Excursions with Thoreau : philosophy, poetry, religion

291 Pages·2015·1.42 MB·English

by  Mooney

Excursions with Thoreau

Excursions with Thoreau
Philosophy, Poetry, Religion
Edward F. Mooney
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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First published 2015
© Edward F. Mooney, 2015
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-0565-8
PB: 978-1-5013-0564-1
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[I would] go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I
could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.
—Walden, “Conclusion”
Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music
exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to
tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness
and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars
survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain
there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.
—Journal, January 15, 1857
[O]ur prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be
blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every
accident that befell us.
—Walden, “Spring”
[G]ratitude for life having been given at all is the spring of remembrance,
for a life is cherished even in misery … What ultimately stills the fear of
death is not hope or desire [for outcomes], but remembrance and gratitude
—Hannah Arendt, Love and St. Augustine*
* Epigraphs: Walden; or Life in the Woods, Jeffrey Cramer (ed.) (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), “Conclusion” p. 133 [para 4]; I give paragraph numbers in
brackets after chapter titles for Walden. Journal January 15, 1857, p. 222; Journal
citations will be from The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, Bradford Torrey (ed.) (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2006) Vols I–XIV, available on-line: The Writings of Henry David
Thoreau: The Digital Collection. Walden, “Spring,” p. 303 [para 19]. Hannah Arendt, Love
and St. Augustine (Chicago: University Press, 1996), p. 52.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
1 Overture 1
2 Celebration and Lamentation 17
3 Sympathy with Intelligence 37
4 Concord Reflections 59
5 Transforming Perceptions 81
6 Ethics and the Wild 97
7 Expressive Bones 111
8 Child of the Mist 119
9 Deaths and Rebirths 135
10 Affliction and Affinity 147
11 John Brown 165
12 Souls in Infinite Culture 179
13 Currents of Time 191
14 Grounding Poetry 203
15 Face of the River 223
Closing Thoughts 239
Closing Images, Reveries, Prayers 241
Closing Passions 243
Chronology 253
Works Cited 255
Credits 263
Index 265

Acknowledgments
Writing is invitational and conversational. Whether we are rational, knowing
or political animals, whether we are wounded, grieving or laughing animals,
whether our primary capacity is language-use, cultural-construction,
tool-use, or reverencing, each of these distinctively human activities and
sufferings emerges in the nexus of our being passionately conversational. We
are beings who negotiate the truths of our condition through earnest, playful,
practical, tragical, comical, and stoical improvisations. This conversing seems
destined to invite ever-wider circles of participants who listen often cross-
generationally and over centuries to ongoing and emerging flows, adding
to (and subtracting from) the mutuality of address that gives direction and
depth to human existence.
Jim Hatley invited my thoughts on Thoreau and Levinas; I invited
Lyman Mower to join in for it was he who first made the startling
suggestion that the two might converse fruitfully. Clark West invited me to
think of Thoreau’s narration of Hannah Duston’s capture and her revenge
killings as the Fall of America, and prompted me to think twice about
Levinas’ story of the woman with bread and a brick. Some women and
men are islands but luckily not all, or not all the time, and become partners
in conversing. I’ve learned from Carson Webb, Rob Reuhl, and Andrew
Corsa of Syracuse, from Kristen Case and Brendan Mahoney, of Maine and
Vermont, from Sandy and Emily Budick and Milette Shamir, of Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv. Ada Jaarsma of the Canadian colds got me to speak about
warm passions. Tzachi and Orit Zamir welcomed my wandering ways and
aimed me toward aspects of yoga and Lear’s fury I otherwise would have
missed. William Day put me on the track of Virgil’s Aeneas contemplating
war and seeing a world where “things weep,” and thanks to Dan Conway
who years ago pushed me along toward Thoreau long before the Concord
saunterer really took hold.
I’ve taken heart and learned from the inspiring Branka Arsić, and
from Kelly Jolley, who invited me to Auburn; they’ve been nothing but
encouraging. Tami Yaguri has been at my side throughout and helpful on
the anomaly of becoming young through aging. I’ve learned from William
Eaton, editor of Zeteo, from Haaris Naqvi my editor, from Steve Webb,
a friend who knows Henry Bugbee and Thoreau’s Journal inside out,
from Gary Whited, a brother and poet in Boston, from Rick Furtak, my
long-time Colorado friend who showed how to shift gears from Kierkegaard