I a Critical Study of the Poetry of Henry Thoreau

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I a Critical Study of the Poetry of Henry Thoreau I A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE POETRY OF HENRY THOREAU AU3Mlo^gfôM • Arthur L. Ford A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY June 1964 aroved by Doctoral Committee Department English . ^g. 77/ 11 243413 /yu)>3 £L ■ CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE I, INTRODUCTION ................................. ............. 1 II. LITERARY THEORY . ... ................................ 8 III. THEME . ..................................... ... .................................._ 23 IV. IMAGERY ................................. 45 V. VERSIFICATION....... ............... 73 VI. STRUCTURE ............................................................................ ... 93 VII. CONCLUSION ........................................................... 104 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................... 112 I CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Henry David Thoreau is known primarily for one book, Walden. With­ out this book, Thoreau would certainly be regarded today as simply one Of many minor Transcendentallsts of the mid-nineteenth century» However, Thoreau was also a poet j in fact, poetry was his first love, and through­ out his life he thought of himself as a poet. In spite of this, his poetry was largely ignored for many .years, the assumption being that his „ .... ......................... v.4. output was scanty and that the poems were mère appendages to his prose. In 1943, Carl Bode published the Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau, *every available piece of original verse that Henry Thoreau composed,a volume running to 247 pages. Twenty-one years later, a new enlarged edition was published containing an additional thirteen poems. Walden remains Thoreau’s most important work; no one would deny that his prose is supe­ rior to his poetry. And yet it does seem strange that so little attention has been directed to a sizable body of work by a major American writer. A review of criticism reveals that surprisingly little has been said about Thoreau’s poetry over the years'. Emerson, who first noticed Thoreau’s poetry, thought of him for a time as the embodiment of his own » ’ concept of a poet, a role which Whitman Was’later to fill. Writing to ^Garl Bode, ed. Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau (Chicago, 1943), p. xil 2 Carlyle, Emerson said: One reader and friend of yours dwells now in my house, and, as I hope, for a twelvemonth to come,—Kenry Thoreau, —arpoet whom you may one day be proud of. Emerson was also instrumental in publishing many of Thoreau’s poems, especially in The Dial. But before long, Emerson's opinion of Thoreau's poetry began to decline and in his oration at the funeral of Thoreau in 1862» Emerson said "His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude.1* Other critics were even more condemning. During the period from Thoreau's death in 1862 to the publication of Poems of Nature by Salt and Sanborn in 1895» the criticism was almost all derogatory. James Russell Lowell's historic 1865 essay on Thoreau in the Worth American Review, of course, damaged his reputation as a writer generally. After Lowell's comments on Thoreau's philosophy and prose, it is even more damning to have his poetry almost completely overlooked. The closest Lowell came to making a direct comment on Thoreau's poetry is contained in the following passage: He had none of the artistic mastery which controls a great work to the serene balance of completeness, but exquisite mechanical skill in the shaping of sentences and paragraphs, Or (more rarely) short bits of vèrse fgr the expression of a detached thought¿-sentiment, - or image. ... I John Weiss, Thoreau's college classmate, writing in The Christian 2 2Quoted in Townsend Scudder, "Henry David Thoreau.". Literary His­ tory of the United States, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al (New York, i960), p. 393. ’ • - . ' ^Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau," Atlantic. X (August, 1862), 246. \james Russell Lowell, "Thoreau," Essays. Poems. and Letters (New York, 19^), p. 101. 3 Examiner in 1865» said, "They are certainly crude, seldom touched with the bloom of beauty, and full of verdant confidence in the reader’s toler- ation of their youth*"^ J. V. O’Connor in 1878 stated simply: "He wrote some indifferent poetry." 6 And Theodore Watts-Dunton, in an 1882 issue of Athenaeum, dismissed him by saying that Thoreau's poems are "more un- 7 mitigated doggeral than even Garlyle's or Emerson’s." Eyen an admirer such as H. S. Salt could not admit Thoreau as a true poet, "Strictly 8 speaking, he can hardly be called a poet at all." Publication Of Poems of Nature in 1895 did little to improve Thoreau's reputation as a poet. In an examination of this collection in Athenaeum for 1896». the reviewer admitted that occasionally Thoreau did * 9 write as a poet, "but that for the most part he did not." And a review­ er^ the British magazineSaturday Review, for 1896, said bluntly, "Thoreau was not a poet.*- i • • Even in the twentieth century, when critical interest turned from Thoreau the naturalist to Thoreau the literary figure, references to his poetry are not favorable. Norman Foerster, writing in The Harvard Monthly John Weiss, "Thoreau," The Christian Examiner. LXXIX (July 1865), 117. ‘ 6 J. V* O'Connor, "Thoreau and New England Transcendentalism," Catholic World, mil (June, 1878), 297. ^Theodore Watt-Dunton, "Thoreau," Athenaeum. (October 28, 1882), p. 560. g H. a. Salt,, "Thoreau's .Poetry* ?n Art Review?,I (May, 1890), 182. Q - 1 7"Review of Poems of Nature," Athenaeum. (October 1?, 1896), p. 517. ^"Thoreau’a Verses." Saturday Review. LXXXI (January 18, 1896), 55. in 1909« said that beyond doubt, so far as mere metrical skill goes, Thoreau was not a poet at all. .. There is no fluidity, still less — . • 11 . , . mellifluence. No natural singer ever sang so uncertainly. ... And in 1913* John hacy, writing in The Spirit of American -Literature. min- tained that:..... \ ■ Thoreau’s spirit is that of a poet,- though his verses are not good, ' for he was wanting in the ’decisive gift of lyrical expression,' as Emerson-says of Plato and might have said of himself.-...- .. * Brooks Atkinson in 1927 said in. a study of-Thoreau, “His verse seems to me execrable"^; and in 1937» Elsie Brickett, in a dissertation on the, poetry of New England Transcendentalism, said, "Thoreau’s verse can never be considered-.intrinsically important in itself." And in that same year; Van Wyck Brooks published The Flowering of New England, in which * , • ' 15 he dismissed Thoreau’s poetry as "sound and scholarly doggerel;" There have been several exceptions to the above criticism. At least three critics since Thoreau’s death have commented favorably on his poetry; The Scotsman, A. H. Japp, who wrote under the pseudonym of H. A; Page, published in 1877 s. study of Thoreau .called Thoreau: His Life and ^Norman Foerster, “Thoreau As a Poet,“ The Harvard Monthly (October, 1909), p. 20. —John Macy, The Spirit of American Literature (New York, 1913), p. 186. 13 J. Brooks Atkinson. Henry Thoreau: The Cosmic Yankee (New York, 1927), P. 73. 14 See the unpubl. difes. (Yale, ,1937) by Elsie Brickett, “Studies in the Poets and Poetry of New England Transcendentalism," p. 165« ^^Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (New York, 1937), p. 294. 5 Aims. In this work. Page referred to the freshness and unusualness of Thoreau’s poetry, ................... In his poems there is often a rarity and chastity of expression, and a quality such as we seldom meet with. Gf their general char* •acter this may.be said. They have the freshness of flowers with the earth still at their roots, though with a purity that recalls the skies; they seem inspired by real occasions, and are far from affec­ tedly finished. He is very free in his way of treating old metres or. inventing new ones, having actually come close on anticipating ; Walt Whitman’s peculiar movements, which he relieves by irregularly recurrent rhymes. ....... However, Page followed this statement with several selections from Thoreau "cast on models more like those we are familiar with."17 A few years later, Joel Benton, himself included in Cooke‘s anthol- ogy of American Transeendentalist poets, published in Lipplncott’s what is probably the best separate and published study of Thoreau’s poetry to date. In spite Of the fact that Thoreau’s poetry was uncollected in any form at this time, Benton revealed many of its most salient points. That sturdy self-assertion, his love of paradox, his defense of that truth which is anti-proverbial and not apparent, his vision of the all in each, his emphasis on the present ténse where he then stood * in speaking, his almost Swederiborgian belief in the double meaning of things, the mystic and hidden being the one he held chiefly . valuable, —all these are best focussed in.his poetxy, though easily enough seen in his essays and narratives,10 Following Bode’s publication of the collected poems in 1943» Henry Wells published a review in American Literature in which he attempted to place Thoreau in the larger tradition of Western literature by indicating l6 H. A. Page, Thoreau: His Life and Aims (Boston, 1877)» pp. 188*189. 17Ibid.. p. 189. 18Joel Benton. "The Poetry of Thoreau," Lippincott «s, XXXVII (May, 1886). 500. 6 those poets who seem to have influenced his poetry. He found Thoreau influenced by many kinds of authors from the Greek classical poets through Medieval poets, Ben Johson* the Metaphysical poets, the Augustans, and even Blake, 19 offering - evidence which is not always conclusive. But per­ haps the most interesting observation made by Wells is that Thoreau ‘•touches the poetry of our own times closely largely in terms of its ’ 20 ' " acute tensions,” Carl Bode restrained from heaping praise on Thoreau’s verse when he first published the collected poems, and when he brought out the new enlarged edition, his initial decision remained.
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