Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated in his essay The American Scholar, “so much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion.” Henry David Thoreau shared in the transcendental views of his friend, R.W. Emerson, and applied these beliefs to his life by sauntering. In Walking, he combines his transcendental views with his romantic style to explain the art of sauntering and the comparison of wildness to the west. Walking is a union of two lectures, Walking and The Wild, that Thoreau wrote in 1851 detailing the walks surrounding his home in Concord.
The American Romantic Movement
Henry David Thoreau emerged during the American Romantic Movement, which occurred in 1830 following the Civil War. This was an answer to the European Romantic Movement that began in the late 1700’s. Because America was still a young country and did not, as of yet, have a rich literary history to draw from, the Romantic influences came from Europeans such as: Coleridge, Rousseau, and Wordsworth. Characteristic of the Romantic style, Thoreau possessed a passionate concern for nature similar to Wordsworth whose library was inside but “his study [was] outdoors” as he states in his essay Walking This style emphasized imagination, emotions, and intuition over reason, logic, and science, which had been prevalent in the Age of Enlightenment in Europe that proceeded the Romantic Movement. Thoreau’s Romantic style is apparent in this passage from his essay Walking:
“A town is saved, not more by the righteous
men in it than by the woods and swamps
that surround it. A township where one
primitive forest waves above, while another
… rots below, … is fitted to raise not only
corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers”
Thoreau combined this Romantic style with his views on transcendentalism, in which, can be found many similarities.
What is Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism was a movement that flourished in New England as a reaction to strict religious confines. It involved a rejection of strict Puritan religious attitudes and called for an independence from organized religion. Thoreau mocks the Puritan belief of the elect in Walking with the suggestion that becoming a walker “comes only by the grace of God [and] requires a direct dispensation from Heaven (2158).” Spirituality was found in a connection with nature. Similar to romanticism, transcendentalism favored intuition, creativity, and individuality, and cherished the beauty of nature. Thoreau’s continued explorations are reiterations of a prevalent romantic habit: the search for self, which he chose to examine by sauntering.
Discovering One's Self through Sauntering
Henry Thoreau discovered a sense of who he was and what he was for on his saunterings. At the end of Walking, we see that Thoreau knows he has to return home: “ the west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium [or the Holy Land], and the sun on our back seemed like a gentle herdsmen driving us home at evening” as he states in Walking. Walking was Thoreau’s outlet for nurturing his individuality and self-reliance. It allowed him to follow his own intuition and not be confined; it offered a freedom not available with other modes of transportation. In Walden he states,“We need the tonic of wildness… We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander” states Garber. This statement epitomizes Thoreau’s belief in the necessity of sauntering and how it can prove beneficial to civilization.
Garber, Frederick. Thoreau’s Redemptive Imagination. New York: New York University Press, 1977.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Walking” Ed. Paul Lauter. The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume One, Third Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,1998: 2157-2178.
Jill Douglass - I have been teaching English Literature and Composition for 9 years in the Orlando area, Spanish for 2, and Reading for 3. I have degrees ...
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