This scene follows Thoreau’s quarrel with Emerson, who has spoken of his disappointment with Thoreau. Emerson gives the twenty-eight-year-old Thoreau a deed of purchase to land on Walden Pond and commands him to live up to his self-proclaimed promise—“Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive.”
WALDEN, 1845
(GREEN-TINCTURED LIGHT. The sound of the “Universal Lyre” in its most ethereal tone. The atmosphere is dreamlike but suffused with joy. THOREAU appears like a sleepwalker who comes awake, and grows vigorous, purposeful. He is unshaven and his hair disheveled. As he speaks, the light gradually shifts to the subtly golden radiance of indirect sunshine.)
THOREAU. To go to Walden. To return
to Walden. The white-pine woods above the cove.
Deep-emerald water. Floating clouds.
Sky mirror. Shock of its cold.
Transparency. Stillness. (Pause.)
To go to Walden at last.
Earth’s eye. You fall and fall forever.
Geese flying like a tempest overhead.
In the blaze of noon—a thrumming of bright dragonflies.
To go to Walden where the blue iris grows in pure water.
To go to Walden where red foxes run.
To go to Walden where squirrels fly overhead in the scrub-oaks.
To go to Walden where snakes glide invisible through the grass.
To go to Walden to suck life’s marrow from the bone.
To go to Walden where the well for my drinking is already dug.
It is no dream of mine but it may be that
I, Henry David Thoreau, am a dream of Walden.
(A beat. In another voice, more probing, at first skeptical; then rising to euphoria, determination.)
THOREAU. To throw off “personal history”—
to give birth to myself—
to tear off the clock’s damning hands—
to obliterate Memory—
to make myself the man I am not—
to make myself HENRY DAVID THOREAU—
no man’s slave, and no woman’s lover—
no father’s son, and no son’s father—
to go to Walden as a pilgrim, as a child—
to worship God in each seed, each raindrop, each rock, each heartbeat—
to begin again, in innocence—
(A beat.)
THOREAU. I SAY THAT IT IS POSSIBLE!
(THOREAU constructs his cabin. Perhaps an ax floats, or flies, into his hand. By degrees a “cabin-shape” should emerge, ten feet wide by fifteen feet long, eight feet in height, with one door, one fireplace, two windows. Going through the motions of building the cabin, wielding the ax, perhaps a hammer, nails, saw, etc., in brisk rhythmic movements, THOREAU whistles intermittently: we recognize, if he does not, the whistling of his brother JOHN.)
THOREAU. Near the end of March 1845, I borrowed an ax and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, and began to cut down some tall arrowy pines for timber. I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. [Pause.) I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south. It was but two hours’ work. (Pause.) By April first, the ice of Walden Pond began cracking. By May first, I set up the frame of my house. By July fourth, Independence Day, it was boarded and roofed, and ready for occupancy. By October first, the chimney was built, the plastering and shingling were completed. (Pause, proudly.) My house, as fine as any in Concord I think it: ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight feet in height. The cost?—for such as secondhand boards, bricks, windows, hinges, nails?—$28.12.
(A beat.)
THOREAU. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than myself. (Pause.)
I have heard no bad news. (Pause.)
I am the first man of creation, the Adam of this shore.
And no rib torn from my side! (Pause.)
(THOREAU continues his brisk, matter-of-fact “construction.”)
THOREAU. My first year, I planted two and a half acres of beans, potatoes, corn, peas and turnips. My second year, I planted even less, for I had found I needed less. (Proudly.) My townspeople looked upon me askance, as a sort of wild eccentric, or hermit, but I was the only free man of my acquaintance, for I was not anchored to any house or farm. No children’s crying disturbed the peace of my woods. (Pause.) For two years I lived in the woods, and for five years I maintained myself solely by the labor of my hands. I found that I could support myself by working but six weeks out of fifty-two— devoting the remainder of my time to living. And to writing.
(THOREAU strides to his desk, takes up his ledger-journal and a pencil.)
THOREAU. Very few books I carried into the woods. Very few I needed. For it was my own book I was writing—WALDEN. As I lived, I wrote of my experiment in living. As I wrote of my experiment in living, I lived. My words became me: HENRY DAVID THOREAU. I need no other epitaph.
(A beat, THOREAU paces about. There is a tincture of mania in his euphoria which he manages, just barely, to control.)
THOREAU. (Gloating.) I MADE MYSELF THE MAN I WAS NOT. AND, BEING SO MADE, I … WAS.
(An echo as of thunder. The RADIANT GOLD LIGHT has been steadily dimming; there is a corresponding sound of thunder. A sudden flash of lightning, THOREAU cringes in his cabin. A sound of pelting, drumming rain on the roof.)
THOREAU. If the damned roof leaks, I shall not record that. (Despondent laugh.) Am I … imprisoned here? (Pause, looking out the window; as if reasoning with someone.) TO LIVE ONE LIFE, YOU MUST REJECT ALL OTHERS. (Shivers; coughs; strikes chest with his fist.) Am I alone?—it is my CHOICE.
(The storm continues. A discordant music, THOREAU loses confidence.)
THOREAU. Madness. My secret terror …
(ELLEN SEWALL, as a girl of seventeen, appears at a distance, a taunting apparition. Her hair is loose and the front of her dress partly open.)
ELLEN. Henry Thoreau …
THOREAU. No! I don’t know you.
ELLEN. (Seductive.) Henry Thoreau. I did love you.
THOREAU. No.
ELLEN. Loved loved LOVED YOU. (As she strokes her body.)
THOREAU. NO.
ELLEN. You were not MAN ENOUGH to take me.
THOREAU. NO!
ELLEN. (Deliciously.) Animal. Crude. Henry Thoreau. You disgust me.
(THOREAU kicks a chair across the room, ELLEN vanishes.)
THOREAU. Leave me alone, you—woman! All Nature is my bride.
(Rain continues drumming on the roof, THOREAU lights a candle at his desk and takes up his journal to write in it but he’s too excited to sit down.)
THOREAU. (Determined.) “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as SOLITUDE.” Yes good! “In my time at Walden, I never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once … when, for a dreadful hour, I came near to collapse.” (Pause.) No: strike that “ … when, for an hour, I doubted if the neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life.” (Pause.) “ … But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.” Yes, exactly! “ … In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature … ”
(A lightning flash, and a peal of thunder so loud that THOREAU drops his journal. JOHN THOREAU appears at a distance, as an apparition.)
JOHN. Henry!—dear brother …
THOREAU. John!
JOHN. Come to me!
THOREAU. (Shielding his face.) Am I dreaming? I am dreaming—
JOHN. I love you, Henry. I alone have plumbed the depths of your heart.
THOREAU. (Frightened.) John, no—leave me alone.
JOHN. Brother, would you deny me? My suffering, your
agony?
THOREAU. (Guilty, despairing.) Am I to wallow in grief, forever?
JOHN. Better grief than nothing.
THOREAU. (Picking up the journal.) This that I have is NOT NOTHING!
JOHN. (Tenderly, seductively, opening his arms to THOREAU.) Brother! No one has loved us as we loved each other. Would you mock my suffering? Recall how I died.
THOREAU. Nature is sweet and beneficent. The world is good.
JOHN. (Pleading, raving.) BROTHER COME TO ME HELP ME BROTHER DON’T ABANDON ME BROTHER—
THOREAU. God help me!—
(THOREAU drops the journal. He begins to have convulsions; his jaws lock in a grotesque parody of a grin. He tears at his hair and clothes, groaning in terror and anguish.)
THOREAU.—help HELP ME—
(A flash of lightning. A peal of thunder. THOREAU staggers toward his bed and collapses onto the floor. JOHN has vanished. Lights out. Lights up. Next morning: a brilliant radiance, as at the start of the scene. The “Universal Lyre” in its ethereal mode. THOREAU, on the floor, wakes, and looks around in apprehension; manages to get up, unsteadily; washes his face in a basin. His clothes are torn and there is a bruise on the side of his face. He has a haggard, dazed look, but the terror has passed. Close outside the cabin, a cardinal sings. THOREAU whistles in reply. A beat. The bird answers.)
THOREAU. (In the doorway, sunshine on his face.) That’s it, then. I turn my face to—“the world.”
(Lights out.)
Henry David Thoreau. Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts.
Joyful Noise:
The Gospel Sound of Henry D. Thoreau
Donald Revell
Now at Sundown I hear the hooting of an owl—hoohoo hoo—hoorer—hoo … I rejoice that there are owls. They represent the stark twilight unsatisfied thoughts I have.
—Journals, November 18, 1851
Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.
—Journals, January 9, 1858
I hear in several places the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs, what I call their pebbly notes, as if they were cracking pebbles in their mouths; not the plump dont dont or ker dont, but kerdle dont dont.
—Journals, May 10, 1858
When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, “There is one of us well, at any rate,” and with a sudden gush return to my senses.
—“Walking”
THE POEMS OF A DAY begin presently with sound, and they continue so. Henry David Thoreau, devoted friend of the days, wrote continually, and still the writing makes the sound of poems. Devotion is competent to every art. It pays perfect attention, and in the economy of poetry (anything written attentively is a poem, whatever else befalls), attention offers a presence to all sounds and to what becomes of sound in words. In his Journals and in books and essays collected out of them, Thoreau imagines unmediated becoming, effortlessly. Sound becomes sense without even trying. An owl hoots and Thoreau rejoices in the instantaneous and unintended representation of his thought. A chickadee “utters its spring note,” and Thoreau is under easy obligations he repays in kind: “phe-be,” faithfully inscribed. Nothing is lost or stolen in translation because nothing is translated. Shaped by senses actually present, onomatopoeia makes sense. And when I read, it makes a sense in me. I am awakened with the bullfrogs by a noise Thoreau has somehow made my own. If I have a noise in mind, I must be somewhere, hearing it. And Thoreau is there beside me, untranslating all the while. I write poems because I love the sound of poems. My faith rests there. And Thoreau assures me faith is not misplaced. Every line, even before it is a line, and ever afterwards if it is true, instances the onomatopoeic sense of being somewhere in particular at a particular point in time. In poetry, the particular is good health to me, and saneness. As Thoreau explains, sound returns us to our senses. From doleful spells of inwardness, we are startled awake. The day is well, and it says so.
But the music is not in the tune; it is in the sound.
—Journals, June 25, 1852
Unscored, unscripted, the sense of the day is the day itself. It makes no references. Its forms transpire, indistinguishable by me from evidence of my senses. Where I put my faith I put myself. I find myself there, in passing, and there my feelings transpire, indistinguishable from the day. Thoreau’s devotion to the hale sense of all sounds sets his words in the presence of presences: each is particular, not separate; each is musical, but not recognizable in the easy way of tunes. Always original, a sound declares itself unprecedented. And of course, of course that is what I believe about true feeling. This has never happened to me before. Reading a poem I hear a sound unheard until now. Making a poem, I utter sounds whose sense is sudden and particular to the hour. In Walden, Thoreau realizes that even an echo is “an original sound” and “not merely a repetition,” and it elapses over circumstances of space and time (treetops and sunrises) particular to itself. In tuneless restless sound Thoreau discovers a keener presence of mind. He abandons his faculties to his senses. Poetry, like freedom, like love, should always be unrecognizable, particularly to itself. It abandons poetry to become a poem. In reckless devotion, Thoreau becomes the stranger who is effortless to know.
Where there is sense, experience arrives. And so does death. In the intervals, effort serves the more to postpone experience—change of circumstances, change of world—than to pronounce it. So often, work is the delay of weal and woe. Early in the history of our Republic, Thoreau upends the work ethic, averring it a distraction from the urgent business of the day: life and death. Habits of effort, ritual and piecemeal, muffle extraordinary sounds of transformation. In a wonderful biography, The Days of Henry Thoreau, Walter Harding offers a glimpse of the man in undistracted extremity. The occasion is the death of Helen Thoreau, his elder sister.
Helen died on June 14, 1849, aged only thirty-six. The funeral was held in the home on the eighteenth with both the Unitarian and the Trinitarian ministers in attendance. Thoreau sat seemingly unmoved with his family through the service, but as the pallbearers prepared to remove the bier, he arose and, taking a music box from the table, wound it and set it to playing a melody in a minor key that seemed to the listeners “like no earthly tune.” All sat quietly until the music was over.
A moment of true feeling interrupts the inertial motion of ritual. Grief defies a senseless consolation, and the defiance is a sound, “a melody like no earthly tune.” Helen, departed from Earth, is sounded no sound of Earth by her attentive brother. The onomatopoeia of extinction is a mechanical minor key. The sound of grief, whose object only is unearthly, employs no words. To speak of death, say nothing.
And Thoreau remained sound upon the efforts of speech, even to the end. Harding relays this telling vignette of a visit from one Parker Pillsbury to Thoreau only a few days before the writer’s death.
“Then I spoke only once more to him, and cannot remember my exact words. But I think my question was substantially this: ‘You seem so near the brink of the dark river, that I almost wonder how the opposite shore may appear to you.’ Then he answered, ‘One world at a time.’”
Effortlessly, all sounds here. Elsewhere is a work of fiction worrying the minor keys.
A child loves to strike on a tin pan or other ringing vessel with a stick, because, its ears being fresh, sound, attentive, and percipient, it detects the finest music in the sound, at which all nature assists. Is not the very cope of the heavens the sounding board of the infant drummer? So clear and unprejudiced ears hear the sweetest and most soul-stirring melody in tinkling cowbells and the like (dogs baying the moon), not to be referred to association, but intrinsic in the sound itself; those cheap and simple sounds which men despise because their ears are dull and debauched. Ah, that I were so much a child that I could unfailingly draw
music from a quart pot! Its little ears tingle with the melody. To it there is music in sound alone.
—Journals, June 9, 1852
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