Thoreau's Cycle of Mythology
This is the first of the writing assignments for my 'American Environmental Writing' class
“A written word is the choicest of relics,” Thoreau declares in Walden (69). He is referring to written words of quality, not the popular Little Readings of his day, and specifically to the Classics, the works of ancient poets like Homer and Virgil. While the subjects of these authors, and others like them, are varied, they are perhaps most famous for their renditions of ancient mythology. Thoreau, who “kept Homer’s Iliad on [his] table” as one of his few possessions (67), is fascinated and enraptured with mythology, studying it intently, as he did all books he valued. So, when he writes, “what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology, I don’t know,” it is hard to believe him, since mythologies of many cultures follow the same patterns and contain similar elements (78). The whole of Walden can be seen as Thoreau himself adding onto this mythological canon by building this new Mythology, following the familiar cyclical pattern but populating it with creation stories and gods of his own.
“They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins,” Thoreau writes of the screech owls that inhabit the forest (84). One of the most common types of stories in traditional Greco-Roman mythology is that various types of birds, and other creatures, as well as plants and some bodies of water, arose when specific humans were transformed by the gods, often to escape death or to celebrate love. These owls (which, not coincidentally, are associated with the goddess of wisdom, Minerva) are Thoreau’s version of this, “suicide lovers” who were spared from true death but spend their time mourning their loved one and repenting of their actions. Thoreau names their calls “threnodies,” a word of Greek origin (“wailing song”) like his most often-cited mythology (“Threnodies”), and to him they do wail; “Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-rn!” is their constant refrain (84).
There’s also a sense in this story, because of previous mythological stories, that the spirits were unable or unwilling to properly express these sentiments in their human form, which is why they do so in their owlish afterlife. The “melancholy forebodings” prevent them from resting peacefully (84). If this is the case, it is interesting to note that Thoreau follows his myth with, “Let them [the owls] do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men” (85). The owls would mourn on behalf of mankind so the people themselves are free to pursue other things. But this lack of expression would contribute to the creation of more owls, since they arise out of the “regrets and sighs that would fain be sung,” but weren’t (84). This relationship of owls and people becomes a cycle in itself.
And it’s not just Walden where Thoreau exalts mythology. In his essay “Walking,” for instance, he informs readers that “The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence ‘indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.’” These mythological creatures- griffins, dragons etc.- are derived from humans creatively reimagining creatures they experienced in the past. Each successive culture builds onto the stories of the preceding one and continues the cycle. The myths are more fantastical and therefore more memorable than their factual basis, but nevertheless can serve to reconnect people to their collective past.
“Thoreau demonstrated... that the function of the artist in society is always to renew the primitive experience of the race,” critic F. O. Matthiessen writes (312). So, Thoreau- who views himself as a writer (an artist) first- is looking to reconnect humankind to its “primitive experience.” This is almost the exact phrasing he himself quotes in “Walking.”
Note that this is a “previous state of organic existence” as well. One definition of organic (which, by the way, is a Middle English word that has its earliest origins in the Greek language like much of mythology does) is “denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole” (“Organic”). In this long-lost state of being, everything in nature and all of humankind worked together, and probably worked better than they would work separately, if each part is necessary for the function of the whole.
There are many versions of how this harmonious state could have looked, but Thoreau seems to think that it had to do with the proper division of spheres and of duties, everything having a place and being in that place, like every part of a cycle is vital to the whole. His other mythology references in Walden demonstrate this view.
In “Sounds,” he celebrates the train as an “iron horse” with “a banner steaming behind it like golden and silver wreaths,” and says it is almost like a “demigod, a cloud-compeller” (78). He views the train as a sign that humans are now “worthy to inhabit [the earth]” because they “have made the elements their servants for noble ends” (78). This is reminiscent of the Greek god Hephaestus and his forge, using natural elements to create tools for the other gods and teaching men to do the same for each other.
Later, in “The Ponds,” Thoreau speaks of the train very differently. It is now a “devilish Iron Horse” with a “ear-rending neigh” (129). Thoreau ends by asserting that someone needs to “thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest” like many a mythological hero slew bothersome creatures (129).
So, how can these views be reconciled? Mythology, of course- each god or goddess had dominion over a certain area, and all was harmonious unless one of them tried to infringe on the domain of another. Similarly, Thoreau sees a place for the train (and technology in general) as long as it confines itself to certain limits. “Nature,” he writes in “Walking,” “has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage.” But, when the train begins to intrude, such as by bringing men to cut ice from the lake, or to cut down the trees by its shore or to pump its water to their houses, it becomes necessary to protest, and “Squaw Walden” is justified in her “revenge,” sending a man to “Tartarus” (Walden 195). The mere presence of the train is something that can be admired and exalted as a natural part of the cycle of human advancement, but once it oversteps its bounds, problems occur.
And the point of mythology is, after all, to teach these types of lessons, and that is exactly why Thoreau uses it. The Thaw passage in “Spring,” where Thoreau creates his own frost god who is “more powerful than Thor [the Norse god of thunder],” invites readers to appreciate all seasons for their own merit (Walden 204). Winter is not inherently evil because it causes inconvenience, and is a welcome part of the seasonal cycle (because surely Summer would welcome the return of a gentle lover who “adorns [her] tresses” beautifully (204)).
Everything in nature follows cycles like the seasons do. Matthiessen writes that Walden was also crafted in a cyclically; it is Thoreau’s “myth of the year” (308). Literature, then, continues the pattern of death and rebirth that is present in nature; Thoreau writes in “Walking” that “the decay of other literature makes the soil in which [mythology] thrives.” But this cycle cannot run backwards, only forwards. So, if he is not talking about ancient Greek and Roman mythology, to what is he referring? To an entirely new mythology, one he himself has created in Walden through his treatment of natural elements like the lake, the owls, and the train. In this way, then, if the Walden experiment invites others to imitate Thoreau’s journey into the woods, it is for the purpose of adding new stories and perspectives to this mythology, just as each oral poet in ancient days added his or her own flair to the age-old tales, or invented his own. In this way, mythology itself can mimic the seasons, and all of nature, constantly changing and renewing, following the familiar cyclical patterns until it really is “as old as mankind” (“Walking”).
Works Cited
Matthiessen, F. O. “Walden: Craftsmanship vs. Technique.” Walden and Civil Disobedience: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Owen Thomas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1966. 305-313.
“Organic.” Oxford English Dictionary. Online. 27 September 2012. Washington College.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Walden and Civil Disobedience: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Owen Thomas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1966. 1-221.
---. “Walking.” Online. 27 September 2012. Washington College. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html
“Threnodies.” Oxford English Dictionary. Online. 25 September 2012. Washington College.
“A written word is the choicest of relics,” Thoreau declares in Walden (69). He is referring to written words of quality, not the popular Little Readings of his day, and specifically to the Classics, the works of ancient poets like Homer and Virgil. While the subjects of these authors, and others like them, are varied, they are perhaps most famous for their renditions of ancient mythology. Thoreau, who “kept Homer’s Iliad on [his] table” as one of his few possessions (67), is fascinated and enraptured with mythology, studying it intently, as he did all books he valued. So, when he writes, “what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology, I don’t know,” it is hard to believe him, since mythologies of many cultures follow the same patterns and contain similar elements (78). The whole of Walden can be seen as Thoreau himself adding onto this mythological canon by building this new Mythology, following the familiar cyclical pattern but populating it with creation stories and gods of his own.
“They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins,” Thoreau writes of the screech owls that inhabit the forest (84). One of the most common types of stories in traditional Greco-Roman mythology is that various types of birds, and other creatures, as well as plants and some bodies of water, arose when specific humans were transformed by the gods, often to escape death or to celebrate love. These owls (which, not coincidentally, are associated with the goddess of wisdom, Minerva) are Thoreau’s version of this, “suicide lovers” who were spared from true death but spend their time mourning their loved one and repenting of their actions. Thoreau names their calls “threnodies,” a word of Greek origin (“wailing song”) like his most often-cited mythology (“Threnodies”), and to him they do wail; “Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-rn!” is their constant refrain (84).
There’s also a sense in this story, because of previous mythological stories, that the spirits were unable or unwilling to properly express these sentiments in their human form, which is why they do so in their owlish afterlife. The “melancholy forebodings” prevent them from resting peacefully (84). If this is the case, it is interesting to note that Thoreau follows his myth with, “Let them [the owls] do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men” (85). The owls would mourn on behalf of mankind so the people themselves are free to pursue other things. But this lack of expression would contribute to the creation of more owls, since they arise out of the “regrets and sighs that would fain be sung,” but weren’t (84). This relationship of owls and people becomes a cycle in itself.
And it’s not just Walden where Thoreau exalts mythology. In his essay “Walking,” for instance, he informs readers that “The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence ‘indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.’” These mythological creatures- griffins, dragons etc.- are derived from humans creatively reimagining creatures they experienced in the past. Each successive culture builds onto the stories of the preceding one and continues the cycle. The myths are more fantastical and therefore more memorable than their factual basis, but nevertheless can serve to reconnect people to their collective past.
“Thoreau demonstrated... that the function of the artist in society is always to renew the primitive experience of the race,” critic F. O. Matthiessen writes (312). So, Thoreau- who views himself as a writer (an artist) first- is looking to reconnect humankind to its “primitive experience.” This is almost the exact phrasing he himself quotes in “Walking.”
Note that this is a “previous state of organic existence” as well. One definition of organic (which, by the way, is a Middle English word that has its earliest origins in the Greek language like much of mythology does) is “denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole” (“Organic”). In this long-lost state of being, everything in nature and all of humankind worked together, and probably worked better than they would work separately, if each part is necessary for the function of the whole.
There are many versions of how this harmonious state could have looked, but Thoreau seems to think that it had to do with the proper division of spheres and of duties, everything having a place and being in that place, like every part of a cycle is vital to the whole. His other mythology references in Walden demonstrate this view.
In “Sounds,” he celebrates the train as an “iron horse” with “a banner steaming behind it like golden and silver wreaths,” and says it is almost like a “demigod, a cloud-compeller” (78). He views the train as a sign that humans are now “worthy to inhabit [the earth]” because they “have made the elements their servants for noble ends” (78). This is reminiscent of the Greek god Hephaestus and his forge, using natural elements to create tools for the other gods and teaching men to do the same for each other.
Later, in “The Ponds,” Thoreau speaks of the train very differently. It is now a “devilish Iron Horse” with a “ear-rending neigh” (129). Thoreau ends by asserting that someone needs to “thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest” like many a mythological hero slew bothersome creatures (129).
So, how can these views be reconciled? Mythology, of course- each god or goddess had dominion over a certain area, and all was harmonious unless one of them tried to infringe on the domain of another. Similarly, Thoreau sees a place for the train (and technology in general) as long as it confines itself to certain limits. “Nature,” he writes in “Walking,” “has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage.” But, when the train begins to intrude, such as by bringing men to cut ice from the lake, or to cut down the trees by its shore or to pump its water to their houses, it becomes necessary to protest, and “Squaw Walden” is justified in her “revenge,” sending a man to “Tartarus” (Walden 195). The mere presence of the train is something that can be admired and exalted as a natural part of the cycle of human advancement, but once it oversteps its bounds, problems occur.
And the point of mythology is, after all, to teach these types of lessons, and that is exactly why Thoreau uses it. The Thaw passage in “Spring,” where Thoreau creates his own frost god who is “more powerful than Thor [the Norse god of thunder],” invites readers to appreciate all seasons for their own merit (Walden 204). Winter is not inherently evil because it causes inconvenience, and is a welcome part of the seasonal cycle (because surely Summer would welcome the return of a gentle lover who “adorns [her] tresses” beautifully (204)).
Everything in nature follows cycles like the seasons do. Matthiessen writes that Walden was also crafted in a cyclically; it is Thoreau’s “myth of the year” (308). Literature, then, continues the pattern of death and rebirth that is present in nature; Thoreau writes in “Walking” that “the decay of other literature makes the soil in which [mythology] thrives.” But this cycle cannot run backwards, only forwards. So, if he is not talking about ancient Greek and Roman mythology, to what is he referring? To an entirely new mythology, one he himself has created in Walden through his treatment of natural elements like the lake, the owls, and the train. In this way, then, if the Walden experiment invites others to imitate Thoreau’s journey into the woods, it is for the purpose of adding new stories and perspectives to this mythology, just as each oral poet in ancient days added his or her own flair to the age-old tales, or invented his own. In this way, mythology itself can mimic the seasons, and all of nature, constantly changing and renewing, following the familiar cyclical patterns until it really is “as old as mankind” (“Walking”).
Works Cited
Matthiessen, F. O. “Walden: Craftsmanship vs. Technique.” Walden and Civil Disobedience: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Owen Thomas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1966. 305-313.
“Organic.” Oxford English Dictionary. Online. 27 September 2012. Washington College.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Walden and Civil Disobedience: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Owen Thomas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1966. 1-221.
---. “Walking.” Online. 27 September 2012. Washington College. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html
“Threnodies.” Oxford English Dictionary. Online. 25 September 2012. Washington College.