RICHARD HIGGINS
After 150 years, Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ still resonates
ON
Officially released eight days later, Henry David Thoreau's masterpiece turns 150 years old today. Over those years, millions have repeated Alger's transaction, paying 25 cents for dog-eared paperbacks and $10,000 for a pristine first edition. More than 200 editions have been published, four of them this year. It has been translated into two dozen languages. "Walden" may or may not be the greatest work of American literature, but it is the most American of our great works and the one that has held a mirror to our soul most fully. Its observation that the average person "has no time to be anything but a machine," to take one example, is certainly no less true today. Thoreau would likely be appalled to learn that high school students today are forced to read this book about inner freedom, and perhaps we should be. It is more easily revered than read, with its dense prose (compacted over eight manuscript revisions), its briar patches of self-indulgent writing and complex allusions. Yet it is astonishing how relevant "Walden" remains on this anniversary. Its introspective tone and focus on sensory perception, its dissent against the pettiness of popular culture and the worry it causes, its reportage on nature and its desire to understand and redress our alienation from it -- all seem addressed to our national mood today. "Walden" did not start off as a publishing juggernaut, though, in contrast to Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" in 1855, for example, which sold 40,000 copies in its first two years. It took five years for the first edition of 2,000 copies of "Walden" to sell out. After that it went out of print until after Thoreau died in 1862. Although he worked hard revising it for years, Thoreau did not boast on publication day. Perhaps his first book's failure sobered him. In any case, the six words he wrote in his journal Aug. 9, 1854, seem to intuit the book's modest debut: "Walden published. Elder-berries. Waxwork yellowing." Thoreau had moved to Walden Pond nine years earlier to begin his experiment in simple living. The idea for it arose after his failed move to Staten Island in 1843 to be a tutor and launch his literary career in New York. But Thoreau was homesick and deeply sad over his brother's recent death. He was soon back in Concord, speaking of moving out of the village, to the woods, to find out who he was and what our life is about. Continued... |
