Keshav Raj Chalise.doc

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Nature in Thoreaus Waldon

Keshav Raj Chalise

Department of English

Tribhuvan Multiple Campus

Palpa

Abstract

Thoreau, a leader of American Transcendental Movement wrote a long

essay entitled Waldon. The narrative essay focuses on his own experience to

the nature. Waldon deals with nature not as the compliment to humans but as a

part of universal wholeness.

Key Words: ecocriticism, transcendentalism,myth, ecology ,ecocentrism

Commencement

Henry David Thoreau, born in Concord in 1817 AD, was one of the founders of

American Transcendentalism. As a follower of Emerson, he began to write in journals at

Emersons suggestion and began his literary career. He was fascinated with the classical

philosophy; Greek, Roman, English and Hindu, especially from the translation. Although he

was not closely affiliated with the group, he became known as a reliable abolitionist speaker

during the 1850 s. His early writing was quite undistinguished, merely individual prose writing

with a lot of clichs. In Waldon , and a few other works he became able to subserve his own

purpose in a quite matured writing. Even in Waldon (1847), he has forcefully compelled his

readers to think about the way he is living and thinking. He has used rhetorical devices to

convince the readers to look beyond the conventional expression. Some of his notable

writings are Cape Cod, A Weak on the Concord, and Merrimack Rivers (1849).

It was Waldon (1847) that helped to recognize him as a literary writer among the

readers though some of his contemporaries had already known him through his writings on

journals. Thoreau was a social philosopher and a student and learner of nature. His writings

emphasize his auto biographical style in the description of nature. Nature has been

philosophized in his expression.

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Waldon or Life in the Wood , long prose writing ensures Thoreaus belief on nature and

natural dominance in humans. As an individual, he had been spending a long hours, days,

months, and even years in nature and nature's sublimity. The essay is the result of his solitary

experience in nature while he spent long hours in nature alone near Waldon pond. The essay

has been divided in various personal experiences, which, more or less, concentrate to the

natural phenomena having eminent role in his life.

Waldon was a revolutionary writing in a sense that his writing broke the tradition of

writing humans and divine power by emphasizing the nature. He was more than a romantic

writer because he hasn't only presented the description of nature alone but also he has

powerfully evoked the philosophy of nature.

Nature in Myths

Waldon is a perfect combination of the eastern and western myths, especially in

relation to the nature and environment. Nature is not just the means to human life for the basic

needs. Neither is it the object to be exploited by the humans. Rather it is a medium for peace

and reconciliation. Thoreau says,

What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the

face of the sun or having suspended with their heads down ward, over flames

or looking at the heavens over their solders until it becomes impossible for

them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing

but liquid can pass into the stomach. (1636)

Hindu mythical stories refer to the Brahmans' activities of worshipping nature and

natural objects such as the sun, fire, air. These natural phenomena are essential elements of

life and the symbolic representations of divine power in the form of nature. The earliest Hindumythical texts highlight the importance of nature. The life initiates with the nature and

evoking nature is the beginning of life. In Rig Veda "Surya (sun) is valued as the source of

every being or being itself as there cannot be any being without light" (Joshi 3). The light is

the source of every universal existence, either living or non living. Thoreau says,

The Vedas say "All intelligence awake with the morning". Poetry and art and

the fairest and the most memorable of the actions of men date from such an

hour. All poets and heroes like Memnon are the children of Aurora and emit

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their music at sunrise. To him, whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace

with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. (1682)

Thoreau combines both Vedic myths with Greek myth regarding nature. The light is

the initiation of all things; morning is not only the dawn at outside physicality but also a dawn

into the human mind, sense, and thoughts. Morning light throws away the sleep, with moral

reform ensuring intellectual exertion, poetic divinity and Aurora, the goddesses of dawn, in

Greek mythology, creates poets and heroes like Memnon who became a hero in Trojan war.

Morning brings a power and enthusiasm to the essayist.''There the sun lighted me to hoe beans

pacing slowly and forward over the yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows."

(1717) His physical labour and mental refreshment are brought from the early light, initiation

of the day . Invoking sun in Hindu Veda is equivalent to the unified concern of the dawn asthe potential beginner both in the east and west.

The earth is the mother for Hindus. Earth is worshipped as the mother goddess and

addressed as female divine persona. The existence of human and every other human being is

on earth and it is possible only because there is the earth. The origin of every other nature is

the earth herself. "They attached me to the earth and so I got the strength like Antaeus."

(1716) In a Greek mythology , earth is the mother and the source of immense power to a

giant, Antaeus ; he was invincible as long as he touched the ground . Later on he was killed by

Hercules. Thoreau's reference of Antaeus properly pinpoints Greek mythical importance of

the earth as goddess.

We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the

piairis and forest without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike,

and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds

in his daily course. (1722)

The sun has been personified in this essay as having life and divine power. Thoreau, very

much impressed by the Hindu mythical reference, concentrates on the sun having been

masculinized in his writing. His impression to nature enables him to be one with it. "His

closest acquaintance with nature" was always with him in his every activity either in hunting,

fishing, and farming, hoeing, or staying by and around the Waldon Pond. (1744)

Thoreau strongly relates eastern Vedic myth relating to the equality and equity among

the creatures in the universe. Nature has the essence of supremacy, having some omnipresent

Supreme Being that the objects in the nature don't have discrimination at all. He says:3 | P a g e


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Never the less I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones

to whom the Ved refers when it says that "he who has faith in the Ommipresent

Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is not bound to inquire what is his

food, or who prepares it even in their case it is to be observed ... (1748)

At least one should know who the savor is and where the life depends in. Just eating,

drinking, and living is a beastly life. The essence of Puritan culture is also against the

epicurean philosophy of humans that is more based on anthropocentric concern. What is

needed is the purity and devotion to nature as the whole organism. The same concept has been

joined with Vedic myth as:

A command over our passions and over the external senses of the body, and

good acts are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's

approximation for god. "Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control

every member and function of the body and transmute what is form is the

grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. (1749)

Thoreau tries to associate the ideology of Hindu mythic division of body and mind in relation

to Nature as God having purity and devotion. Every natural events are meaningful in case of

natural creation. The natural events are frequently related to western mythical references. Hehas given a long description of his own visioning of the fighting between the ants. The minute

observation of the war of the ants is compared with the historical racial conflict as well as the

war in humans." ... war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black and

frequently two red ones against one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the

hills and values in my wood yard ...' (1754)

The war of ants refers to the mythical war of Troy that changed the total civilization.

Nature is not only limited to nature in particular, it is the indication of the whole history,religion, and mythical significance. Nature is a major part both in eastern Hindu myth and

various western myths that has strongly been raised in the essay, Waldon.

Nature and Ecology

Human behaviours are caused by the impulse. Environmentally destructive human

activities are also derived by natural impulse though they are known as 'unnatural.'

"Environmentalists are conventionally seen as defenders of nature." (Kerridge 538) Nature issimple to define.It is what the earth is, and what happens on the earth itself. Nature works in

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itself. It needs no human help and it "does without human interventions." (538) What is

nature is exactly opposite of artificial. Something which exists is nature, and the thing that is

made to be existed is artificial. Human being, as object, is also a natural existence but the

things done by humans not as nature's rule are exactly artificial. Therefore, all the human

activities are not unnatural but they are unnatural which are against the law of nature.

Ecology is the study of nature on its "natural interdependences." (535) Nature and natural

lives relate to each other and share their environment between and among themselves.

Ecological study concentrates in against of the practice of isolating creatures in any human

purpose. They must be left free in the natural ecosystem which works in a system of variable

and constant flux.

Thoreau's Waldon, an autobiographical expression, concerns with the nature as a complete

whole in itself having its own system. His experience in the Waldon pond brings himself just

as a part of nature but nothing more. He writes, "Every morning was a cheerful invitation to

make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I got up early

and bathed in the pond that was a religious exercise and one of the best things which I did''.

(1681)

Thoreau's concern was to have the life in complete nature in natural way. His extremesatisfaction to be affiliated with nature was a mystery even to him and felt that it was the best

experience and best activity he had ever involved in life. He understood properly the concept

that "morning brings back the heroic ages'' (1681)

What is the meaning of life is simplicity in behaviour and naturalness in activity. It is our

concern to "reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite

expectation of the dawn." (1682) The task of man is to make the life worthy of the

contemplation. Still our life is as mean as the life of ants similar to the Greek fable of Aeacus.Thoreau makes a serious comment on highly artificial but purely humanly attitudes that "we

are determined to be starved before we are hungry." (1684) The truth is more different than

we understand. The true and sublime lie in eternity, but not in impulses. It is the nature that

provides the true and sublime in us.

He elaborates: ''The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions whether

we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then.... Let

us spend one day as deliberately as Nature ....''(1686)

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The pace of human is determined by the universal law of nature. Thoreau presents his

humble request to the whole humanity to live with the real conception of nature and have a

real day experience with nature. His comment over here is that we are not being natural in our

activities. By birth, we are real object of nature. The older we become the more we forget its

elementary value in us. The maturity in society teaches us to become more anthropocentric

that the nature around us is\has to be used just for humans. What is important of our universe

are the individual and common human actions. The sense of regret he has felt in his maturity

is expressed as "I have always been regretting that I wasn't as wise as the day I was

born."(1687)

Human sense must be equal to the sense of other creatures. Like humans, all creatures

have organs, parts, and natural process of birth, growth, life, and death. What differs is theway of expression and thoughts. Our sense perception is equivalent to them. "My instinct tells

me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures are their snout and fore-

paws."(1687) He further elaborates his feeling similar to every organism as: "I feel more like

the citizen of the world at the sight of the palm leaf which will cover so many flaxen New

England heads the next summer.' (1698)

The tradition of nature preservation has been practised in a various ways. Human

brutality came to an end when they started to keep and serve animals rather than killing them

as soon as they encountered with them. To some extent, keeping animals represents human

selfishness and domination over innocent creatures. Slowly it came to be improved. "Ancient

poetry and mythology suggest at least that husbandry was once a sacred art"(1721). Animal

husbandry and plant husbandry are supposed to be religious activities in Hindu religion.

Plants and animals are benefited from the power of sun. As referred from modern science, the

sun consists of an immense power that is utilized by other natural phenomena in a process

known as photosynthesis and ecosystem.

"The earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore, we should receive the

benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity."(1722) Humans

have been using nature but not for nature's sake but for human's sake. The earth can't be a

human property that humans can subjugate over it in the way they like. The value of nature

isn't the monetary value; it must always be the natural value. The whole earth is enriched by

the heat and light of the sun.

Ecocentrism vs Anthropocentrism

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Anthropocentrism and ecocentrism are the terms frequently used in recently developed

Post modern concern of ecocriticism. "Anthropocentrism is the placing of humanity at the

center of everything, so that other forms of life will be regarded only as resources to be

consumed by human beings." (Kerridge 537) Humanity has great been focused, especially

from the impact of renaissance. It got penetrated in to the mode of learning when industrial

revolution began and modernism started. Everything became the means of human happiness

no regard to other object. Ecocentrism is exactly the opposite concept of anthropocentrism.

Ecocentrism attempts "to place the ecosystem, rather than humanity, at the center" (537). The

contrast between these ideologies has been strongly raised by Thoreau in his prose work,

Waldon.

Environment crisis is a new context. Human pleasures are flourished not on the love and protection of nature but on the destruction of nature for human purpose. In this crisis, what we

need to do is to have a sense of equity with nature and natural process. Thoreau writes,

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher

nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps can not be wholly expelled; like

the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies, possibly we may

withdraw from it, but never change its nature. (1749)

Ultimately, human being, by nature, is an animal. There is always a haunting sense of

animality in each of us. This sense has not properly distinguished us higher than animal itself.

The difference between human and brute beast can only be carefully considered by superior

men who don't properly keep them at the center of all. Nature, in its natural happening, is the

source of pleasure. The most pleasant hours are "during the long rain storms in the spring or

fall." (1704) Nature is ever fresh.

The major cause of the reaction of New Historicism and Marxism against ecocentricinterpretation is that nature is pleasure but it is highly solitary. But Thoreau argues that nature

is not solitary rather humans are accompanied by the nature. Nature is a society for humans.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature

and has his senses still .... While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust

that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my

beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not dear and melancholy but good

for me too. (1703-04)

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Society is that where we feel complete friendliness, familiarity among others. There is

no enemity in a real society, no sense of insecurity, no feeling of loneliness. The same

happens on nature. Nature is always friendly to humans when it is perceived and behaved in

the natural manner. Then "why should I feel lonely?" if there is nature around us. (1705)

With the reference of the Hindu belief on Indra, as the Goddess of rain and harvesting,

Thoreau discloses that "we are not wholly involved in Nature." (1706) Solitude is not

measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. It is our

thinking that pushes us into solitariness, or to society. A man thinking or working is always

alone. On the other hand, a man working in nature, busy on harvesting is not lonely because

he is employed and he is accompanied with nature.

"What is a country without rabbits and partridges?" (1780) As we are the citizens of any

particular country place, so are other creatures. The nature doesn't distinguish humans as poor

or rich. It is equal to everyone however the perception to nature makes someone poor or rich.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard

names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The

fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You

may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hour even in a poor houseas brightly as from the rich man's abode.... (1805)

Human life itself is a nature though human actions are variously destructive to nature

itself. Nature has no variation to its dealing to humans. What is center is not the human affairs

but it is the nature which is also a determining factors of the whole human system. Human life

can't exist without nature, but nature exists whether we exist of not. The real happiness is

found in the nature. Materiality doesn't bring happiness though it can give prosperity. Nature

as the means of peace, happiness, and pleasure, consists of sublime having the eternity of souland the trust to life. What is important is not money, fame or position but the truth that is

found in nature. "Rather than love, than money, than fame, gives me truth." (1807) The life is

like nature and must be nature. "The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this

year higher than man has ever known it and flood the parched uplands." (1808)

Eco-language

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Linguists are of the opinion that language is particularly a human activity, purely human

phenomenon. But language is everything in the nature though it is different from the human

phonetic system. The sounds from nature, nature's creatures and plants, landscape, hills, and

vales have some meanings if they are understood.

"While the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house until by the

sun falling in at my west window , or the noise of some traveller's wagon on

the distant highway , I was reminded of the lapse of time , I grew in those

seasons like corn in the night ..."(1693)

Nature's particular events function as the source of information, they communicate

something to us. Is not communication a language?

Conclusion

Thoreau's image of Waldon, in this prose is the Eden in natural wholeness. His affiliation

to nature has a challenge to the tradition of the separation of humanity from nature. In against

of dualism, Thoreau emphasized on monism that the world and its creatures are one

substance, one organic body. They can't be separated in essence though they are different in

form. Even the humans are the single part of such organic whole and they must always be so.

The unhappiness is caused by the impulse within humanity that is never fulfilled. The desire

brings more unhappiness. The unhappiness in Eden got destroyed due to the human

disobedience to nature. As a transcendental philosopher, he has projected the principle of

nature as the source of all human creation; artistic, physical and spiritual creation.

Disobedience to nature may result a great disaster; a disaster on the destiny to humanity, is the

threat he wants to share in the prose through his own experience in the nature as the truth and

sublime of universal totality.

References

Baym, Nina. et.al. ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature . 3 rd ed. vol. 1 NewYork : W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Buchanan, Ian. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory . New York : Oxford UP, 2010.

Huggan, Graha and Helen Tiffin. Post Colonial Ecocriticism . London & New York :Routledge, 2010.

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Joshi, Ammaraj. Nature in Rig Veda. The Academia. 1 (2068) 1-6

Kerridge, Richard. ''Environmentalism and Ecocriticism'' . Literary Theory and Criticism. ed.Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.

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