Thoreau (1862)

AUTHOR: Emerson, Ralph Waldo

PUBLICATION: Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 1883. Centenary Edition: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 10. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903-1904. 449-485
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/emerson/4957107.0010.001/1:24?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

Emerson originally delivered this eulogy at the funeral of Henry David Thoreau in May 1862. He emphasizes Thoreau's harmonious relationship with animals and plants, describing him as wholly attuned to the powers of nature. Emerson also briefly touches on his vegetarianism, temperance, and general frugality.

KEYWORDS: food, animals, land usage, environmentalism, Transcendentalism

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo & Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Emerson describes Thoreau’s vegetarianism as intersectional, part of a larger resistance to the system: “He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco ; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun” (454). Emerson eulogizes Thoreau's general frugality and temperance, his preference for indigenous plants and a Native American way of life versus civilization, and what could be described as the "becoming-animal" of Thoreau: “He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken this path before him” (469) and “'either he had told the bees things or the bees had told him.' Snakes coiled round his legs; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters” (472). “His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad air, like a slaughter-house” (481). Finally, Emerson upholds Thoreau as a model: “His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home” (485).

 

Last updated on February 29th, 2024

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