During a period of days when Thoreau was writing about the life of nature and his own "warm pulse of young life that beats steadily underneath all" (Journal 189), he was also ruminating about the days of the old poets he wrote, We are accustomed to say that the common sense of this age belonged to the seer of the last—as if time gave him any vantage ground. But not so: I see not but Genius must ever take an equal start, and all the generations of men are virtually at a standstill for it to come and consider of them. Common sense is not so familiar with any truth but Genius will represent it in a strange light to it. Let the seer bring down his broad eye to the most stale and trivial fact, and he will make you believe it a new planet in the sky. (Journal 193) 6 The classic poet holds tight to the thread of antiquity, seeking to keep vital the enduring conversation of origin and meaning. Their gift was an ability to describe glory and gloom so that both are musical. Of the poet, one eye searched for Beauty, while the other eye searched for Truth, and it was in the midst of earth that they would find eternity. Thoreau's journal is sprinkled with thoughts about the ancient poets Homer and Virgil, and the later philosophers such as Chaucer, Milton, and Goethe; in several journal entries he copied influential passages of their work that echoed a relevant truth. During Thoreau's early years of intellectual exploration he seemed most curious about the mystery of the mind, and as fascinating as scientific nature was to him, his inspiration burned for a desire to coordinate his place in the modern world with the mythological realm of the wisest poet philosophers. Of Origen he borrowed from the seventeenth century theologian, "Cudworth" and, as though Thoreau were contemplating the seed of invention and the thread of evolution, he wrote, "Origen determines that the stars do make by signify; and that the heavens are a kind of divine volume, in whose characters they that are skilled may read or spell out human events." Nothing can be truer, and yet astrology is possible" (Journal 1133). Thoreau was most respectful and most constant at the universality of the poets' message and he imagined "What the first philosopher taught, the last will have to repeat" (Journal 1134). Thoreau understood the truth of striving inwardly and he was acutely aware that men like Milton had raised the concept of heaven and hell as a psychological construct, rather than an infinitely distant geography. Doubtless, these seventeenth century men were seeking to emphasize the power of the human construct of God and mortality. Surely this Christian structure, ascertaining superiority over a more pagan ideology, represented greater control of nature that most assuredly enhanced the value and meaning of life. True poets of any age seem not so very different, for even in seemingly undeveloped concepts, they were sincere intellectual contemplators of their own minds. In Christian Doctrine, Milton boldly for the seventeenth century, paved his personal path stating, "But in fact I decided not to depend upon the belief or judgment of others in religious questions for this reason: God has revealed the way of eternal salvation only to the individual faith of each man, and demands of us that any man who wishes to be saved should work out his beliefs for himself' (Kerrigan 1141). The Transcendentalists prospered with this concept and the difference between the Renaissance man and the nineteenth century American man is the apparent inequality of importance between mind and body. 7 Thoreau, in contrast with the more enchanted poets, reflected on the unarguable importance of both mind and body, not simply mind over body. He understood that the growth of the soul progressed through his own actions, rather than solely by the hand of God. Similar to older poets, Thoreau suggested that the mystery of earth holds the key to God or, at least, to the secrets of immortality. He emphasized Earth as the animate instrument that man had access to on a daily basis. Clearly, for the poet-naturalist, earth symbolized the clearest connection between God and man. Indeed, man's journey on earth illustrated the divine trial of worthiness and faith. The responsibility respectfully placed upon him secured his basis for humility. For Thoreau, Earth represented the unifying factor in a world that had passion for cosmic order and historical significance. Earth embodied the sacred belief of life, death, and resurrection by illustrating its alternating patterns of sorrow, grief, joy, and celebration. Her cyclic rituals complemented man's journey, and indeed, set the moral models of society. Thoreau would have a reader know that it was the nature of the farmer who "keeps pace with his crops and the revolutions of the seasons,[...]" {Journal 178) that reflected a high regard to the earth and her cycles. For as dark cold clouds brought at times a bitter darkness, so too were they sure to crystallize with time into sunshine and blue skies. "A serene summer-evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end of a season, but the beginning" {Journal 1400). Carl Bode stresses that classical writing was one of Thoreau's "vital interests" (313). In Thoreau's earlier years he was significantly concerned about "the role of the poet in life and the function of poetry" (313) and, states Bode, even "toward the end of his life, when he became primarily a reporter of nature, the classics still occupied a warm spot in his heart" (313). Thoreau never completely lost his enchantment of Fancy and Imagination and the classics seemed to reside in his thoughts. From, especially, the teens to young adulthood they spoke to him with a force. On November 20,1837 he wrote, "I would read Virgil, if only that I might be reminded of the identity of human nature in all ages" {Journal 112). Thoreau spent his earliest years professing to the trainings of a poet, and he began to symbolize nature through earlier poets' renditions of light and dark and birth and death, but his symbolism invited the reader to experience earth texturally through organic processes. His journal illustrates a man collaborating with a myriad of subjects in order to glimpse the universal ascent of man. On April 9,1839 he 8 wrote, "Fat roots of pine lying in rich veins as of gold or silver, even in old pastures where you would least expect it, make you realize that you live in the youth of the world, and you begin to know the wealth of the planet" (Journal 177). Seven years later he contemplated, We forget how the sun looks on our fields, as on the forests and the prairies, as they reflect or absorb his rays. It matters not whether we stand in Italy or on the prairies of the West, in the eye of the sun the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden, and yields to the wave of an irresistible civilization. (Journal 7401) In 1839, Thoreau was twenty years old and had been out of Harvard for two years. In general, the poets' philosophy, nature, and love seemed to be heavy in his heart. From 1839 to 1842 Thoreau exhibited all the traits of a healthy man in the youth of life. He had hopes for love, for writing, and for making his own way in life. It was during this year when the Thoreau brothers, Henry and his older brother John, met and fell in love with the same woman, Ellen Sewell. Continuing his poetic endeavors from Harvard, these were the days when Henry Thoreau practiced expression in the form of both prose and poetry. He met Ellen a week or two before this was written. July 20,1839 The Breeze's Invitation Come, let's roam the breezy pastures, Where the freest zephyrs blow, Batten on the oak tree's rustle, And the pleasant insect bustle, Dripping with the streamlet's flow. What if I no wings do wear, Thro' this solid-seeming air I can skim like any swallow; Whoso dareth let her follow, And we'll be a jovial pair. Like two careless swifts let's sail, Zephyrus shall think for me; Over hill and over dale, Riding on the easy gale, We will scan the earth and sea. Yonder see that willow tree Winnowing the buxom air; 9 You and gnat and I a bee, With our merry minstrelsy We will make a concert there. One green leaf shall be our screen, Till the sun doth go to bed, I the king and you the queen Of that peaceful little green, Without any subject's aid. To our music Time will linger, And earth open wide her ear, Nor shall any need to tarry To immortal verse to marry Such sweet music as he'll hear. During the period that the Thoreau brothers were courting the seventeen year old Ellen Sewall they went on an excursion down the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. They retired their old boat Rover (Harding 88) and painted a new one that was green and blue and "christened it the "Musketaquid"—an Indian name for the Concord River" (Harding 88). On August 31, 1839 John and Henry, after an evening of melon festivities in which Henry provided the fattest and juiciest melons of the county, packed their Musketaquid and shoved off. This week long adventure gave Thoreau many years worth of material for writing, and in fact, he spent much of his time at Walden working on what was to become his first book titled A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. Along the voyage down the lazy river Thoreau explored the world around him, camping on the river's embankments, watching and listening to the variety of birds, animals, insects, and conversing with the Indians, and settlers of unfamiliar shores whenever there was chance. Throughout seven days, readers glimpse Thoreau's passion of ancient cultures and people, and his thirst for nature and the organic processes that guide the eternal cycles of evolution. The following is a poem written in his Journal that appears (slightly altered) in "Tuesday" of A Week (235). This passage appears to have taken place upon the river before and during the earliest gleaming of sunrise. Thoreau ruminates about the preceding rainy day on top of the Catskills and under mystical clouds that could have represented, perhaps, the characters of gods. It is a new morning and in the "dewy and embryo light" (235) he could see that the fog from the mountains had descended upon the river. Thoreau described the first pinholes of light as air that was barely 10 visible. With just slight vision the keenest sense in the early morning water was auditory; and in the midnight of morning he could detect through the stillness, "One little rill of commerce already awake on this distant New Hampshire river" (235). FOG Thou drifting meadow of the air, Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, And in whose fenny labyrinths The bittern booms and curlew peeps, The heron wades and boding rain-crow clucks; Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air, Fountain-head and source of rivers, Ocean branch that flowest to the sun, Diluvian spirit, or Deucalion shroud, Dew-cloth, dream drapery, And napkin spread by fays, Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers, Sea-flowl that with the east wind Seek'st the shore, groping thy way inland, By whichever name I please to call thee, Bear only perfumes and the scent Of healing herbs to just men's fields. Journal 1458 These were the early days of Thoreau as a poet. He was young and lustful in 1839 when he fell in love at the age of twenty-two, but fatefully, by November 9 of 1840, Ellen Sewall had rejected both Thoreau brothers. More grief would soon arrive and in December of 1841 John fatally nicked himself shaving and afflicted with lockjaw, died eleven days later on January 11, 1842 in Henry's arms. By the age of twenty-five Thoreau had experienced death and heartbreak. They were experiences that matured the young man and paved his way towards manhood. Thoreau's suffering instigated a more sharply focused attraction to nature, and the process of renewed life both fascinated and inspired him. By the mid-1840's he had settled into a state of perpetual bachelorhood and courted with the idea of finding a solitary haven in the midst of Mother Nature. He educated himself about his landscape, learning the names of birds, grasses, and wildflowers. He noticed the varieties of insects, animals, and fish. He had standing invitations with the trees, the fields, and the mountaintops. He often envisioned the ancient gods of Greece and the Indians of earlier times ("the savages") before the white man's arrival. By December he had committed himself to the love of nature and in an inward state of mind he 11 declared, "My last stronghold is the forest" (Journal 1525) and he wrote on Wednesday, December 2,1840: The lake is a mirror in the breast of nature, as if there were there nothing to be concealed. All the sins of the wood are washed out in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre about it—and it becomes an arena for all the genialness of nature. It is the earth's liquid eye—it is blue or grey, or black as I choose my time. In the night it is my more than forty feet reflector. It is the cynosure of the wood all trees direct the dweller to its brink—all paths seek it out—birds fly to it—and quadrupeds flee to it—and the very ground inclines toward it. It is nature's saloon, or where she has sat down to her toilet. The sun dusts its surface each morning by evaporation. Always a fresh surface wells up. I love to consider the silent economy and tidiness of nature, how after all the filfth of the wood, and the accumulated impuritie[s] of the winter have been rinsed herein, this liquid transparency appears in the spring. I should wither and dry up if it were not for lakes and rivers. I am conscious that my body derives its genesis from their water, as much as the muskrat or the herbage on their brink. The thought of Walden in the woods yonder makes me supple jointed and limber for the duties of the day. Sometimes I thirst for it. There it lies all the year reflecting the sky—and from its surface there seems to go up a pillar of ether, which bridges over the space between earth and heaven. Water seems to be the middle element between earth and air. The most fluid in which man can float. Across the surface of every lake there sweeps a hushed music. My body is invigorated by the cones and needles of the pine seen against this frosty air—This is no thin diet. (Journal 1523) During the year of 1842, Walter Harding expresses that Thoreau presented a calm exterior, but "it proved an outward calm only" (135). From January 9, 1842 until February 19,1842 Thoreau did not put pen to paper. These days were part of his most grievous rites of passage and it was, 12 "as if years had been crowded into the last month [...]" (Journal 1321). Thoreau's life was at a crossroad. His sureness had been tested and he relied more on hope and faith than on certainty. On February 20 he wrote, My path hitherto has been like a road through a diversified country, now climbing high mountains, then descending into the lowest vales. From the summits I saw the heavens; from the vales I looked up to the heights again. In prosperity I remember God, or memory is one with consciousness; in adversity I remember my own elevations, and only hope to see God again. (Journal 7320) Like his predecessors, Thoreau was dedicated to learning about the world through his senses, his Reason, and the cyclic processes of nature. It was an experience that included keen observation and the coordination of the mind and the body. During his college years he learned about the ancient poet's, the Greek and Roman gods, the heroes, and the warriors of much older times. Although there were and remain many different idols, they all encompass the same essential message of origin and grace. It was a history that Thoreau invited himself into, and he integrated the numerous philosophies with the contemporary influences of his own time. These were the intellectual thinkers of Concord, the Transcendentalist mentors such as Professor Edward Charming (Sanborn 65), Bronson Alcott, Dr. George Ripley, and most notably, Ralph Waldo Emerson. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Nature was finally attaining characteristics other than the supernatural and now, rather than demons, sprites, and Satan, it was God who lived on the mountain and in the meadows. The Transcendentalists were shifting the language. The transcendentalists' individualism followed the Romantic culture, a period that has been described as most liberating for the common man. Never in English literature have young men looked so searchingly into their own souls and at the world around them and expressed their responses in language of such beauty and power. In the early decades of the nineteenth century Britain was stirred by new feelings about the world of nature, about liberty—both personal \ and political—and about the common man. (Adventures in English Literature x) For articulating the oldest concept of genius during the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson was America's and Thoreau's contemporary poet-philosopher. From Emerson's essay titled Self-Reliance the definition of genius is specified: "To believe your own thought, to believe 13 that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius" (Myerson 319). Emerson philosophically ascribes, Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. (Myerson 319) Emerson uses, if not the same words, then the same sentiment as the old poets and Thoreau mirrors this estimate in his own vibrant wording. By 1836, when Nature first came out, Emerson's words, as reported by numerous Thoreau scholars, were among the most influential for the nineteen year old Henry David Thoreau. They seemed to confirm his deepest convictions, and the inward thoughts that he had held since childhood seemed to be now coherent because they were so eloquently articulated. In Nature, Emerson writes, To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says—he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields it tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. (Myerson 127) 14 Even as a boy Thoreau's poetic ideas are illuminated and F.B. Sanborn writes in his book American Men of Letters that although he was a naturalist by character and a moralist by constitution, more than anything else Thoreau "was inwardly a poet by force of that shaping and controlling imagination, which was his strongest faculty" (284). Sanborn also evidences his proclivity for imagination by illuminating another boyhood statement in which he quotes Thoreau as stating, "The other world is all my art, my pencils will draw no other, my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it as a means." (285). Thoreau certainly was the embodiment of Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice. But well before Emerson's sage words, Thoreau had been gearing his intellectual curiosity towards the serious study and fancy contemplation of nature's evidence. Conceivably it is with Emerson's words that Thoreau felt empowered to continue in his own direction and follow his "original" (Myerson 125) self in search of claiming his own unique "genius" (Emerson Self-Reliance). Thoreau industriously and energetically agreed with Emerson that in nature he was able to harmonize the body and spirit. And by doing so, he imagined a man was better able to pursue the highest honor of perfecting himself, thus encouraging others by example. Reginald Cook got it most accurate when he wrote that Thoreau "was a seer before he was an expresser. Writing was only his talent; his genius was his way of looking at and understanding life" (126). Thoreau's genuine curiosity of life and his determination to become familiar with its many facets are gifts that sustained his interpretation and he reported with words that contained substance and beauty. On March 3, 1839 Thoreau pondered the character and role of the Poet: He must be something more than natural, even supernatural. Nature will not speak through but along with him. His voice will not proceed from her midst, but, breathing on her, will make her the expression of his thought. He then poetizes when he takes a fact out of nature into spirit. He speaks without reference to time or place. His thought is one world, hers another. He is another Nature—Nature's brother. Kindly offices do they perform for one another. Each publishes the other's truth. (Journal 174) Thoreau's landscape was ripe for opportunity and he prospered within a community that fostered an intellectual propensity. He had the support of a loving family and the security of wealthy transcendentalist members loyal to his genius. He held a state of "honest poverty" (Sanborn Henry David Thoreau 42) and the ability to live off the land; he had the leisure to contemplate ennui, and he had, mostly, freedom from war. Thoreau's terrain and community offered not only adventurous exploration, but also, a thriving source of intellectual stimulation. In New England, Transcendentalism had the nineteenth century's patent on new religion and it relied on big thinkers, rather than preachers, to contemplate the role of morality. The principles of Transcendentalism pressed to the outer peripheries of a rigid Puritan Christianity that had its most current roots buried in the depths of Medieval Europe. The religious freedom of America had brought with it a God with many faces that had punishable and oftentimes tortuous fines for any perceived pagan affiliation or behavior in association to gods, demons, or witchcraft. And while the Transcendentalists boldly striped the supernatural fears from Nature, they remained gallantly loyal to the tradition of grace. Long before Thoreau went to Walden, he was becoming clear about the direction of his life and he was determined to report what mattered most to him. He decided to become accountable and responsible for the words that he wrote, and he firmly established pride in the characteristics pf truth, honor, and courage. Thoreau gives a historical account of a man's life in New England America in the nineteenth century. His published journals represent the last twenty-four years of his life. When viewed as a whole the twenty-four years bring the nature of Concord to life. Individually, the writing breathes with a man filled with curiosity, triumph, melancholy, and cheer. The journals illustrate an appropriately complicated epic account of Henry David Thoreau's life with the earth. Throughout the years he also studied Eastern religion and myth, and he studied the art of the yogin, the persons who mastered the art of body and breath, and since he consistently strived to live in the present he gathered from Christianity the grace to honor God, and the Man of earnest hard labor. The old poets and philosophers were men known for maintaining the discussion of morals and ethics, good and evil, and most certainly, flesh and spirit. The magic of traveling through ancient words and loops of ideas came from detecting the joy of the human potential and the wise authors, including Thoreau, knew that it was the poet of any age who, without denying the ugly, looked to the beauty of life. Thoreau was a poet who searched the echoes of light because they resonated inside the soul as truth and hope. He suspected that as it was from the darkness of nature that we have emerged, so too would it be in the darkness of nature's arms that we, undoubtedly, would return. Earth was the doorkeeper to God whose emblems were the cycles of day and night, light and dark, months and seasons. These are the emblems symbolic for all poets because they represented the foundation in the human condition that strived towards the heroic mastery of balance, grace, and truth. Like the ancient philosophers and seers before the time of Christ, and the Renaissance poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then the later Romantics of the eighteenth century, Henry Thoreau's genius is a stream of consciousness that remains relevant for any age because it contributes a discernible evolution for the nineteenth century.