“Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it

H. D. THOREAU: Walden

“Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.” (Thoreau, 211) This brief comment of Henry David Thoreau’s on the second year which he also spent at Walden provides space for ideas about the motives for choosing that particular structuring of the book Walden. Was this a matter of arbitrary choice or does the structuring of the text correspond somehow with the main ideas in the book? Is it possible to trace some clues in Thoreau’s thinking which would justify the limited extent (in terms of time) of Walden? The aim of this essay is to draw parallels between the form and the contents of the book rather than claim any definite motives for the particular structuring of the book.

First and foremost, the formal structure of Walden seems to be the reflection of Thoreau’s conception of natural life and time. Nature has a cyclical life. Thoreau describes the act of creation coming again and again: “As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.” (Thoreau, 207) Consequently, if a year, or even a day as Thoreau suggests, is described, it is a valid description of any year. Thoreau namely says: “The day is the epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.” (Thoreau, 199) One year thus becomes a basic pattern. Thoreau’s claim for simplification of life may be understood as mere keeping to this pattern or unit of time. As he lives in nature and with nature, he has got the same rhythm with her which beats with every day and night and every coming season. Nature is the true archetype for everything artificial, man-made and as it is archetypal, it is perfect. The closer one can get to nature, the closer to the ideal he lives.

Moreover, the synecdochy, or a part standing for something broader, is used in Walden not only in terms of time but also in terms of space. “Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature” (203) or “The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale.” (Thoreau, 198) are short excerpts from the chapter Spring that show Thoreau’s concern for detail that reveals much more than may usually be expected. And indeed, this is a basic principle of the book – to describe the life of nature and a man in nature ‘on a small scale’. Thoreau plays with the idea of space very skillfully. One should draw his attention to a smaller place concerning human world (for if one watches sensitively a small place on the earth can stand for the whole world), so that he can provide larger space for the world of God, or in other words for natural space that would allow him to transcend that world of people. He speaks about the limited world in which we live but there is always the possibility to transgress these boundaries. Thoreau puts the diminishing of the complexity of human human world into direct relation with making space for higher laws in man’s life: “In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will apear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.“ (Thoreau, 214)

Secondly, the structure of this book is in conformity with Thoreau’s rejection of superfluities. Throughout the whole book he speaks about material superfluities for which many people sacrifice most of their lives, working hard to get something they do not really need, and in addition to that something that distracts their attention from that what is essential in life. He mentions the latter negative aspect of superfluities also when information is concerned. In the last chapter Conclusion of Walden Thoreau says: “Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch.” (Thoreau, 218) In order to avoid being subject to his own criticism, Thoreau endeavoured to restrict himself only to the account of the essential and vital that his experiment of living in the woods brought. It may be argued that it could have been then even a briefer report but Thoreau is not a man of extremes.

A great tendency towards minimalization can be traced in his book but Thoreau is not an ascetic man. Thoreau especially calls for reassessment of the term necessity, his message is minimize the efforts you put into filling your basic needs, i.e. food, shelter and fuel.

On the other hand, the formal restructuring of Thoreau’s journal entries into the final form of the book, may be viewed as a feature of depersonalisation of his experience which would to some extent contradict his intention to make an account of personal experience of one particular person set in a particular place and time. This intention is stressed in Thoreau’s using the first person pronoun I. The tendency of making the book less personal may be indicated also in his statements in which he rejects natural, human emotions, for example when he asserts that he never felt lonely or that he was never scared. “I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humblebee.” (Thoreau, 92) All these similes are impressive but are they really effective? Can a man be so much a part of nature that the same laws would be valid for flowers and animals as well as for man? This seems to be just a heroic statement about his dealing with solitude but it does not work. Thoreau even admits that he welcomed and appreciated some visitors.

If the message of Walden is that people should go and live as they would really wish to live and Thoreau is in this respect very optimistic for he simply says ‘I have made it‘ , then as the motto of Walden already says that the aim of this book is just to encourage or inspire, awaken people or in Thoreau’s words “if only to wake my neighbors up“ then the book is to say just the basic – that is to cover the period of one year. It should provide only enough of inspiration but full experience is only up to every individual to get.

Every book is limited concerning the period and the setting it depicts. Walden is not different in this but it is special and symptomatic in that its author selected a basic unit of natural life, i.e. year, even though the human experience expanded over this time. Time of nature is higher than time of men and it is noble to live according to it.

Henry David Thoreau. Walden and Civil Disobedience.Norton & Comp., New York, 1966.