Little Big Man

Sept. 14, 1851

            It appeared that we weighed, -- Tolman I think about 160, Conant 155, Keyes about 140, Kelsey 130, myself 127.

            That's Thoreau on the right -- on a pedestal -- and I've still got a few inches on him.  Not to mention a few pounds.  (In the background is a replica of his cabin at Walden Pond.  HDT sold the original to a friend when he left the pond, who used it as a lean-to to house his animals.)


            So physically HDT was a small man, even as his influence has been titanic.


            Now for Thoreau and his freinds to weigh themselves was a rare thing.  Your average American was not constantly haunted by bathroom scales back in the day.  (And what with better food and more physical labor, being underweight was much more of an issue than being overweight.)  Thoreau was primarily a vegetarian, though he also apparently enjoyed his mother's homemade pies.  Who doesn't?


[By the way, if you've never seen it rent/download sometime the movie Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman.]

19th Century Women

Nov. 14, 1851

            Some of my friends make singular blunders.  They go out of their way to talk with certain young women of whom they think, or have heard, that they are pretty, and take pains to introduce me to them.  That may be a reason why they should look at them, but it is not a reason why they should talk with them.  I confess that I am lacking a sense, perchance, in this respect, and I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has regular features.  The society of young women is the most unprofitable I ever tried.  They are so light and flighty that you can never be sure whether they are there or not there.

            Now at first glance this quotation does not seem likely to endear HDT to some readers -- particularly female, especially of the feminist persuasion.  (You go, girls!)  But let's consider the occasion.  Here's a quotation from Etiquette for Ladies: With Hints on the Preservation, Improvement, and Display of Female Beauty, published by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. 1838-1840.  [Thanks to this blog for doing the legwork.]

            Men frequently look with a jealous eye on a learned woman, and are apt to denominate her a blue; be cautious, therefore, in a mixed company of showing yourself too much beyond those around you. To a mind well formed there is more real pleasure derived from the silent consciousness of superiority, than in the ostentatious display of it . It is possible to be silent, and yet not dull,—the silent eyes are often a more powerful conqueror than the noisy tongue; but be not, therefore, apparently careless to the conversation of others,— es the eyes can tell whether you are absent or not, although the mouth gives no audible token of presence.

So let me suggest that what Thoreau has disdain for is the 1850 version of American womanhood -- not especially well-educated and restricted by both fashion and manners -- and that this quotation actually reveals an underlying respect for women.


            One last anecdote, from a Caroline Dall, "author, journalist, lecturer and champion of women's rights, was a Unitarian community service worker, minister's wife and lay preacher (June 22, 1822-December 17, 1912)".   Thoreau initially refused an invitation to hear Ms. Dall lecture, since, according to Emerson "he says women never have anything to say".  But HDT not only ended up attending the lecture, he invited Dall to spend the next day at his home, with himself, his mother and his sister -- a day "filled to the brim with charming talk", according to Ms. Dall.

Gotta Be Me

Dec. 21, 1851

            But let me say frankly that at the same time I feel, maybe with too little regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am.




            I normally never would associate Thoreau with the entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., but here we are.  The song was originally called "I've Got to Be Me".  It was from an original Broadway musical called Golden Rainbow, and was written and composed by Walter Marks.  (This was back in the 1960's, when they still made original musicals not based on cartoons or second-rate Hollywood movies -- yes, I'm looking at you, Bring It On: The Musical.)  But when Sammy recorded it, he hadda change the lyrics, just a little.


            But here's a pertinent verse:
                                   I'll go it alone, that's how it must be
                                  I can't be right for somebody else
                                  If I'm not right for me
                                 I gotta be free, I've gotta be free
                                Daring to try, to do it or die
                                I've gotta be me.



We already know that it was tough being HDT (see March 13, 1841).  His manners and his philosophy alienated a lot of people, including friends.  But in order to be authentic, to be true to himself, there was no other road he could go.

The Great Man

Jan 31, 1852

            Emerson is too grand for me.  He belongs to the nobility and wears their cloak and manners. . . I am a commoner.  To me there is something devilish in manners.  The best manners is nakedness of manners.

          When Thoreau returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard, he began to spend a lot of time with Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson was already a renowned essayist, the nominal father of the Transcendental Movement.
           At first the general impression of HDT was that he was Emerson's "Mini-Me" (if you'll pardon the expression).  Not only did he espouse the same philosophy as Emerson, but apparently he adopted some of Emerson's mannerisms, as well.  But to Emerson, Thoreau was always the real deal.


At the beginning of the relationship, Emerson noted in his journal that "my young friend. . . seems to have as free and erect mind as any I have ever met."  In July 1852, Emerson more or less cops to the charge that Thoreau makes above.

          Thoreau gives me, in flesh and blood and pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics.  He is far more real, and daily practically obeying them, than I; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside.

          Thoreau's cabin at Walden was built on Emerson's land.  HDT tutored RWE's son, and his brother's son, and once stayed with Emerson's family as RWE went on a lecture tour to England.  Late in his life, as his brilliant mind was slipping away, he would ask his wife

                   "What was the name of my best friend?"
                   "Henry Thoreau," she would answer.
                   "Oh, yes. Henry Thoreau."

Too Much Knowledge?

May 7, 1852

            I fear that the dream of toads will not sound so musical now that I know whence it proceeds.  But I will not fear to know.


           It's an old truism that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".  Can the same be said of a lot of knowledge?  Can you know too much?  I'm reminded of the poem "An Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins.  When he asks his students to respond to a poem, "all they want to do/ is tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it".  Where did they get such an idea?  From Dick Cheney?  No, from their probably well-meaning English teachers.
            So, is knowledge the enemy of beauty?  Of spontaneity and whimsy?  When we look to deeply into things the magic is revealed -- as pedestrian and ordinary, even as vile and repulsive.  
            But that's the type of magic as practiced by magicians: which is really deception and misdirection.  To look closely at true beauty is to reveal even more and more beauty.  To look closely and meter and diction -- to understand why "a host" of golden daffodils is the perfect choice for Wordsworth, to realize the "hours" of work that "seem a moment's thought"* -- only enhances the wonder and appreciation of readers.  And Thoreau's world -- the world of nature -- is replete with deep and hidden wonders.


             Knowledge may destroy mystery.  But it increases reverence.




* -- see W.B. Yeats/ "Adam's Curse"

Natural Man

June 12, 1852

            What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his notebook, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties.

            I don't think of HDT as a licentious man.  When it came to clothes, manners, and behavior he was fairly restrained and conservative.  But no doubt he must have felt about Nature the way that Walt Whitman did.

            The atmosphere is not a perfume.... it has no taste
            of the distillation.... it is odorless,
            It is for my mouth forever.... I am in love with it,
            I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
            I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

But as much as Thoreau was an individual, and as much as he was more inclined to follow the ways of animals rather than the ways of man, I can't imagine him going out in public without being adequately clothed.  (Now, bathing at Walden Pond, I'm sure, was an entirely different story.

Business

June 29, 1852

            In my experience nothing is so opposed to poetry – not crime – as business.  It is a negation of life.

            Now there's a provocative statement.  It sounds anti-capitalist.  And by extension,  even anti-American?  (You certainly couldn't get elected President saying things like that.)  So, what can we make of this.

            Say that you business is making chairs.  What is your goal?  What is your ambition?  To make the best chair possible?  At the most reasonable price possible?  Or is it to make as much money as possible?  Do you use the best materials?  The materials that offer the best value-to-price ratio?  Or the cheapest materials possible?  How do you treat your employees?  Hire the best craftsmen possible, and promising young carpenters?  Or hire the cheapest labor available?  Maybe outsource to a third world factory?  Who are you serving?  Your customers, or yourself?  In Thoreau's view, business was mostly about making money.

            Thoreau's family had a pencil business, and HDT worked for it at times.  He was instrumental in finding better graphite, to make a better pencil.  Even so, it was never more than a business to him.  And he no doubt felt his time could be much better spent doing other things -- his daily explorations of the world around him.

            Here's a poem by Buddhist-American poet Gary Snyder that I've enjoyed teaching for years that you may find relevant:

           

            THE TRADE

I found myself in a massive concrete shell
     lit by glass tubes, with air pumped in, with
     levels joined by moving stairs.

It was full of those things that were bought and made
      in the twentieth century. Layed out in trays
     or shelves

The throngs of people of that century, in their style,
     clinging garb made on machines,

Were trading all their precious time
     for things.