Life too near paralyzes Art. Long these matters refuse to be recorded, except in the invisible colors of Memory.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
HENRY DAVID THOREAU WAS my first love. Insomniac, restless, exhilarated to an almost unbearable degree by late-night sessions of writing, and of reading, when the rest of the household was asleep, I discovered Thoreau at the age of fifteen and found him the very voice of my inarticulate soul. The voice of romance, and of searing common sense. A poet’s voice, an artist’s eye. The intransigent, abrasive, quarrelsome soul of rebellion. “My arrow aimed at your hearts, my friends!” Ralph Waldo Emerson gloated, anticipating how his young Concord friend would unsettle his Boston literary acquaintances Margaret Fuller and James Russell Lowell, among others. And so Thoreau has been, through the decades, an arrow aimed at the collective heart of America.
There are writers so explosive to the adolescent imagination—Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, as well as Thoreau—that to pick up their books is to bring a lighted match to touch flammable material. Many of us have been permanently altered by a single book, and Walden is frequently that book. Beyond the almost too exquisitely written sentences of Walden we may discover the more spontaneous, vivid and conversational passages of the Journal, one of the great, though relatively little-known, of nineteenth-century works. For here is a poet of the near-at-hand. A visionary whose certitude is, if we are honest, our own. Thoreau addresses us with devastating directness. He honors us by setting for us the highest standards of integrity. We can never live up to his expectations. Yet even to fail is to have been illuminated, touched by grace. He is a poet of doubleness, too, warning us against the virtues of youth that are his own: “The scythe that cuts will cut our legs.” Perhaps the razor-sharp scythe that Thoreau wielded, flashing in the dullish light of his world, cut him, to a degree. For never has a man so wounded by life (by the repudiation of his first love, Ellen Sewall, by the ghastly, protracted death from lockjaw of his beloved older brother John) so defiantly redefined himself. Born “David Henry Thoreau,” he baptized himself “Henry David Thoreau.” Out of the rough, seemingly unpromising materials of his background he forged a personality that would in turn write the essays, poems and books, and the great project of his life, the many-volumed journal. We who are writers stand in awe of Thoreau who created “Thoreau” by a continuous exertion of will. We marvel at his confidence that he could, and would, forge a new American prose. A self-proclaimed critic of mere fiction (“one world at a time”), Thoreau was the most inspired of fiction-writers. His gift for language has given us his brilliant prose, and his gift for imagination has given us the man, Thoreau.
This scene follows Thoreau’s quarrel with Emerson, who has spoken of his disappointment with Thoreau. Emerson gives the twenty-eight-year-old Thoreau a deed of purchase to land on Walden Pond and commands him to live up to his self-proclaimed promise—“Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive.”
WALDEN, 1845
(GREEN-TINCTURED LIGHT. The sound of the “Universal Lyre” in its most ethereal tone. The atmosphere is dreamlike but suffused with joy. THOREAU appears like a sleepwalker who comes awake, and grows vigorous, purposeful. He is unshaven and his hair disheveled. As he speaks, the light gradually shifts to the subtly golden radiance of indirect sunshine.)
THOREAU. To go to Walden. To return
to Walden. The white-pine woods above the cove.
Deep-emerald water. Floating clouds.
Sky mirror. Shock of its cold.
Transparency. Stillness. (Pause.)
To go to Walden at last.
Earth’s eye. You fall and fall forever.
Geese flying like a tempest overhead.
In the blaze of noon—a thrumming of bright dragonflies.
To go to Walden where the blue iris grows in pure water.
To go to Walden where red foxes run.
To go to Walden where squirrels fly overhead in the scrub-oaks.
To go to Walden where snakes glide invisible through the grass.
To go to Walden to suck life’s marrow from the bone.
To go to Walden where the well for my drinking is already dug.
It is no dream of mine but it may be that
I, Henry David Thoreau, am a dream of Walden.
(A beat. In another voice, more probing, at first skeptical; then rising to euphoria, determination.)
THOREAU. To throw off “personal history”—
to give birth to myself—
to tear off the clock’s damning hands—
to obliterate Memory—
to make myself the man I am not—
to make myself HENRY DAVID THOREAU—
no man’s slave, and no woman’s lover—
no father’s son, and no son’s father—
to go to Walden as a pilgrim, as a child—
to worship God in each seed, each raindrop, each rock, each heartbeat—
to begin again, in innocence—
(A beat.)
THOREAU. I SAY THAT IT IS POSSIBLE!
(THOREAU constructs his cabin. Perhaps an ax floats, or flies, into his hand. By degrees a “cabin-shape” should emerge, ten feet wide by fifteen feet long, eight feet in height, with one door, one fireplace, two windows. Going through the motions of building the cabin, wielding the ax, perhaps a hammer, nails, saw, etc., in brisk rhythmic movements, THOREAU whistles intermittently: we recognize, if he does not, the whistling of his brother JOHN.)
THOREAU. Near the end of March 1845, I borrowed an ax and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, and began to cut down some tall arrowy pines for timber. I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. [Pause.) I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south. It was but two hours’ work. (Pause.) By April first, the ice of Walden Pond began cracking. By May first, I set up the frame of my house. By July fourth, Independence Day, it was boarded and roofed, and ready for occupancy. By October first, the chimney was built, the plastering and shingling were completed. (Pause, proudly.) My house, as fine as any in Concord I think it: ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight feet in height. The cost?—for such as secondhand boards, bricks, windows, hinges, nails?—$28.12.
(A beat.)
THOREAU. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than myself. (Pause.)
I have heard no bad news. (Pause.)
I am the first man of creation, the Adam of this shore.
And no rib torn from my side! (Pause.)
(THOREAU continues his brisk, matter-of-fact “construction.”)
THOREAU. My first year, I planted two and a half acres of beans, potatoes, corn, peas and turnips. My second year, I planted even less, for I had found I needed less. (Proudly.) My townspeople looked upon me askance, as a sort of wild eccentric, or hermit, but I was the only free man of my acquaintance, for I was not anchored to any house or farm. No children’s crying disturbed the peace of my woods. (Pause.) For two years I lived in the woods, and for five years I maintained myself solely by the labor of my hands. I found that I could support myself by working but six weeks out of fifty-two— devoting the remainder of my time to living. And to writing.
(THOREAU strides to his desk, takes up his ledger-journal and a pencil.)
THOREAU. Very few books I carried into the woods. Very few I needed. For it was my own book I was writing—WALDEN. As I lived, I wrote of my experiment in living. As I wrote of my experiment in living, I lived. My words became me: HENRY DAVID THOREAU. I need no other epitaph.
(A beat, THOREAU paces about. There is a tincture of mania in his euphoria which he manages, just barely, to control.)
THOREAU. (Gloating.) I MADE MYSELF THE MAN I WAS NOT. AND, BEING SO MADE, I … WAS.
(An echo as of thunder. The RADIANT GOLD LIGHT has been steadily dimming; there is a corresponding sound of thunder. A sudden flash of lightning, THOREAU cringes in his cabin. A sound of pelting, drumming rain on the roof.)
THOREAU. If the damned roof leaks, I shall not record that. (Despondent laugh.) Am I … imprisoned here? (Pause, looking out the window; as if reasoning with someone.) TO LIVE ONE LIFE, YOU MUST REJECT ALL OTHERS. (Shivers; coughs; strikes chest with his fist.) Am I alone?—it is my CHOICE.
(The storm continues. A discordant music, THOREAU loses confidence.)
THOREAU. Madness. My secret terror …
(ELLEN SEWALL, as a girl of seventeen, appears at a distance, a taunting apparition. Her hair is loose and the front of her dress partly open.)
ELLEN. Henry Thoreau …
THOREAU. No! I don’t know you.
ELLEN. (Seductive.) Henry Thoreau. I did love you.
THOREAU. No.
ELLEN. Loved loved LOVED YOU. (As she strokes her body.)
THOREAU. NO.
ELLEN. You were not MAN ENOUGH to take me.
THOREAU. NO!
ELLEN. (Deliciously.) Animal. Crude. Henry Thoreau. You disgust me.
(THOREAU kicks a chair across the room, ELLEN vanishes.)
THOREAU. Leave me alone, you—woman! All Nature is my bride.
(Rain continues drumming on the roof, THOREAU lights a candle at his desk and takes up his journal to write in it but he’s too excited to sit down.)
THOREAU. (Determined.) “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as SOLITUDE.” Yes good! “In my time at Walden, I never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once … when, for a dreadful hour, I came near to collapse.” (Pause.) No: strike that “ … when, for an hour, I doubted if the neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life.” (Pause.) “ … But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.” Yes, exactly! “ … In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature … ”
(A lightning flash, and a peal of thunder so loud that THOREAU drops his journal. JOHN THOREAU appears at a distance, as an apparition.)
JOHN. Henry!—dear brother …
THOREAU. John!
JOHN. Come to me!
THOREAU. (Shielding his face.) Am I dreaming? I am dreaming—
JOHN. I love you, Henry. I alone have plumbed the depths of your heart.
THOREAU. (Frightened.) John, no—leave me alone.
JOHN. Brother, would you deny me? My suffering, your agony?
THOREAU. (Guilty, despairing.) Am I to wallow in grief, forever?
JOHN. Better grief than nothing.
THOREAU. (Picking up the journal.) This that I have is NOT NOTHING!
JOHN. (Tenderly, seductively, opening his arms to THOREAU.) Brother! No one has loved us as we loved each other. Would you mock my suffering? Recall how I died.
THOREAU. Nature is sweet and beneficent. The world is good.
JOHN. (Pleading, raving.) BROTHER COME TO ME HELP ME BROTHER DON’T ABANDON ME BROTHER—
THOREAU. God help me!—
(THOREAU drops the journal. He begins to have convulsions; his jaws lock in a grotesque parody of a grin. He tears at his hair and clothes, groaning in terror and anguish.)
THOREAU.—help HELP ME—
(A flash of lightning. A peal of thunder. THOREAU staggers toward his bed and collapses onto the floor. JOHN has vanished. Lights out. Lights up. Next morning: a brilliant radiance, as at the start of the scene. The “Universal Lyre” in its ethereal mode. THOREAU, on the floor, wakes, and looks around in apprehension; manages to get up, unsteadily; washes his face in a basin. His clothes are torn and there is a bruise on the side of his face. He has a haggard, dazed look, but the terror has passed. Close outside the cabin, a cardinal sings. THOREAU whistles in reply. A beat. The bird answers.)
THOREAU. (In the doorway, sunshine on his face.) That’s it, then. I turn my face to—“the world.”
(Lights out.)