I'm finding that reading Thoreau after Cooper is a very interesting task in observing how differently the two writers seem to approach the idea of 'ordering.' Christoph suggests in his paper (on Cooper) that Cooper "advocates a type of reading that is in fact non-sequential and crosses all artificial dividing lines" and while this may be true, particularly as Cooper attempts to resist the anthropocentric ordering of seasons, I think, what we see in Thoreau is a much more complete "writing against the grain." Even a quick reading of Rural Hours demonstrates that while Cooper purports to resist the type of ordering that seems to be the underlying premise of her observations, it becomes quickly obvious that she, in fact, adheres to a different kind of ordering rather fully, that is, her own. What Cooper seems to signify as important (in the natural world and its circadian rhythms) is what she, in turn, focuses on and asks us to question our behaviors towards. When it doesn't fit her fancy, Cooper seems to discount it, as we saw so clearly in so many of the examples we talked about during class.
Thoreau, on the other hand, seems to be much more genuine in his resistance to ordering. Thoreau's dedication to the casting off of the unnecessary 'outer skins' as a way to harmonize more closely with the natural world and its untainted possibilities is much more forthright than Cooper's and seems to illuminate many of her ideas as privileged musings. It's interesting to me how in this way, Thoreau and his many resistances to various structures, orders and human-induced fallacious modes of being seem not only to undermine some of Cooper's sentiments (interesting to think that they were contemporaries of one another) and her ways of expressing them, but how this directly underlies the way that Thoreau, himself, expresses his concerns i.e. his 'voice' and how that directly supports his idea that true freedom, particularly of expression, is of supreme importance.
This freedom, of course, comes from the casting off that Thoreau outlines in these early sections of the book (and can be read very easily through the lens of social ecocriticism). Thoreau's voice and how it seems to parallel his philosophic mode brings to mind Bachelard, who said that an image or even the poetic imagery as created by someone else still provides for imaginistic opportunities, which he took great liberties in his book to demonstrate. Thoreau seems to do the same thing in Walden--he will begin with a particular, something very specific (returning to the most basic elements for inspiration here, as he suggests his fellow man do as well) and from that point, from that inspiration, he will somehow be allowed to transcend it to something larger, some place of his imagination is fueled by the elementals within experience. In this way, his language and expression mirror the actions and choices in his life. This is curious and brings to mind Tallmadge and Lindholdt's ideas on the necessity of activism of real experience or what Buell calls 'world-making'.
There's so much to say on this, but I'll leave it up to others to continue with my very fragmented and undeveloped ideas here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I picked up on the same aspects you outlined above, but I had a somewhat different perspective on them. Thoreau seems to be trying to live as a new Plato, always stripping down everything he finds to a kind of "essence" which allows him to gain a vista onto unmediated wisdom. His whole discussion of what is necessary and unnecessary in the "Economy" chapter reminds me of the Parable of the Cave - his fellow men have been duped into leveraging their lives for rent money and are left in the darkness of servitude; but by going to build his own cabin, Thoreau has seen the glimmers of real sunshine. He spurns any kind of received wisdom, even laughs at the old, and continually makes reference to old wives tales, though he doesn't necessarily use that term.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right to match him up with Bachelard - and I think it has something to do with what you call anti-ordering and what I might call "setting the house in order." The whole first chapter seems to me a kind of how-to manual, again a way for Thoreau to lead his fellow man into the light of "that economy of living which is called philosophy." By simplifying his life, and especially by removing the "traps" of civilization and returning to nature (which according to Plato was closer that art to pure forms), Thoreau believe himself able to rarefy his experience and to allow himself more direct access to those "abstractions" (i.e. forms) which are more valuable to him than the material works of man, like stone monuments. Bachelard has the same goal, but a different premise: to get closer to a baseline human impression of the non-human world.
So it is curious, even problematic then, that both begin with discussions of the house. Perhaps by setting the house in order they are able to extend the lines of the foundation into the world at large? Perhaps understanding our own homes and shelters, insofar as they are a negotiation between human and non-human realms, is as close as we can come to undertsanding what we are not? Or, as Thoreau attempts in his economy, should we try to understand the relationship between ourselves and our homes, as an abstraction of wealth, labor, materials, or as concepts, feelings, inspirations? Inasmuch as the shelter IS that meeting place between mind and material, it can also be understood as a concretization of language, word-making - the preeminent form of human world-making. Thoreau's hovel expresses him as clearly as Bachelard's home inside of poems. In either case, only words remain.
I think Buell's concept of a work of art as an environment might be relevant here, with some modification, in that Walden is as constructed by Thoreau as his log cabin. What Buell calls "world-making" is no different than what Thoreau calls "economy": both betray a kind of philosophy, and both are ways of organizing the world of the text. I find it funny that Thoreau's desire for material simplification is expressed in ever more bizzarely tortured syntax, word-choices, and literary allusions. Similarly, Buell's quest for universality is complicated by his use of personal neologisms. Of course, this is a kind of analysis/rhetoric/deconstruction 101, but I think it is important to pay attention to the authorial choices and predelictions reflected in the words themselves. Nor do I think that Thoreau was unaware of what he was writing.
As you said, this is a pretty large topic, and I'm afraid I have gone off on a series of unconnected tangents rather than sticking to a single point. Hopefully others can make sense of what I said if I can't.
Ben and Magda--I think all these topics are, in various ways, connected. Bachelard's focus on, and immersion on, the image implies a resistance to structure (to him, it is not important to bear in mind the structure of the poem as a whole). For Thoreau, the boundaries between the house as artifact and the nests, burrows, skins animals inhabit (the slough of the snake) are fluid--Thoreau's log cabin is as ephemeral as the skin the snake sheds, as inhabitable as the image that is discarded when it is no longer useful. The complexity/ obscurity of Walden stems from that fact--that it forces us to inhabit different structures, that the house we are invited to enter is not the house of fictions, but different passageways, shells that we have to leave behind as hermit crabs do theirs. That this whole thing is of course another supreme fiction, as Wallace Stevens would say, goes without saying.
ReplyDelete