Thoreau, Henry D. - Walden

371 Pages·2012·2.41 MB·English

by  Henry David Thoreau

The Writings of
Henry D. Thoreau
Walden
I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to
brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing
on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.
HENRY D. THOREAU
Walden
EDITED BY J. LYNDON SHANLEY
INTRODUCTION BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Center emblem means that one of a panel of textual
experts serving the Center has reviewed the text and
textual apparatus of the original volume by thorough and
scrupulous sampling, and has approved them for sound
and consistent editorial principles employed and
maximum accuracy attained. The accuracy of the text
has been guarded by careful and repeated proofreading
of printer's copy according to standards set by the Center.
Editorial expenses for this volume have been met in part
by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities
administered through the Center for Editions of
American Authors of the Modern Language Association
Copyright © 1971 by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
First paperback printing, 1989
Introduction to the paperback edition © 1988 by The Ontario Review,
and reprinted by arrangement with the author.
All rights reserved.
LCC 72-120764
ISBN 0-691-06194-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.
Walden.
I. Shanley, J. Lyndon (James Lyndon), 1910-
II. Title.
PS3048.A2S5 1988 813'303 88-32507
Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief, Elizabeth Hall Witherell
Executive Committee
Walter Harding
William L. Howarth
Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Textual Editor
William Rossi
Robert Sattelmeyer, General Editor for the Journal
Heather Kirk Thomas
The Writings
Walden, J. Lyndon Shanley (1971)
The Maine Woods, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1972)
Reform Papers, Wendell Glick (1973)
Early Essays and Miscellanies,
Joseph J. Moldenhauer et al. (1975)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,
Carl F. Hovde et al. (1980)
Journal 1: 1837-1844, Elizabeth Hall Witherell et al.
(1981)
Journal 2: 1842-1848, Robert Sattelmeyer (1984)
Translations,K.P. Van Anglen (1986)
Cape Cod, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1988)
Journal 3: 1848-1851, Robert Sattelmeyer et al. (1990)
Journal 4: 1851-1852, Leonard N. Neufeldt and Nancy
Craig Simmons (1992)
Journal 5: 1852-1853, Patrick F. O'Connell (1997)
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Contents
Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates ix
Economy 3
Where I Lived,
and What I Lived For 81
Reading 99
Sounds 111
Solitude 129
Visitors 140
The Bean-Field 155
The Village 167
The Ponds 173
Baker Farm 201
Higher Laws 210
Brute Neighbors 223
House-Warming 238
Former Inhabitants;
and Winter Visitors 256
Winter Animals 271
The Pond in Winter 282
Spring 299
Conclusion 320
Index by Paul O. Williams 335
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Introduction
I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound
has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which
I am one . . . but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is
this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!—
Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come
into contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the
solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact!
Contact! Who are we? where are we?
—Thoreau, "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," 1848
Of our classic American writers Henry David Thoreau
is the supreme poet of doubleness, of evasion and mystery.
Who is he? Where does he stand? Is he to be defined even
by his own words, deliberately and fastidiously chosen as
they are, and famously much revised? The facts of his life,
available in any Thoreau "chronology," seem more detached
from the man himself than such facts commonly do: Thoreau
warns us that the outward aspect of his life may be "no more
I than it is you." He boasts of having the capacity to stand
as remote from himself as from another. He is both actor and
spectator. He views himself as a participant in Time as if he
were a kind of fiction—"a work of the imagination only." We
know with certainty of the historical man, born 12 July
1817, Concord, Massachusetts, and who died 6 May 1862,
Concord, Massachusetts; what lies between is a mystery.
Perhaps for these reasons, and because of the redoubt-
able tone of Thoreau's voice, he is the most controversial of
American writers. Whether he writes with oneiric precision
of thawing earth, or a ferocious war between red and black
ants, or the primeval beauty of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, or in
angry defense of the martyred John Brown ("I do not wish
to kill or be killed but I can foresee circumstances in which
both of these things would be by me unavoidable"), he as-