1. SOLITUDE (First entry in Henry David Thoreau's Journal, Oct. 22, 1937)
To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present, — I avoid myself. How could I be alone in the Roman emperor’s chamber of mirrors? I seek a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor the lumber arranged.
The Germans say, “Es ist ailes wahr wodurch du besser wirst.”
(Translation of the German: All is true through which you become better.)
Meum Mihi
What makes us 'better' is, of course, problematic. It is not necessarily what makes us happier or wiser or less at odds with the world or more productive or whatever is yet more better (stet). As the Romans say, suum cuique, to which I would add tuum tibi, ergo meum mihi. For me, happiness is overrated. As for wisdom, I am with Socrates: he is wisest who knows he is a fool. If it were the case that I knew something worth knowing, it would still be of no use to you. Happily, for all of us, Henry lives now only as stale prase on the lips of his admirers. I would rather be elsewhere. Nor does work make me a better person. I put no stock in the Protestant work ethic. Doing nothing at all suits me quite well. What is better than dillydallying all day? When I am doing nothing I feel more a part of whatever all of this is, itself without purpose, ever in se sibi. Of course, what I have said puts me at odds with worldly ambitions and with those who would win applause. What a waste! I would rather not even be myself if I could not go dark. Henry David, my Henry David, wrote his first journal entry in the autumnal bloom of 1837. As for me, I am writing during the plague of 2020. It's spring.
2. Spring
Oct. 25 (1837) She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy. “The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes, and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light vapor.” GOETHE, Torquato Tasso.
Spring before spring
Henry David wrote this journal entry in late October. It must be that the autumnal bloom of leaves, the chill air, crisp and aromatic, the silvery breath escaping his lips, makes him think of a spring before spring, which to the poet’s eye is always arriving in all times and places. It is the poet’s gift to us who might otherwise forget that we are always beginning, recreating the world for ourselves and others. Feel the wind on your skin like a kiss. Spring is here.
3. Virgil
Nov. 18 (1837) “Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles” is such a line as would save an epic; and how finely he concludes his “agrestem musam,” now that Silenus has done, and the stars have heard his story, — “Cogere donee oves stabulis, numerumque referre Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo.”
Vesper
The line that would save an epic is from Virgil’s Sixth Ecologue, Pulsae referent ad sidera valles: the struck valleys echo to the stars. The trees, the rivers, the valleys, and stars are the musical instruments upon which the poet strikes his song. Yet, significantly, Virgil’s words are not from his Aeneid. He elevates the "agrestem musam" to the heavens. When all the epic clatter of arms and shouts of heroes have passed away, the pastoral poem reasserts the prior authority of nature’s rhythms: Evening rules even unwilling Olympus and the stars remain as they always are, night and day.
From Eclogue 6
ille canit: pulsae referunt ad sidera ualles:
cogere donec ovis stabulis numerumque referre 85
iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo.
he (Silenus) sings: the struck valleys echo to the stars:
until to gather the sheep in the stables and to tally their number
he bid and, Olympus unwilling, Vesper advanced.
agrestem musam: rustic muse
4. NAWSHAWTUCT
Nov. 21, (1837) One must needs climb a hill to know what a world he inhabits. In the midst of this Indian summer I am perched on the topmost rock of Nawshawtuct, a velvet wind blowing from the southwest. I seem to feel the atoms as they strike my cheek. Hills, mountains, steeples stand out in bold relief in the horizon, while I am resting on the rounded boss of an enormous shield, the river like a vein of silver encircling its edge, and thence the shield gradually rises to its rim, the horizon. Not a cloud is to be seen, but villages, villas, forests, mountains, one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens. The atmosphere is such that, as I look abroad upon the length and breadth of the land, it recedes from my eye, and I seem to be looking for the threads of the velvet. Thus I admire the grandeur of my emerald carriage, with its border of blue, in which I am rolling through space.
We belong to nature
It may be that Henry David is thinking here of the divinely-crafted shield of Achilles. There is, however, great irony between what Achilles' shield depicts and the hero's subsequent slaughter of Trojans. Certainly, strife and death are present in the scenes Hephaestus creates but these take place within a balanced cosmos: the shield’s rim is Oceanus, the sun and moon crown the heavens, there are two noble cities, one at war and another at peace, and there is a young boy plucking his lyre, his song “so clear it could break the heart with longing”:
and what he sang was a dirge for the dying year,
lovely ... his fine voice rising and falling low
as the rest followed, all together, frisking, singing,
shouting, their dancing footsteps beating out the time.
There is nothing depicted on the shield Hephaestus has made that even remotely approximates Achilles’ murderous rampage, against which the Scamander River protests:
“Stop. Achilles! Greater than any man on earth,
greater in outrage too—
for the gods themselves are always at your side!
But if Zeus allows you to kill off all the Trojans,
drive them out of my depths at least, I ask you,
out on the plain and do your butchery there.
All my lovely rapids are crammed with corpses now,
no channel in sight to sweep my currents out to sacred sea—
I’m choked with corpses and still you slaughter more,
you blot out more! Leave me alone, have done—
captain of armies, I am filled with horror!” (XVIII, Fagles)
There is no irony of any sort in Henry David’s description of his rustic shield, though one may wonder what protective purpose his may serve. We know he abhorred the intrusion of the ‘machine in the garden’ and the ‘discordant drumming’ of urban life. If this imagined shield is to provide any meaningful protection, it must be that the pastoral landscape he surveys serves to recall Henry David to himself and fortifies him as he engages in the necessary business of everyday life. Just so we may carry within ourselves Henry David’s rustic shield! It will protect us against all harm, not because we cannot be bruised or broken or put to death as Socrates was, but because we have within an inner resource that cannot be touched. We belong to nature.