Thoreau: A Disparagement
From 1850s
[edit] Thoreau: A Disparagement
[edit] Llewelyn Powys - from Bookman (New York) 69 (April 1929): 163-65
A good case in point is the work of Thoreau which I suspect has been and is today much overrated. Thoreau is cried up as being one of the greatest American writers. In reality, he was an awkward, nervous, self-conscious New Englander who, together with an authentic taste for oriental and classical literature, developed a singular liking for his own home woods. He does not strike me as an original thinker, bolstered up as his thoughts always are by the wisdom of the past. Mysticism, that obstinately recurring form of human self-deception, is, in his case, even more unsatisfactory than usual, while his descriptions of nature that have won such applause are seldom out of the ordinary. I am inclined to think that his reputation owes much to his close association with Emerson, that truly great man, who under so kindly and sedate and exterior possessed so mighty a spirit.
The naïveté of Thoreau’s mind is incredible. At his best, he is second best. He is too cultured and not cultured enough. It is, in truth, amazing that this provincial pedant, who so strained to be original, should enjoy the distinction he does. “He was a local as a woodchuck,” wrote John Burroughs. He observed nature closely but his most original passages are forced. His is a notebook observation, a very different thing from that deep underswell of passionate feeling that distinguishes, for example, the poetry of Walt Whitman when he chants of wild and free life. As I read this dilettante of the bluebird and the bobolink, I constantly find myself becoming impatient. He is too bookish, too literary. To draw direct power out of the ground, out of the smelling, fecund, sweet soil of the earth, it is necessary to lose oneself, it is necessary to lose one’s soul to find it. Thoreau never is able to do this. He is always there, the transcendental original of Concord with a lesson to impart. It is impossible for him to feel nature in his lungs, in his navel, in the marrow of his bones...
