Henry David Thoreau (bornDavid Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an Americannaturalist,essayist,poet, andphilosopher.[2] A leadingtranscendentalist,[3] he is best known for his bookWalden, a reflection uponsimple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are hiswritings on natural history andphilosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings ofecology andenvironmental history, two sources of modern-dayenvironmentalism. Hisliterary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointedrhetoric,symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophicalausterity, and attention to practical detail.[4] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste andillusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.[4]
Thoreau had a distinctive appearance, with a nose that he called his "most prominent feature".[13] Of his appearance and disposition,Ellery Channing wrote:[14]
His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were quite marked: the noseaquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits ofCaesar (more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging brows above the deepest set blue eyes that could be seen, in certain lights, and in others gray,—eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open with the most varied and unusual instructive sayings.
Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau[15] inConcord, Massachusetts, into the "modestNew England family"[16] of John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. His father was of French Protestant descent.[17] His paternal grandfather had been born on the UKcrown dependency island ofJersey.[18] His maternal Scottish-American grandfather, Asa Dunbar, ledHarvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion",[19] the first recorded student protest in the American colonies.[20] David Henry was named after his recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He began to call himself Henry David after he finished college; he never petitioned to make a legal name change.[21]
He had two older siblings,Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister,Sophia Thoreau.[22] None of the children married.[23] Helen (1812–1849) died at age 37,[23] fromtuberculosis. John Jr. (1814–1842) died at age 27,[24] oftetanus after cutting himself while shaving.[25] Henry David (1817–1862) died at age 44, of tuberculosis.[26] Sophia (1819–1876) survived him by 14 years, dying at age 56,[23] of tuberculosis.[27]
He studied atHarvard College between 1833 and 1837. He lived inHollis Hall[28] and took courses inrhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science.[29] He was a member of the Institute of 1770[30] (now theHasty Pudding Club). According to legend, Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee (approximately equivalent to $157 in 2024) for a Harvard master's diploma, which he described thus:Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college".[31] He commented, "Let every sheep keep its own skin",[32] a reference to the tradition of usingsheepskinvellum for diplomas.
Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord. The house has been restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust,[33] a nonprofit organization, and is now open to the public.
The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—did not interest Thoreau,[34]: 25 so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught at a school inCanton, Massachusetts, living for two years at an earlier version of today'sColonial Inn in Concord. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings that were later combined.[35] After he graduated in 1837, Thoreau joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but he resigned after a few weeks rather than administercorporal punishment.[34]: 25 He and his brother John then opened the Concord Academy, agrammar school in Concord, in 1838.[34]: 25 They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed when John became fatally ill fromtetanus in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving.[36][37] He died in Henry's arms.[38]
Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he metRalph Waldo Emerson through a mutual friend.[16] Emerson, who was 14 years his senior, took a paternal and at times patron-like interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, includingEllery Channing,Margaret Fuller,Bronson Alcott, andNathaniel Hawthorne and his sonJulian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.
Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical,The Dial, and lobbied the editor, Margaret Fuller, to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published inThe Dial was "Aulus Persius Flaccus",[39] an essay on the Roman poet and satirist, in July 1840.[40] It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry, on October 22, 1837, reads,"'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."[41]
Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followedtranscendentalism, a loose and eclecticidealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts", as Emerson wrote inNature (1836).
1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau, designed byLeonard Baskin
On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved in with theEmersons.[42] There, from 1841 to 1844, he served as the children's tutor; he was also an editorial assistant, repairman and gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson onStaten Island,[43] and tutored the family's sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representativeHorace Greeley.[44]: 68
Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family'spencil factory, which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. He resurrected the process of making good pencils with inferiorgraphite by using clay as a binder.[45] The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, had been first patented byNicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795. Thoreau made profitable use of a graphite source found inNew Hampshire that had been purchased in 1821 by his uncle, Charles Dunbar. The company's other source of graphite had beenTantiusques, a mine operated by Native Americans inSturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the pencil factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite at the time, which was used in theelectrotyping process.[46]
Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (120 hectares) of Walden Woods.[47]
"Civil Disobedience" and the Walden years, 1845–1850
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.
— Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For", inWalden[48]
Thoreau felt a need to concentrate and work more on his writing. In 1845,Ellery Channing told Thoreau, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you."[49] Thus, on July 4, 1845, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment insimple living, moving to a small house he had built on land owned by Emerson in asecond growth forest around the shores ofWalden Pond, having had a request to build a hut onFlints Pond, near that of his friendCharles Stearns Wheeler, denied by the landowners due to theFairhaven Bay incident.[50][51] The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres (5.7 hectares) that Emerson had bought,[52]1+1⁄2 miles (2.5 kilometers) from his family home.[53] Whilst there, he wrote his only extended piece of literary criticism, "Thomas Carlyle and His Works".[54]
Original title page ofWalden, with an illustration from a drawing by Thoreau's sister Sophia
On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the localtax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquentpoll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to theMexican–American War andslavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. The next day Thoreau was freed when someone, likely to have been his aunt, paid the tax, against his wishes.[5] The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government",[55] explaining his tax resistance at theConcord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:
Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State—an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr.Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.
Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay titled "Resistance to Civil Government" (also known as "Civil Disobedience"). It was published byElizabeth Peabody in theAesthetic Papers in May 1849. Thoreau had taken up a version ofPercy Shelley's principle in the political poem "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819), which begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.[57]
At Walden Pond, Thoreau completed a first draft ofA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, anelegy to his brother John, describing their trip to theWhite Mountains in 1839. Thoreau did not find a publisher for the book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense; fewer than 300 were sold.[42]: 234 He self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book.
Reconstruction of the interior of Thoreau's cabin
Replica of Thoreau's cabin and a statue of him near Walden Pond
In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip toMount Katahdin inMaine, a journey that was later recorded in "Ktaadn", the first part ofThe Maine Woods.
Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.[42]: 244 At Emerson's request, he immediately moved back to the Emerson house to help Emerson's wife, Lidian, manage the household while her husband was on an extended trip to Europe.[58] Over several years, as he worked to pay off his debts, he continuously revised the manuscript of what he eventually published asWalden, or Life in the Woods in 1854, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of the four seasons to symbolize human development. Partmemoir and part spiritual quest,Walden at first won few admirers, but later critics have regarded it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.
The American poetRobert Frost wrote of Thoreau, "In one book ... he surpasses everything we have had in America."[59]
The American authorJohn Updike said of the book, "A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible."[60]
Thoreau moved out of Emerson's house in July 1848 and stayed at a house on nearby Belknap Street. In 1850, he moved into a house at255 Main Street, where he lived until his death.[61]
In the summer of 1850, Thoreau and Channing journeyed from Boston toMontreal andQuebec City. These would be Thoreau's only travels outside the United States.[62] It is as a result of this trip that he developed lectures that eventually becameA Yankee in Canada. He jested that all he got from this adventure "was a cold".[63] In fact, this proved an opportunity to contrast American civic spirit and democratic values with a colony apparently ruled by illegitimate religious and military power. Whereas his own country had had its revolution, in Canada history had failed to turn.[64]
In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated withnatural history and narratives of travel and expedition. He read avidly onbotany and often wrote observations on this topic into his journal. He admiredWilliam Bartram andCharles Darwin'sVoyage of the Beagle. He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his word.[65][66]
He became aland surveyor and continued to write increasingly detailed observations on the natural history of the town, covering an area of 26 square miles (67 square kilometers), in his journal, a two-million-word document he kept for 24 years. He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source of his late writings on natural history, such as "Autumnal Tints", "The Succession of Trees", and "Wild Apples", an essay lamenting the destruction of the localwild apple species.
With the rise ofenvironmental history andecocriticism as academic disciplines, several new readings of Thoreau began to emerge, showing him to have been both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots.[67][68] For instance, "The Succession of Forest Trees", shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through the dispersal of seeds by winds or animals. In this lecture, first presented to a cattle show in Concord, and considered his greatest contribution to ecology, Thoreau explained why one species of tree can grow in a place where a different tree did previously. He observed thatsquirrels often carry nuts far from the tree from which they fell to create stashes. These seeds are likely to germinate and grow should the squirrel die or abandon the stash. He credited the squirrel for performing a "great service ... in the economy of the universe."[69]
He traveled toCanada East once,Cape Cod four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books,A Yankee in Canada,Cape Cod, andThe Maine Woods, in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest toPhiladelphia and New York City in 1854 and west across theGreat Lakes region in 1861, when he visitedNiagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago,Milwaukee,St. Paul andMackinac Island.[70] He was provincial in his own travels, but he read widely about travel in other lands. He devoured all the first-hand travel accounts available in his day, at a time when the last unmapped regions of the earth were being explored. He readMagellan andJames Cook; thearctic explorersJohn Franklin,Alexander Mackenzie andWilliam Parry;David Livingstone andRichard Francis Burton on Africa;Lewis and Clark; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers.[71] Astonishing amounts of reading fed his endless curiosity about the peoples, cultures, religions and natural history of the world and left its traces as commentaries in his voluminous journals. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "live at home like a traveler".[72]
AfterJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown ordamned him with faint praise. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a key speech, "A Plea for Captain John Brown", which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of theAmerican Civil War entire armies of the North wereliterally singing Brown's praises. As a biographer of Brown put it, "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."[73]
Thoreau in his second and final photographic sitting, August 1861.
Thoreau contractedtuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1860, following a late-night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rainstorm, he became ill withbronchitis.[74][75][76] His health declined, with brief periods of remission, and he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularlyThe Maine Woods andExcursions, and petitioning publishers to print revised editions ofA Week andWalden. He wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded, "I did not know we had ever quarreled."[77]
Grave of Thoreau atSleepy Hollow Cemetery in ConcordGeodetic Marker at Thoreau's gravesite
Aware he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian".[78] He died on May 6, 1862, at age 44.Amos Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn.[79] Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at the funeral.[80] Thoreau was buried in the Dunbar family plot; his remains and those of members of his immediate family were eventually moved toSleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking andcanoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. He was a highly skilled canoeist;Nathaniel Hawthorne, after a ride with him, noted that "Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two paddles or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to require no physical effort to guide it."[82]
He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet[83] and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote inWalden, "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."[84]
Thoreau's famous quotation, near his cabin site at Walden Pond
Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, thepastoral realm that integrates nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitrator between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of humanity in North America. He decried the latter endlessly but felt that a teacher needs to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. The wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country". His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail", but he also hiked on pristine land.
In an essay titled, "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher",environmental historianRoderick Nash wrote, "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance."[85]
Of alcohol, Thoreau wrote, "I would fain keep sober always. ... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor. ... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"[84]
While Henry David Thoreau was never formally diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or another related condition, some people in the autistic community strongly identify with Thoreau's lived experience, as described in his essays[86]. It is speculated that Thoreau may have had ASD himself; Julie Brown, author of "Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and Asperger's Syndrome Have Influenced Literary Writing", claims that Thoreau "demonstrated so many traits of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) that it seems very likely he was affected by it"[86]. Brown specifically names Thoreau's social difficulties and desire for solitude, strict routines and desire for sameness, formation of identity through oppositional behavior, and restrictive and intense interests, citing examples from Thoreau's essays[86].
For example, inWalden, Thoreau describes the (perceived) superiority of a simple diet and a limited wardrobe, as well as his construction of a rather spartan living space in the woods; Brown connects these traits to the repetitive, simple diets and clothing of other people with Asperger's Syndrome, and asserts that the small size and limited decoration of Thoreau's living space was a sign of his desire for consistency and simplicity, which she asserts are "rooted in his place on the autism spectrum"[86].
An additional point can be made that Thoreau's favorite number is four. This is due to the fact that he has referenced it in multiple works, such as including four metaphors in one paragraph inWalden.
Thoreaunever married and was childless. In 1840, when he was 23, he proposed to eighteen-year oldEllen Sewall, but she refused him, on the advice of her father.[87]Sophia Foord proposed to him, but he rejected her.[88]
Thoreau's sexuality has long been the subject of speculation, including by his contemporaries. Critics have called himheterosexual,homosexual, orasexual.[89][90] There is no evidence to suggest he had physical relations with anyone, man or woman. Bronson Alcott wrote that Thoreau "seemed to have no temptations. All those strong wants that do battle with other men's nature, he knew not."[91] Some scholars have suggested that homoerotic sentiments run through his writings and concluded that he was homosexual.[89][92][93] The elegy "Sympathy" was inspired by the eleven-year-old Edmund Sewall, who had just spent five days in the Thoreau household in 1839.[94] One scholar has suggested that he wrote the poem to Edmund because he could not bring himself to write it to Edmund's sister Anna,[95] and another that Thoreau's "emotional experiences with women are memorialized under a camouflage of masculine pronouns",[96] but other scholars dismiss this.[89][97] It has been argued that the longpaean inWalden to the French-Canadian woodchopper Alek Therien, which includes allusions toAchilles and Patroclus, is an expression of conflicted desire.[98] In some of Thoreau's writing there is the sense of a secret self.[99] In 1840 he writes in his journal: "My friend is the apology for my life. In him are the spaces which my orbit traverses".[100] Thoreau was strongly influenced by the moral reformers of his time, and this may have instilled anxiety and guilt over sexual desire.[101]
Thoreau was fervently againstslavery and actively supported the abolitionist movement.[1] He participated as a conductor in theUnderground Railroad, delivered lectures that attacked theFugitive Slave Law, and in opposition to the popular opinion of the time, supported radical abolitionist militia leaderJohn Brown and his party.[1] Two weeks after the ill-fatedraid on Harpers Ferry and in the weeks leading up to Brown's execution, Thoreau delivered a speech to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, in which he compared the American government toPontius Pilate and likened Brown's execution to thecrucifixion of Jesus Christ:
Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.[4]
In "The Last Days of John Brown", Thoreau described the words and deeds of John Brown as noble and an example of heroism.[102] In addition, he lamented the newspaper editors who dismissed Brown and his scheme as "crazy".[102]
Thoreau was a proponent oflimited government andindividualism. Although he was hopeful that mankind could potentially have, through self-betterment, the kind of government which "governs not at all", he distanced himself from contemporary "no-government men" (anarchists), writing: "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government."[103]
Thoreau deemed the evolution fromabsolute monarchy tolimited monarchy todemocracy as "a progress toward true respect for the individual" and theorized about further improvements "towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man".[103] Echoing this belief, he went on to write: "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."[103]
It is on this basis that Thoreau could so strongly inveigh against the British administration andCatholicism inA Yankee in Canada. Despotic authority, Thoreau argued, had crushed the people's sense of ingenuity and enterprise; the Canadianhabitants had been reduced, in his view, to a perpetual childlike state. Ignoring the recent rebellions, he argued that there would be no revolution in the St. Lawrence River valley.[64][104]
Although Thoreau believed resistance to unjustly exercised authority could be both violent (exemplified in his support for John Brown) and nonviolent (his own example oftax resistance as described in "Resistance to Civil Government"), he regardedpacifistnonresistance as temptation to passivity,[105] writing: "Let not our Peace be proclaimed by the rust on our swords, or our inability to draw them from their scabbards; but let her at least have so much work on her hands as to keep those swords bright and sharp."[105] Furthermore, in a formal lyceum debate in 1841, he debated the subject "Is it ever proper to offer forcible resistance?", arguing the affirmative.[106]
Likewise, his condemnation of theMexican–American War did not stem from pacifism, but rather because he considered Mexico "unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army" as a means to expand the slave territory.[107]
Thoreau wasambivalent towardsindustrialization andcapitalism. On one hand he regarded commerce as "unexpectedly confident and serene, adventurous, and unwearied"[4] and expressed admiration for its associatedcosmopolitanism, writing:
I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer[4]
On the other hand, he wrote disparagingly of the factory system:
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.[4]
Thoreau also favored the protection of animals and wild areas,free trade, and taxation for schools and highways,[1] and espoused views that at least in part align with what is today known asbioregionalism. He disapproved of the subjugation of Native Americans, slavery,philistinism,technological utopianism, and what can be regarded in today's terms asconsumerism, mass entertainment, and frivolous applications of technology.[1]
Intellectual interests, influences, and affinities
Thoreau was influenced byIndian spiritual thought. InWalden, there are many overt references to the sacred texts ofIndia. For example, in the first chapter ("Economy"), he writes: "How much more admirable theBhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East!"[4]American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia classes him as one of several figures who "took a morepantheist orpandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world",[108] also a characteristic ofHinduism.
Furthermore, in "The Pond in Winter", he equates Walden Pond with the sacredGanges river, writing:
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with thesacred water of the Ganges.[4]
Thoreau was aware his Ganges imagery could have been factual. He wrote about ice harvesting at Walden Pond. And he knew that New England'sice merchants were shipping ice to foreign ports, includingCalcutta.[109]
Additionally, Thoreau followed variousHindu customs, including a diet largely consisting of rice ("It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India."[4]),flute playing (reminiscent of the favorite musical pastime ofKrishna),[110] andyoga.[111]
In an 1849 letter to his friend H.G.O. Blake, he wrote about yoga and its meaning to him:
Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who practice yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruits of their works. Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.[112]
Thoreau read contemporary works in the new science of biology, including the works ofAlexander von Humboldt,Charles Darwin, andAsa Gray (Charles Darwin's staunchest American ally).[113] Thoreau was deeply influenced by Humboldt, especially his workCosmos.[114]
In 1859, Thoreau purchased and read Darwin'sOn the Origin of Species. Unlike many natural historians at the time, includingLouis Agassiz who publicly opposed Darwinism in favor of a static view of nature, Thoreau was immediately enthusiastic about the theory ofevolution by natural selection and endorsed it,[115] stating:
The development theory implies a greater vital force in Nature, because it is more flexible and accommodating, and equivalent to a sort of constant new creation. (A quote fromOn the Origin of Species follows this sentence.)[113]
Thoreau's careful observations and devastating conclusions have rippled into time, becoming stronger as the weaknesses Thoreau noted have become more pronounced ... Events that seem to be completely unrelated to his stay at Walden Pond have been influenced by it, including the national park system, the British labor movement, the creation of India, the civil rights movement, the hippie revolution, the environmental movement, and the wilderness movement. Today, Thoreau's words are quoted with feeling by liberals, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, and conservatives alike.
— Ken Kifer,Analysis and Notes on Walden: Henry Thoreau's Text with Adjacent Thoreauvian Commentary[116]
Thoreau's political writings had little impact during his lifetime, as "his contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or as a radical", viewing him instead as a naturalist. They either dismissed or ignored his political essays, including "Civil Disobedience". The only two complete books (as opposed to essays) that were published in his lifetime,Walden andA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), both dealt withNature, in which he "loved to wander".[16] His obituary was lumped in with others, rather than as a separate article, in an 1862 yearbook.[117] Critics and the public continued either to disdain or to ignore Thoreau for years, but the publication of extracts from his journal in the 1880s by his friend H.G.O. Blake, and of a definitive set of Thoreau's works by theRiverside Press between 1893 and 1906, led to the rise of whatliterary historianF. L. Pattee called a "Thoreau cult".[118]
Thoreau's writings went on to influence many public figures. Political leaders and reformers likeMohandas Gandhi, U.S. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, American civil rights activistMartin Luther King Jr., U.S. Supreme Court JusticeWilliam O. Douglas, andRussian authorLeo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly "Civil Disobedience", as did "right-wing theoristFrank Chodorov [who] devoted an entire issue of his monthly,Analysis, to an appreciation of Thoreau".[119]
Mohandas Gandhi first readWalden in 1906, while working as a civil rights activist inJohannesburg, South Africa. Gandhi first read "Civil Disobedience" while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against theIndian population in theTransvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling what he termed its "incisive logic ... unanswerable" and referring to Thoreau as "one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced."[127][128] He told American reporterWebb Miller, "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause ofIndian Independence. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience', written about 80 years ago."[129]
Martin Luther King Jr. noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of nonviolent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attendingMorehouse College. He wrote in his autobiography that it was,
Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters; a freedom ride into Mississippi; a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia; a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama; these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.[130]
American psychologistB. F. Skinner wrote that he carried a copy of Thoreau'sWalden with him in his youth.[131] InWalden Two (published in 1948), Skinner wrote about a fictionalutopian community of about 1,000 members inspired by the life of Henry Thoreau.[132] Thoreau and his fellowTranscendentalists fromConcord, Massachusetts were also a major inspiration for the American composerCharles Ives, whose 1915Piano Sonata No. 2, known as theConcord Sonata, features "impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau", and includes a part for flute, Thoreau's instrument, in its 4th movement.[133]
Thoreau's ideas have impacted and resonated with various strains in theanarchist movement, withEmma Goldman referring to him as "the greatest American anarchist".[137]Green anarchism andanarcho-primitivism in particular have both derived inspiration and ecological points-of-view from the writings of Thoreau.John Zerzan included Thoreau's text "Excursions" (1863) in his edited compilation of works in the anarcho-primitivist tradition titledAgainst civilization: Readings and reflections.[138] Additionally,Murray Rothbard, the founder ofanarcho-capitalism, has opined that Thoreau was one of the "great intellectual heroes" of his movement.[119] Thoreau was also an important influence on late 19th-centuryanarchistnaturism.[139][140] Globally, Thoreau's concepts also held importance withinindividualist anarchist circles[141][142] in Spain,[139][140][141] France,[141][143] and Portugal.[144]
For the 200th anniversary of his birth, publishers released several new editions of his work: a recreation ofWalden's 1902 edition with illustrations, a picture book with excerpts fromWalden, and an annotated collection of Thoreau's essays on slavery.[145] The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Thoreau on May 23, 2017, in Concord, MA.[146]
Thoreau's work and career received little attention from his contemporaries until 1865, when theNorth American Review publishedJames Russell Lowell's review of various papers of Thoreau's that Emerson had collected and edited.[147] Lowell's essay,Letters to Various Persons,[148] which he republished as a chapter in his book,My Study Windows,[149] derided Thoreau as a humorlessposeur trafficking in commonplaces, asentimentalist lacking in imagination, a "Diogenes in his barrel", resentfully criticizing what he could not attain.[150] Lowell's caustic analysis influenced Scottish authorRobert Louis Stevenson,[150] who criticized Thoreau as a "skulker", saying "He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself."[151]
Nathaniel Hawthorne had mixed feelings about Thoreau. He noted that "He is a keen and delicate observer of nature—a genuine observer—which, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness."[152] On the other hand, he also wrote that Thoreau "repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men".[153][154]
In a similar vein, poetJohn Greenleaf Whittier detested what he deemed to be the "wicked" and "heathenish" message ofWalden, claiming that Thoreau wanted man to "lower himself to the level of awoodchuck and walk on four legs".[155]
In response to such criticisms, the English novelistGeorge Eliot, writing decades later for theWestminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded:
People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.[156]
Thoreau himself also responded to the criticism in a paragraph of his workWalden by highlighting what he felt was the irrelevance of their inquiries:
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. ... Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; ... I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.[157]
Recent criticism has accused Thoreau of hypocrisy,misanthropy, and beingsanctimonious, based on his writings inWalden,[158] although these criticisms have been regarded as highly selective.[159][160][161]
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^Knoles, Thomas (2016)."Introduction".American Antiquarian Society. Archived fromthe original on June 5, 2023. RetrievedDecember 17, 2021.She was in Watertown when Henry wrote to her with his own proposal, probably in early November [1840]...'I wrote to H. T. that evening. I never felt so badly at sending a letter in my life.'
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^Summers, Claude JThe Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage, Routledge, New York, 2002, p. 202
^Bergman, David, ed. (2009).Gay American Autobiography: Writings From Whitman to Sedaris. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 10
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^Hendrick, George and Oehlschlaeger, Fritz (eds.)Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation, University of Illinois Press, 1979.
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^"Les anarchistes individualistes du début du siècle l'avaient bien compris, et intégraient le naturisme dans leurs préoccupations. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu à peu effacé, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, à un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence).""Anarchisme et naturisme, aujourd'hui." by Cathy YtakArchived February 25, 2009, at theWayback Machine
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^Nathaniel Hawthorne,Passages From the American Note-Books, entry for September 2, 1842.
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