At Walden Part-1

It could perhaps fit for this account to be called "On Walden" too, however, since I want to emphasize the joy I derived, when my dream came true, when I visited Walden in the New England spring this year (2007), which had prompted me to call it "At Walden". As people who know me, hopefully do agree that I am usually a modest person, I do admit here that this essay of mine, is not to exercise efforts to evaluate the genius of Thoreau, nor to defend against many accomplished gentlemen and women of great minds who did not accept Thoreau in the first place. It is my humble attempt to offer to my readers, the influence and inspiration of Thoreau in my life, which is of late been of the sorts of "quite desperation", while I struggle to learn what it has to offer.

Ever since I first read the account of Henry David Thoreau's life in my High School English Course, I felt fascinated about the Walden Pond and the 19th Century New England. What attracted most is the idea of living independently in woods, in a cabin built by your own hands!! It is more like an adventure, like the Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss or the classic Treasure Island by Stevenson or more recently like Tom Hanks' motion picture (based on a true story, I heard) 'Castaway'. And I always had this dream of living in solitude with lots of books in my wooden cabin.

After a long time, I bought the "Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau" published by the Bantam Classics series (March 1981 edition, Edited by Joseph Wood Krutch) on the 27th day of September, 2003 in a bookstore in Spencer's Plaza, Chennai. I started reading the random chapters Walden and the other essays.

The essay on "Life Without Principle", was one of the first I completed from the book. I am quoting some of the beautiful lines from this essay that I had underlined in my copy of the book for readers of my blog might enjoy them the same way I did and have been since these four odd years. Where I could, I will try and put my thoughts and feelings relevant to these influential words of Thoreau.

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

My interpretation of this lines may differ from those who might be surprised at the statement and find it too hard to accept, that the importance of the businesses of people which ought to have the involvement of the art, wisdom and compassion that the poetry, phiolosophy and life offer to us in that order, are being neglected. And moreover the next statement explains that things such as business, politics and the daily routine will never be of higher significance, if not equal to the finer aspects of life.

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.

Perhaps, the transcendatalistic nature of Thoreau is quite evident with the statement above, that he separates the mind, may be more appropriately the soul, from the physical body.

I would like to quickly go on to that part of the book, where Mr. Krutch and his team had compiled excerpts from Thoreau's Journal which was originally published in Emerson's The Dial.

That aim in the life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline. How much, what infinite leisure it requires, as of a life-time, to appreciate a single phenomenon!

The profoundness of this one is obvious. It is not that Thoreau did not give us the humour side of him. For instance:

There are some things which God may afford to smile at; man cannot.

Indeed, it is equally profound as the earlier, but I like this better, because it brings a smile onto your lips, at least for the instance, no matter what kind of situation you are in.

Then there comes may be the world's most influential literature of the times that followed Thoreau, the CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. The great Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, leaders who have led millions of people, have been deeply influenced by this single essay from the wisdom of Thoreau. Here go a few underlined phrases from this essay, which I do not think I have enough courage or wisdom to provide my own comments. This is not a dogma, that my faith in Thoreau's words are like that of a religion, but it is easy to comprehend that the simplicity of these words shout the most shrilling echo of Truth in my ears.

That government is best which governs least; That governement is best which governs not at all.

The only oblligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. (This infact is one of the principles of my life I embraced from Thoreau)

There are numerous such moments when I journeyed through these pages of the book, where filled with deep contemplation I have sensed inside myself, something beyond which was otherwise the obvious.

I have completed reading the following chapters of Walden:

'Complimental Verses', 'Where I lived, and what I lived for', 'Reading', 'Solitude', 'Higher Laws'.

Most of the time I keep re-reading the same chapters and the condition of my book, wear-and-tear shows how much I used it.

Before I get into the details of my actual trip to the Walden at Concord, MA, I would like to pause here, like what I usually do during when I read books, to ensure my thoughts consume the depth of what I gained so far. In the next part, I will try and explain more of my experience of being at Walden, the Pond and at the same time like today, quote the wonderful phrases from Walden the book.

-Siddartha Pamulaparty

August, 6 2007.