Walden

I love this point, @toriwebster. It seems to me that the tell-tale indication that Thoreau could easily dispense with the “clock-watch-sun-moon” part of this sentence is the word that follows “attracted me” in A: the word “and.”

“Both place and time had undergone a revolution and I [dwelt] seemed to dwell nearer to those parts of the globe & to those eras in history which had attracted me, and as I had no clock nor watch, but the sun & moon, I also lived in a more primitive and absolute time.”

His main thought is that he was closer to the places and times that most attracted him. He wisely decided to end the sentence there, perhaps recognizing that adding more to the sentence (the word “and” literally signals nothing but addition) would distract from that main thought. Classic case of “Less is more.”

@jaidyn It’s interesting to think about Thoreau’s gendering of Nature as female. It says less about Thoreau himself, I think, than about our culture in general. It was common to treat Nature as female in Thoreau’s time and remains so today. Why?

The portion of manuscript below shows the revision you pointed out. You can see a zoomable image of the whole MS page on the Huntington website.

@averyw One does have to wonder whether it was really by coincidence that Thoreau starting living at Walden Pond on Independence Day. In any case, it’s no coincidence, certainly, that at some point in drafting Walden he decides to make this connection. I think you’re right to see metaphorical significance here.

This passage is one of many in Walden that have their origin, in one way or another, in Thoreau’s Journal. It’s important to keep in mind that Walden: A Fluid-Text Edition incorporates only the seven drafts in HM 924, the manuscript of Walden at the Huntington Library, and that thus some passages in even the first draft, “A,” already represent revisions of material from the Journal.

This passage is a case in point. You can see the manuscript page of the Journal where Thoreau records, on July 5, “Yesterday I came here to live,” on the website of the Morgan Library.

Here’s a transcript of the page: “Walden Sat. July 5th–45. Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountain houses I have seen, which seemed to have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them as I fancy of the halls of Olympus. I lodged at the house of a saw-miller last summer, on the Caatskills mountains, high up as Pine orchard in the blue-berry & raspberry region, where the quiet and cleanliness & coolness seemed to be all one, which had this ambrosial character. He was the miller of the Kaaterskill Falls. They were a clean & wholesome family inside and out–like their house. The latter was not plastered–only lathed and the inner doors were not hung.The house seemed”

When comparing different version of Walden I found one of the most interesting aspects of Thoreau’s revisions were the ways in which his original manuscript did not have as explicit and impactful metaphors and analogies compared to his finished text. One of the most interesting to me was his line in this paragraph that states how he first took up his abode in the woods on Independence Day, or July 4th. This piece of his experience in the woods is not added until his 5th revision of the text. For such a symbolically driven statement, I find it very interesting how Thoreau does not either realize that this occurred, or he postpones adding it into later versions. If either is true, I find it very funny and almost coincidental that the symbolism of his first day in the woods, the first day of his independence, falls on the same day America declared independence.

Earlier versions of this were shorter and simpler, and he changed it to be more direct and confrontational. I think his use of saying “to live deliberately” is really showing that he wants to live intentionally and with purpose, and that is also exactly how the tone of this paragraph feels. He wants to make sure his life is full and that he doesn’t have regrets when he dies. His repetition of the word “to” also makes the tone feel like it’s passionate and building, which fits perfectly with the point he is trying to make.

In this paragraph, one revision that stands out in the fluid-text edition is the change from “Its thin current slides away” to “Its thin current glides away.” That word change subtly shifts the feel of the sentence. “Slides” sounds slightly abrupt or mechanical, while “glides” suggests smoothness and continuity. Because Thoreau is comparing time to a stream, “glides” better matches the natural flow of water. The rhythm of the sentence also becomes softer and more fluid, reinforcing the metaphor instead of interrupting it. I also noticed the compression of “My head is my hands & my feet” into “My head is hands and feet.” The revised sentence is more concentrated. It sounds more like a philosophical than casual. It flows better and is more balanced, which mirrors his idea that his best faculties are fully concentrated in the intellect.

[Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself]

Henry David Thoreau made an edit from version A in paragraph 14 by changing purity to I may say innocence in the  published version. The sentence changed from “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and purity with itself Nature herself.” to “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” I believe Thoreau wrote the “innocence”of nature to explain the true meaning of life is innocent in the way that it is not corrupt by materialistic values or unmoral beliefs. Purity can have a religious or judgmental connotation that Thoreau is not intending in this. The innocence of nature provides a more natural and free sense of the world rather than purity which makes me feel more constricted. When Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond to find the true meaning of life he was living in an innocent way trying to learn the beauty and values of what was important without any expectations or judgement. The use of innocence instead of purity makes it feel every day Thoreau was able to wake up and live a fresh new experience since nature itself is innocent and fluid.

[Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.]

In earlier version of the text, specifically Version A, Thoreau described nature as simply “itself” rather than “herself”.  I think the personification makes this passage more powerful.  It highlights just how much he respects the natural world for giving him the opportunity to learn about himself and to teach him.

[ 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. ]

In early drafts, Thoreau wrote something much shorter, “I went down to the pond…” In early versions, he only mentions living by the pond, but in the final version, he expanded it into the longer sentence and gets rid of the word pond to highlight the woods instead. I think he did this to emphasize the seclusion and isolation of Walden and where he actually was living. Instead of a simple statement of purpose, it becomes an explanation of why he went to the woods and what he hoped to learn from life.

I love the connection you make here between Thoreau’s desire to avoid “hurry” and his “appreciation for the dawn,” @rlf9 (Beck). In both, there’s an escape from ordinary time; if you “Renew [yourself] completely each day”—”again, and again, and forever again” (as he describes in paragraph 14, quoting the words that he says were engraved on the tub of Tching-thang), you’re living in circular time, rather than the linear time that he envisions as an endless “stream” (see paragraph 23) running constantly away. This repeating circle essentially makes time stand still.

In her comment on Thoreau’s critique that the nation “lives too fast”, @daphnepl writes that “I deleted social media a few months ago and I have never been happier because my free time is filled with my own thoughts, interactions, and creativity rather than consuming the experiences of strangers on the internet or idea that we need to be ever improving beings.” How do you feel, yourself, about the role that technology, in particular social media, plays in making life feel excessively hurried?