glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoreau At Walden "There was nothing about his "experiment," as his friends liked to call it, to arouse such curiosity and contempt. It was a common-sensible understanding, and only a slight departure from Henry's usual mode of living. His average weekly outlay, for necressaries he could not supply himself, was twenty-seven cents. A few days at manual labor, building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting or surveying,-six weeks of work out of the year, when he had grown extravagant and had to have a microscope,-gave him an ample surplus. Why should anyone live by the sweat of his brow and bore his fellowmen by talking about it? Why should not everyone live with an ample margin?-as anyone could do, provided he followed the path of simplication, logically and ruthlessly enough. The mass of men led lives of quiet desperation. Why, if not to maintain a "standard of living" that every law of the universe controverted? Did they not know that the wisest had always lived, with respect to comforts and luxuries, a life more simple and meagre than the poor? Had all the philosophers, Hindu, Greek and Persian, lived and taught in vain? Had anyone measured man's capacities? Was it fair to judge by precedents, when so very little had been attempted? Who could say that if a man advanced, boldly, in the direction of his dreams, endeavoring to live the life he had imagined, he would not meet with a success that he had never expected in common hours? Henry believed, and wished to prove, that the more one simplified one's life the less complex the laws of life would seem. Why all this pother about possessions? He liked to think of the ancient Mexicans, who burned all their goods every fifty years. Hawthorne, in one of his stories, had pictured a similar holocaust; and this was the kind of reform that Henry thought was worth considering. He meant to have his furniture, actual and symbolic, as simple as an Indian's or an Arab's. There were three bits of limestone on his table. They had to be dusted every day, while the furniture of his mind was still undusted. Out of the window quick! If he had had the wealth of Croesus, Henry's mode of living would not have been different. Space, air, time, a few tools, a note-book, a pen, a copy of Homer, what could he wish more than these? A bath in the pond at sunrise, a little Spartan sweeping and cleaning, then a bath for the intellect, perhaps in the Bhagavad-Gita, the pure water of Walden mingling in his mind with the sacred water of the Ganges. The day was his, for any wild adventure. Sometimes, on a summer morning, he would sit for hours in his sunny doorway, amid the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness. The birds flitted noiselessly about him. He could feel himself growing like the corn. He knew what the Orientals meant by contemplation and the forsaking of works. . ." pg. 360-362 "The Flowering Of New England" from the chapter 'Thoreau At Walden' by Van Wyck Brooks 7:53 p.m. - 2006-08-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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