I mentioned, gentle reader, that I picked up my college copy of Walden and Other Writings because I had just re-read Walden in an omnibus edition of The Maine Woods / Walden / Cape Cod and figured I would polish off the other shorter works in this volume, namely A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, “Civil Disobedience”, and some ephemera.
One thing I did notice when I turned past Walden in this volume is that I did a little “dialoging with the text.” In college, at least in the English classes, they recommend that you highlight things you find meaningful, relevant, or think will be useful for the final and to scrawl your notes in the margins. I didn’t really get into it that much–even then it seemed like it was defacing the book and selfish to boot. Some books that I get secondhand that have been used in college classes have so much highlighting and scrawl as to be nigh unreadable (which is probably an indicator that I should flip through the pages of classical literature and philosophy that I find at book sales much like I check record and video covers to make sure that they contain what they say).
At any rate, in case you’re wondering, as I was, what all I highlighted as I read it, here we go:
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway seed in it,—though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugar,—and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely,—that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder,—out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin,—the architecture of the grave, and “carpenter” is but another name for “coffin-maker.” One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my ornaments ready I will wear them.
(Compare with Roark in The Fountainhead)
…but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.
A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much.
What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
(Emerson?)
…but they have, to my eyes, if possible….
(Must be transparent eyeball of Emerson)
So I highlighted a couple of passages that would have been inspirational to a young man in college, and I highlighted (or in the last case, circled in pen) a number of things that connected them to other things I’d read.
To be honest, that was my super power in college: taking a lot of philosophy, literature, and theology classes had me reading a lot of primary texts, and I could make impressive connections in papers and whatnot that impressed the professors.
A couple of such instances come to mind:
First, in a class on the Romantic poets, I expounded at length about how Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” drew heavily upon imagery and themes from the Bhagavad Gita. And after a very excited and passionate discussion contribution to that effect, Dr. Duffy said, “Yes, that’s in the footnotes.” But he looked and saw I was using a library copy of the book and not the edition sold in the book store for the class, he said, “But I see some of us have a different edition.” Suitably impressed with my insight, I hoped, gleaned because I had taken a class on Eastern traditions from the theology department and had read the Bhagavad Gita.
Second, in a class on playwright Ben Jonson, I wrote my paper on how in Sejanus: His Fall, the titular emperor did everything contra to what Machiavelli said a ruler should do in The Prince. Unbeknownst to me, the doctor running the class had written a whole book with a similar theme. The paper resulted in my getting an A in the class and made the final unnecessary, which meant that my crash course in catching up on the class readings–three or four plays in as many nights to prep for the final had all been in vain. Ah, well. I still have finished the two-volume set of Ben Jonson I have around here. Given how much time has passed, I should probably re-read the set.
At any rate: The fact that the yellow highlighting ends pretty early and the latter passage is circled in pen might indicate that I started out keeping up with the reading but didn’t finish Walden in the portion of the class where I was supposed to have read it. Which often happened as I was taking a full load of English and Philosophy, so my nightly reading load was 200+ pages atop working a full time job and riding a bus two to four hours to campus every day.
I guess it took, though, as I continue to intermittently read heady tomes. It’s just that I get less opportunity to make the cross-book references since modern paperbacks don’t allude to classical literature much.
Instead of highlighting passages now, I put a little post-it flag in the books by passages that strike me, and I sometimes remark upon those passages here on the blog. But if it’s just one flag, I’ll just take it out before shelving it.
This volume of Walden and Other Writings has three such flags. Let’s see what struck me now.
In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Mencius says: “If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well how to seek them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, he does not know how to seek them again. . . . The duties of practical philosophy consist only in seeking after those sentiments of the heart which we have lost; that is all.”
You know, I’ve read some Confucius, and I bought a Penguin Classics edition of Mencius which has even odds of coming pre-highlighted eight years ago in Wisconsin. Although Thoreau quotes Mencius, his thought seems more Buddhist-influenced than Confucian with its urgings to respect authority. Maybe in the middle of the 19th century, Eastern thought was not as clearly delineated.
From “Civil Disobedience”:
As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.
Definitely not Confucian. And a bit….stark. Who knew that Thoreau invented rage-clickbait?
From his journal:
Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,–and He would perchance reward us with lumps of gold? It is a text, oh! for the Jonash of this generation, and yet the pulpits were as silent as immortal Greece [?], silent, some of them, because the preacher is gone to California himself. The gold of California is a touchstone which has betrayed the rottenness, the baseness, of mankind. Satan, from one of his elevations, showed mankind the kingdom of California, and they entered into a compact with him at once.
Perhaps I was merely flagging the last sentence to slag on California. But it also illustrates Thoreau’s opposition to industry, manufacturing, and probably capitalism which permeates his writing. Still more Buddhist than Confucian, and the use of Christian religious figures is atypical and probably just to reach the Christians and not representative of his religious faith.
At any rater (he said as its his second use of the transition in this post), that’s what I marked in the book. And now that I have remarked here, I can take those flags out and add this book to my “read” shelves and to my 20-year-old book database (which only contains the books I have completed plus reference works).
Oh, and lest I forget: Maybe I should read more classics, as they’re available on Project Gutenberg, and I can swipe and paste quotes instead of holding a book open and trying to touch-type the quote with sometimes ridiculous results. If you want to read Walden, “Civil Disobedience”, and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, or if you just want to check my quotes, you can find them online here and here.
