Benvenuto Cellini Tells Us in His Memoirs, That, After a Certain Terrible Dream Or Vision Which He Had During His Confinement in the Castle of St

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN:

PEOPLEBENVENUTO MENTIONED IN CWALDENELLINI

WALDEN: Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment PEOPLE OF of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the WALDEN atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like Cellini’s, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all?

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1500

November 3, Tuesday (Old Style): Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1510

At about this point Benvenuto Cellini was banished from his native Florence for his alleged role in a brawl. As a result, he would receive his early artistic training not only from the Florentine goldsmith Antonio di Sandro, also known as “Marcone,” but also from a goldsmith in Siena, Francesco Castoro.

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.

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1519

Benvenuto Cellini removed to Rome, where he would reside until that bastion would fall to the Spanish emperor in 1527.

Lucrezia Borgia died. Lorenzo (not the magnificent Lorenzo, but another one of the Medici family named after him) died and the family needed a place to put him. (What do you do for a family that has everything? –You build them a container to put it all in.) Giulio de Medici (who would become Pope Clement VII in 1523) succeeded Lorenzo at Florence.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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1527

This was a poor harvest year in Europe.

The first Protestant University was founded in Marburg.

German mercenary soldiers, troops in the pay of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, put Rome to fire and sword, killing 4,000 of its inhabitants and looting its art treasures — well, so much for the Renaissance. The Swiss guards transferred Pope Clement VII to safe custody at the Castel Sant’Angelo, with in the process 147 of them losing their lives. Benvenuto Cellini, participating in the unsuccessful defense of the city, at one point –if we are to take his word for it– slew the Constable of Bourbon and at another point slew the Prince of Orange, Philibert — he was, it seems, quite the slewer.

King Charles V himself also was slewed during this Roman holiday event. Also, the authentic foreskin of Jesus Christ, which had been passed along to the pope by the emperor Charlemagne upon the occasion of his coronation on Christmas Day, 800 CE, was taken by a German soldier from the Sanctum sanctorum of the Lateran basilica in Rome, in its jeweled reliquary. That soldier would soon be captured in the village of Calcata, just a day or two’s travel north of Rome, and taken into confinement, and would hide the precious object in his cell for the following three decades, until it would be discovered there in 1557 and taken to the local church. CATHOLICS

With the sack of Rome, Pope Clement was put to ignominious flight — and so Florence revolted against the Medici and restored its traditional republic. The Medici were expelled. The left arm of Michelangelo’s “David” was struck with a bench during a riot, and broken into three pieces (it would be reattached but the seams still show). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Michelangelo completed the marble interior of the Medici family chapel devoted to the memory of their dear departed youths Giuliano and Lorenzo.

This was a fateful year for Anglican religion — King Henry VIII began the divorce proceedings against his wife Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón which would radically divorce London from Rome.

In London, Boccaccio’s THE FALL OF PRINCES, PRINCESSES, AND OTHER NOBLES was translated by John Lydgate and printed by Richard Pynson who, in addition to William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde, was among the 1st to bring printing to the British Isles. He had been Printer to the King since 1508 and would continue in that capacity until 1529. He was still using black-letter face, though this had long since been abandoned in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent. HISTORY OF THE PRESS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1529

Benvenuto Cellini was appointed to direct Pope Clemente VII’s artistic workshop. He slew a man who had slain his brother. Later this year, upon wounding a notary of the city, he was forced to flee briefly to Naples.

Women actors appeared for the first time on the Italian stage.

Italian physician Giovanni Battista da Monte introduced clinical examinations of patients at the sickbed.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1530

Due to the change in popes, at about this point Benvenuto Cellini was able to return from Naples to Rome. However, he would fall afoul of one member of Pope Paul III’s illegitimate brood, Pietro Alvise Farnese, and would need to flee to Florence and Venice.

Florence was taken by imperial troops. Alessandro de Medici became a hereditary duke.

Philipp Melanchthon wrote APOLOGIA. The Confession of Augsburg, prepared by Melanchthon, defining the basic tenets of Lutheranism, was approved by Herr Professor Martin Luther and signed by the German Protestant princes.

They formed the Schamalkaldic League against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his Catholic allies. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1535

In Venice, Benvenuto Cellini designed a 40-soldi coin showing Duke Alessandro de Medici on one side and Saints Cosmo and Peter Damian on the other.

Milan would be under Spanish rule from this year until 1713.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

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1537

Benvenuto Cellini was thrown in the lockup on suspicion of having pocketed some of the gems on one of the Pope’s tiaras. He may not have been guilty, for Cardinal d`Este of Ferrara, for whom he had created a silver cup, and others, would be able to secure his release. He abandoned Rome in favor of the court of King Francis I of France.

Duke Alessandro of Florence was murdered.

Cosimo I began to found the younger branch of the Medici (this would persist until 1737).

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

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1545

Benvenuto Cellini, who had become entangled in disputes at the court of King Francis I of France, returned to his native Florence.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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1558

Alfonso II d'Este became Duke of Ferrara (until 1597).

Of the 103 cases of homicide reported in the English county of Nottinghamshire between 1458 and 1558, the quarterstaff was the murder weapon in 53. What this indicates to us is that the “Robin Hood” stories, which depict dozens of the Sheriff’s men being offed by means of bow and arrow, have probably been based not on historical records but on the sorts of mummeries that were done during May Day fairs.

Benvenuto Cellini began work on his memoirs, in Chapter 128 of Book I of which he would offer an account of the Heiligenshein light:

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1562

Benvenuto Cellini abandoned work on his memoirs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1571

February 14, Wednesday (1570, Old Style): Benvenuto Cellini died in Florence. His remains would be interred there, at the Church of Santa Maria Novella. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1572

Pope Gregory XIII (Ugo Buoncompagni of Bologna).

In about this year, Benvenuto Cellini’s uncompleted memoirs, which he had begun in 1558 but had abandoned in 1562, were being posthumously published. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1796

Henry Thoreau’s copy of THE LIFE OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF had been printed in this year at Salem for Cushing and Carlton, at the Bible and Heart:

This edition’s preface includes a letter by Richard Price. It also includes, as pages 82-126, a continuation about Franklin’s life composed by Henry Steuber, and as pages 127-132, “Extracts from the last will and testament of Dr. Franklin.” DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

It is very significantly different from every “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” book you have ever HDT WHAT? INDEX

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perused! –To grasp what Thoreau knew, and what Thoreau did not know, of the life of Franklin, one must consult this book that he had on his bookshelf in his garret in Concord. Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE:

I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s– & our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Benvenuto Cellini’s, & De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater – since you like Autobiography. I think you must read Coleridge again & further – skipping all his theology – i.e. if you value precise definitions & a discriminating use of language. By the way, read De Quincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY VITTORIO ALFIERI BENVENUTO CELLINI BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1845

MEMOIRS OF BENVENUTO CELLINI, A FLORENTINE ARTIST; WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. CONTAINING A VARIETY OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ARTS AND THE HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. WITH NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS OF G.P. C ARPANI. TRANSLATED BY THOMAS ROSCOE (New-York: Wiley & Putnam).

CELLINI’S MEMOIRS, I CELLINI’S MEMOIRS, II HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1847

A 1-volume edition of MEMOIRS OF BENVENUTO CELLINI, A FLORENTINE ARTIST; WRITTEN BY HIMSELF: CONTAINING A VARIETY OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ARTS, AND THE HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. NOW FIRST COLLATED WITH THE NEW TEXT OF GIUSEPPE MOLTENI, AND CORRECTED AND ENLARGED FROM THE LAST MILAN EDITION, WITH NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS OF G.P. C ARPANI, AS TRANSLATED BY THOMAS ROSCOE WAS PUBLISHED BY HENRY G. B OHN OF YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN IN LONDON. CELLINI’S MEMOIRS

This is the edition which Henry Thoreau would read during September 1851 — and Brad Dean has now tracked down the volume, which remains at the Concord Free Public Library: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1851

September 12, Friday: Henry Thoreau read the MEMOIRS OF BENVENUTO CELLINI, A FLORENTINE ARTIST; WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. CONTAINING A VARIETY OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ARTS AND THE HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. WITH NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS OF G.P. C ARPANI. TRANSLATED BY THOMAS ROSCOE (New-York: Wiley & Putnam, 1845).

CELLINI’S MEMOIRS, I CELLINI’S MEMOIRS, II HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Compare his journal entry of this day with what he had to say in WALDEN:

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

September 12, Friday: Not till after 8 AM does the fog clear off so much that I see the sun shining in patches on Nawshawtuct. This is the season of fogs. like knight like esquire When Benvenuto Cellini was attacked by the constables in Rome – His boy Cencio assisted him or at least stood by –& afterward related his masters exploits –“& as they asked him several times whether he had been afraid, he answered that they should propose the question to me, for he had been affected upon the occasion just in the same manner that I was.” Benvenuto Cellini relates in his Memoirs that during his confinement in the Castle of St Angelo in Rome he had a terrible dream or vision in which in which certain events were communicated to him which afterward came to pass –& he adds– “From the very moment that I beheld the phenomenon, there appeared (strange to relate!) a resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all that I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two o’clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew: it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France.” This reminds me of the halo around my Shadow which I notice from the cause way in the morning –also by moonlight– as if in the case of a man of an excitable imagination this were basis enough for his superstition. After I have spent the greater part of a night abroad in the moonlight I am obliged to sleep enough more the next ENDYMION night to make up for it –Endymionis somnum dormire –to sleep an Endymion sleep as the ancients expressed it. And there is something gained still by thus turning the day into night. Edymion is said to have obtained of Jupiter the privelege of sleeping as much as he would. Let no man be afraid of sleep – if his weariness comes of obeying his Genius. He who has spent the night with the gods sleeps more innocently by day than the sluggard who has spent the day with the satyrss sleeps by night. He who has travelled to fairy-land in the night – sleeps by day more innocently than he who is fatigued by the merely trivial labors of the day sleeps by night. That kind of life which sleeping we dream that we live awake – in our walks by night, we, waking, dream that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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we live, while our daily life appears as a dream.

2 P M To the Three Friends’ Hill beyond Flints Pond – via RR. RWEs Wood Path S side Walden – Geo Heywood’s Cleared Lot & Smith’s orchards – return via E of Flints’ P via Goose P & my old home to RR– I go to Flints P. for the sake of the Mt view from the hill beyond looking over Concord. I have thought it the best especially in the winter which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see the Mts in the horizon once a day. I have thus seen some earth which corresponds to my least earthly & trivial – to my most heaven-ward looking thoughts– The earth seen through an azure an etherial veil. They are the natural temples elevated brows of the earth – looking at which the thoughts of the beholder are naturally elevated and etherialized. I wish to see the earth through the medium of much air or heaven – for there is no paint like the air. Mts thus seen are worthy of worship. I go to Flints’ Pond also to see a rippling lake & a reedy-island in its HDT WHAT? INDEX

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midst – Reed Island.

A man should feed his senses with the best that the land affords At the entrance to the Deep Cut I heard the telegraph wire vibrating like an AEolian Harp. It reminded me suddenly – reservedly with a beautiful paucity of communication – even silently, such was its effect on my AEOLIAN HARP thoughts– It reminded me, I say, with a certain pathetic moderation – of what finer & deeper stirrings I was susceptible – which grandly set all argument & dispute aside– –a triumphant though transient exhibition of the truth. It told me by the faintest imaginable strain – it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can hear – yet conclusively & past all refutation – that there were higher infinitely higher plains of life – which it behoved me never to forget. As I was entering the Dep Cut the wind which was conveying a message to me from heaven dropt it on the wire of the telegraph which it vibrated as it past. I instantly sat down on a stone at the foot of the telegraph pole – & attended to the communication. It merely said “Bear in mind, Child – & never for an instant forget – that there are higher plains infinitely higher plains of life than this thou art now travelling on. Know that the goal is distant & is upward and is worthy all your life’s efforts to attain to.” And then it ceased and though I sat some minutes longer I heard nothing more. There is every variety & degree of inspiration from mere fullness of life to the most rapt mood. A human soul is played on even as this wire – which now vibrates slowly & gently so that the passer can hardly hear it & anon the sound swells & vibrates with such intensity as if it would rend the wire – as far as the elasticity & tension of the wire permits – and now it dies away and is silent – & though the breeze continues to sweep over it, no strain comes from it – & the traveller hearkens in vain. It is no small gain to have this wire stretched through Concord though there may be no Office here. Thus I make my own use of the telegraph – without consulting the Directors –l ike the sparrows which I perceive use it extensively for a perch. Shall I not go to this office to hear if there is any communication for me – as steadily as to the Post office in the village? I can hardly believe that there is so great a diffirence between one year & another as my journal shows. The 11th of this month last year the river was as high as it commonly is in the spring – over the causeway on the Corner Road. It is now quite low. Last year Oct 9th the huckleberries were fresh & abundant on Conantum – They are now already dried up. We yearn to see the Mts daily – as the Israelites yearned for the Promised land – & we daily live the fate of Moses who only looked into the Promised land from Pisgah before he died. On Monday the 15th instant I am going to perambulate the bounds of the town. As I am partial to across- lot routes, this appears to be a very proper duty for me to perform, for certainly no route can – well be chosen which shall be more across lot – since the roads in no case run round the town but ray out from its center, and my course will lie across each one. It is almost as if I had undertaken to walk round the town at the greatest distance from its centre & at the same time from the surrounding villages. There is no public house near the line. It is a sort of reconnaisance of its frontiers authorized by the central government of the town – which will bring HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the surveyor in contact with whatever wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces This appears to be a very ancient custom. And I find that this word perambulation has exactly the same meaning that it has at present in Johnson & Walkers dictionary– A hundred years ago they went round the towns of this state every three years. And the old select men tell me that before the present split stones were set up in 1829, the bounds were marked by a heap of stones, and it was customary for each select man to add a stone to the heap. Saw a pigeon place on Geo. Heywoods cleared lot – the six dead trees set up for the pigeons [American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius] to alight on, and the brush-house close by to conceal the man. I was rather startled to find such a thing going now in Concord– The pigeons on the trees looked like fabulous birds with their long tails & their pointed breasts I could hardly believe they were alive & not some wooden birds used for decoys – they sat so still – and even When they moved their necks I thought it was the effect of art. As they were not catching them I approached & scared away a dozen birds who were perched on the trees and found that they were freshly baited there – though the net was carried away – perchance to some other bed. The smooth sandy bed was covered with buckwheat – wheat or rye – & acorns – sometimes they use corn shaved off the ear in its present state with a knife– – There were left the sticks with which they fastened the necks– As I stood there I heard a rushing sound & looking up saw a flock of 30 or 40 pigeons dashing toward the trees, who suddenly whirled on seeing me & circled round & made a new dash toward the bed as if they would fain alight if I had not been there – then steered off. I went into the bough-house & lay awhile looking through the leaves – hoping to see them come again & feed – but they did not while I stayed. This net & bed belongs to one Harrington of Weston as I hear– Several men still take pigeons in Concord every year. By a method methinks extremely old – and which I seem to have seen pictured in some old book of fables or symbols – & yet few in Concord know exactly how it is done. And yet it is all done for money & because the birds fetch a good price – just as the farmers raise corn & potatoes. I am always expecting that those engaged in such a persuit will be somewhat less grovelling & mercenary than the regular trader or farmer, but I fear that it is not so. JAMES BAKER Found a violet – apparently viola cucullata or hoodleaved violet in bloom in Bakers meadow beyond Pine Hill. Also the bidens cernua Nodding Burr-marygold with 5 petals – in same place. Went through the old cornfield on the hill side beyond now grown up to birches & hickories. Woods where you feel the old corn hills under your feet –f or these not being disturbed or levelled in getting the crop like potatoe hills last an indefinite while – & by some they are called Indian corn fields – though I think erroniously not only from their position in rocky soil frequently – but because the squaws probably with their clam shells or thin stones or wooden hoes did not hill their corn more than many now recommend. What we call woodbine is the vitis hederacea or Common creeper or American ivy. When I got into the Lincoln road I perceived a singular sweet scent in the air – which I suspected arose from from some plant now in a peculiar state owing to the season, but though I smell everything around I could not detect it, but the more eagerly I smelled the further I seemed to be from finding it – but when I gave up the search – again it would be wafted to me– It was one of the sweet scents which go to make the autumn air – which fed my sense of smell rarely & dilated my nostrils– I felt the better for it. Methinks that I possess the sense of smell in greater perfection than usual–& have the habit of smelling of every plant I pluck. How autumnal is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside! From the pondside hill I perceive that the forest leaves begin to look rather rusty or brown. The pendulous drooping barberries are pretty well reddened. I am glad when the berries look fair & plump. I love to gaze at the low island in the Pond – at any island or inaccesible land. The isle at which you look always seems fairer than the main-land on which you stand. I had already bathed in Walden as I passed, but now I forgot that I had been wetted & wanted to embrace & mingle myself with the water of Flints pond – this warm afternoon – to get wet inwardly & deeply. Found on the shore of the Pond that singular willow like herb in blossom – though its petals were gone. It grows up 2 feet from a large woody horizontal root & droops over to the sand again – meeting which it puts out a myriad rootlets from the side of its stem – fastens itself & curves upward again to the air– –thus spanning or looping itself along. The bark just above the ground thickens into a singular cellular or spongey substance which at length appears to crack nearer the earth giving that part of the plant a winged appearance & some what 4 sided It appears to be the cellular tissue or what is commonly called the green bark – & like-wise invests the root to a great thickness – somewhat like a fungus & is of a fawn color The Lythrum verticillatum or swamp Loosestrife – or Grass Poly – but I think better named as in Dewey Swamp-willow herb– The Prinos berries are pretty red. Any redness like cardinal flowers or poke – or the evening sky or Cheronaea excites us as a red flag does cows & turkies. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In general, for this Brocken phenomenon, refer to Irwin, John T. AMERICAN HIEROGLYPHICS: THE SYMBOL OF THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS IN THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE. New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1980. Here is what Jerry Dennis has had to offer in IT’S RAINING FROGS AND FISHES: FOUR SEASONS OF NATURAL PHENOMENA AND ODDITIES OF THE SKY (Illustrations by Glenn Wolff. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, pages 156-7):

An odd halo phenomenon sometimes occurs in early morning when the sun is just up and a closely trimmed lawn is soaked with dew. To observe it, stand with your back to the sun, so that your shadow is cast across the damp grass. If conditions are right a luminous white halo will surround the head of your shadow, creating an effect eerily reminiscent of the halos said to surround the heads of saints. Thoreau noticed it near his cabin on Walden Pond: “As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect.” The halo, known as a dew halo or heiligenschein (German for “holy shining”), is startling enough to have caused the immodest sixteenth-century sculptor Benvenuto Cellini to imagine he had been sainted, or at least given divine reward for his genius. Unfortunately for Benvenuto, dew halos, while certainly not an everyday occurrence, can appear over the heads of saints and sinners alike. They form when sunlight, streaming past a viewer’s head, strikes dewdrops. In much the same way that rainbows are formed, light penetrates each drop, is bent slightly, then reflects off the rear of the drop back to the viewer. A similar phenomenon frightened the climbing shorts off early mountaineers who reached the fog-shrouded peak called Broken, in Germany’s Hartz Mountains. Frightened climbers returned from the mountain and told of a bizarre apparition they had seen climbing along with them near the peak. The stories were quickly added to ancient legends of the Broken peak of the Hartz Mountains as the place where witches gathered on Walpurgis night, a legend Goethe used in the witches’ sabbath scene in FAUST. The apparition, dubbed the “Brocken specter,” proved to be the climbers’ own shadows enlarged and cast on clouds of fog banks above, below, or beside them. The dispersal of light in water droplets within the fog sometimes cause the shadows to be ringed with a colorful glory, or “Brocken bow,” draping the specter in rainbowlike colors and adding to the eerie effect. Glories are refraction phenomena most commonly seen when you stand facing mist or a bank of fog with the sun behind you, and your shadow is cast against the white screen of the fog. The glory appears around the head of your shadow as a series of colored rings. They are also commonly seen from aircraft, when the shadow of the craft is visible on clouds below. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1857

April 26, Sunday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Benjamin B. Wiley and attempted to explicate his parable in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS of the loss of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove.

WALDEN: In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my gate. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Curiously, he explicated it as if he were explicating his reference to Mencius’s remark about the loss of the “sentiments of the heart” in A WEEK where he had quoted as follows:

A WEEK: Mencius says: “If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well PEOPLE OF how to seek them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, A WEEK he does not know how to seek them again.... The duties of practical philosophy consist only in seeking after those sentiments of the heart which we have lost; that is all.”

MENCIUS

So what he sent off to Wiley was:

How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound & horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize — this I answer hastily & with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words.

I would infer, from this confusion, that in Thoreau’s memory his quotation in THE DIAL and then in A WEEK of a parable from Mencius, a parable which referred to a fowl and a dog, and his invention of his own parable in WALDEN, which referred to a hound, a horse, and a turtle-dove, had, by 1857 at least, become commingled.

THE SCHOLAR. Teen, son of the king of Tse, asked what the business of the scholar consists in? Mencius replied, In elevating his mind and inclination. What do you mean by elevating the mind? It consists merely in being benevolent and just. Where is the scholar’s abode? In benevolence. Where is his road? Justice. To dwell in benevolence, and walk in justice, is the whole business of a great man. Benevolence is man’s heart, and justice is man’s path. If a man lose his fowls or his dogs, he knows how to seek them. There are those who lose their hearts and know not how to seek them. The duty of the student is no other than to seek his lost heart. He who employs his whole mind, will know his nature. He who knows his nature, knows heaven. It were better to be without books than to believe all that they record. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

MENCIUS

We should, therefore, limit the range of possible interpretations of Thoreau’s parable to those which are not blatantly discordant with the more decipherable intention of the Mencius parable. And immediately we notice that a key to the Mencius parable is that “loss” can mean such different things, that we may know how to recover from one “loss” but may have no clue as to how to recover from another “loss.” THOREAU AND CHINA

There is a marked difference in the meaning of the word “my” when it is applied to my hound, my horse, and my turtledove.

Did we suppose that “my” means the same in the expression “Please get my hat” as in the expression “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” No, we did not suppose that, nor are we to suppose that the possessive pronoun is the same when it is applied to a family pet with whom we share a long-term and deep affectional relationship, to a barn animal we saddle in order to go somewhere, and to a wild bird we glimpse as it disappears behind a cloud. In the sense in which the dog is my dog, the horse is not my horse. In the sense in which the horse is my horse, the turtledove is not my turtledove. And there is not only a difference in the definition of the possessive pronoun “my” when it is applied to my hound, my horse, and my turtledove, there is also a difference in the meaning of the economic term “loss.” For me to lose my hound is for this dog to run off after a scent and return when it chooses. For me to lose my horse is for this horse to be stolen by a horse thief, or for me to gamble it away, or for it to lie down and die. For me to lose a turtledove is — what? Thoreau didn’t need to clutch a turtledove, so how could he lose it? What he said was “In Boston yesterday an ornithologist said significantly, ‘If you held the bird in your hand–’; but I would rather hold it in my affections,” and the bird of which he and the ornithologist spoke might as well have been a turtledove as an eponymous anonymous bird of some other species. When one gets to the turtledove part of the saying, one recognizes that Thoreau’s parable of loss is a secret joke, a joke on the whole idea that in this world there could be such a thing as loss. We may well wonder how the idea of loss could have arisen in a world in which each instant of our lives is a gift to us, and is a gift over which we have no control whatever. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Note that if we interpret the parable of the “loss” of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove as a secret joke on the whole idea that in this world there could be such a thing as loss, then the parable becomes an intrinsic part of the chapter, for the chapter, according to Stanley Cavell’s THE SENSES OF WALDEN, is, in its entirety, a parable about the unreality of loss and an attempt to subvert our customary deployment of economic terms such as loss when we attempt to deal with the affect of our lives:

The writer comes to us from a sense of loss; the myth does not contain more than symbols because it is no set of desired things he has lost, but a connection with things, the track of desire itself.

Note also that if we interpret this parable of the “loss” of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove as a secret joke on the simpleminded presumption that “loss” is one single, unproblematic concept, then we are led directly back, full circle, to this citation of Mencius in A WEEK, the citation in which the “duties of practical philosophy” are specified.

MENCIUS

Barbara Johnson, while agreeing that the parable has to do with losses, evidently disagrees with the idea that the chapter is intended to distance us from the easy application of such economic terms to the affect of our lives. Rather, she suggests, WALDEN wakes us up to our losses, evidently to the reality of our losses:

WALDEN’s great achievement is to wake us up to our own losses, to make us participate in the trans-individual movement of loss in its own infinite particularity, urging us passionately to follow the tracks of we know not quite what, as if we had lost it, or were in danger of losing it, ourselves. In order to communicate the irreducibly particular yet ultimately unreadable nature of loss, Thoreau has chosen to use three symbols [hound, bay horse, and turtledove] that clearly are symbols but that do not really symbolize anything outside themselves.

We may note also, here, that Johnson is attempting a pre-emptive strike at anyone and everyone who would make the three symbolic animals “symbolize anything outside themselves.” My own attitude toward this is that a good reader is an active reader, and seeks to read meaning into what she is reading. We should judge each attempt on its merits, and make no pre-emptive strike against the attempt to actively engage with the presented material. Concord April 26th HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1857 Dear Sir I have been spending a fortnight in New Bedford, and on my return find your last letter awaiting me. I was sure that you would find Newcomb inexhaustible, if you found your way into him at all. I might say, however, by way of criticism, that he does not take firm enough hold on this world, where surely we are bound to triumph. I am sorry to say that I do not see how I can furnish you with a copy of my essay on the wild. It has not been prepared for publication, only for lectures, and would cover at least a hundred written pages. Even if it were ready to be dis- persed, I could not easily find time to copy it. So I return the order. I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s– & our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Ben- venuto Cellini’s, & De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater – since you like Autobiography. I think you must read Coleridge again & further –skipping all his theology– i.e. if you value precise definitions & a discriminating use of language. By the way, read De Quincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth. How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound & horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize— This I answer hastily & with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words. I take this occasion to acknowledge, & thank you for, your long letter of Dec 21st. So poor a correspondent am I. If I wait for the fit time to reply, it commonly does not come at all, as you see. I require the presence of the other party to suggest what I shall say. Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives – their genius (a celestial muse) and also to some fair daughter of the earth. Unless these two were fast friends before mar- riage, and so are afterward, there will be but little peace in the house. In answer to your questions, I must say that I never made, nor had occasion to use a filter of any kind; but, no doubt, they can be bought in Chicago. You cannot surely identify a plant from a scientific description until after long practice. The “millers” you speak of are the perfect or final state of the insect. The chrysalis is the silken bag they spun when caterpillars, & occupied in the nymph state. Yrs truly HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Henry D. Thoreau EDWARD GIBBON THOMAS DE QUINCEY VITTORIO ALFIERI BENVENUTO CELLINI BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON

READ ALFIERI’S TEXT READ FRANKLIN’S TEXT

April 26. Riordan’s cock follows close after me while spading in the garden, and hens commonly follow the gardener and plowman, just as cowbirds the cattle in a pasture. I turn up now in the garden those large leather-colored nymphs.

P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. See on the water over the meadow, north of the boat’s place, twenty rods from the nearest shore and twice as much from the opposite shore, a very large striped snake swimming. It swims with great ease, and lifts its head a foot above the water, darting its tongue at us. A snake thus met with on the water appears far more monstrous, not to say awful and venomous, than on the land. It is always something startling and memorable to meet with a serpent in the midst of a broad water, careering over it. But why had this one taken to the water? Is it possible that snakes ever hibernate in meadows which are subject to be overflown? This one when we approached swam toward the boat, apparently to rest on it, and when I put out my paddle, at once coiled itself partly around it and allowed itself to be taken on board. It did not hang down from the paddle like a dead snake, but stiffened and curved its body in a loose coil about it. This snake was two feet and eleven inches long; the tail alone, seven and a quarter. There [were] one hundred and forty-five large abdominal plates, besides the three smaller under the head, and sixty-five pairs of caudal scales. The central stripe on the back was not bright-yellow, as Storer describes, but a pale brown or clay-color; only the more indistinct lateral stripes were a greenish yellow, the broad dark-brown stripes being between; beneath greenish. Beneath the tail in centre, a dark, somewhat greenish line. This snake was killed about 2 P.M.; i.e., the head was perfectly killed then; yet the posterior half of the body was apparently quite alive and would curl strongly around the hand at 7 P.M. It had been hanging on a tree in the meanwhile. I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one. I see a great many beetles, etc., floating and struggling on the flood. We sit on the shore at Wheeler’s fence, opposite Merriam’s. At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place. C. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year. We are in this like snakes that lie out on banks. In sunny and sheltered nooks we are in our best estate. There our thoughts flow and we flourish most. By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates. Thus the average temperature of the year just suits us. Generally, whether in summer or winter, we are not sensible either of heat or cold. A great part of our troubles are literally domestic or originate in the house and from living indoors. I could write an essay to be entitled “Out of Doors,” — undertake a crusade against houses. What a different thing Christianity preached to the house-bred and to a party who lived out of doors! Also a sermon is needed on economy of fuel. What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords of wood, when I burn only one? Thus robbing our half-naked town of this precious covering. Is he so much colder than I? It is expensive to maintain him in our midst. If some earn the salt of their porridge, are we certain that they earn the fuel of their kitchen and parlor? One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river or of the dead and refuse (unmarketable!) wood of the forest suffice, and nature rejoices in him. Another, Herod-like, requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

hickory, and he is commonly esteemed a virtuous man. He who burns the most wood on his hearth is the least warmed by the sight of it growing. Leave the trim wood-lots to widows and orphan girls. Let men tread gently through nature. Let us religiously burn stumps and worship in groves, while Christian vandals lay waste the forest temples to build miles of meeting-houses and horse-sheds and feed their box stoves. The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. Towed home an oak log some eighteen feet long and more than a foot through, with a birch with around it and another birch fastened to that. Father says he saw a boy with a snapping turtle yesterday. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

2012

January: H. Moysés Nussenzveig’s article “The Science of the Glory” in Scientific American revealed that for more than a century, physics professors and optics professors have been merely waving their hands in the air and going “trust me,” as they have attempted to persuade their students that they actually do understood this strange atmospheric phenomenon called the “glory” so carefully described by Thoreau in his journal and in WALDEN. We had a computer program that could calculate out this refraction effect for us, and yet a Nobel Laureate has needed to comment wryly “It is very nice that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.” The answers we have been getting, from treating light as if it were a string of billiard balls that bounce around inside a tiny water droplet in the mist and then ricochet right back at you, when we know that in fact it is not like a billiard ball at all and simply does not ricochet like a billiard ball, is all of 14° off from accurate. Water does not have the sort of refractive index that would allow light to be bounced around and sent exactly 180° back at your eyeball. The best you could get from any of this sort of hall-of-mirrors bouncing would be no better than 166° and the returning billiard ball would miss your eyeball by a nautical mile! This experience is not to be understood without an understanding of wave dynamics phenomena such as “tunneling.” It was not to be understood at any point within a hundred years of Thoreau’s lifetime. THE SCIENCE OF THE GLORY • On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon.

• As in a rainbow, the colors are produced by the microscopic water droplets that compose clouds, but in the case of glories the physics is more subtle. • The light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from wave tunneling, which is when light rays that missed a droplet can still transfer energy into it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

• The understanding gained from glories is helping climatologists to improve models of how cloud cover may contribute to or alleviate climate change.

So, see, you’re walking down the railroad causeway in a mist alongside an Irishman, with the sun at your back, and can see two shadows ahead of you in the mist — your own head and shoulders and the head and shoulders of the Irishman. You can see around the shadow of your own head a luminous aura, a “glory.” Around the shadow of that Irishman’s head, however, there’s no such aura of light. Does that mean that the Irishman since he is Irish doesn’t have a soul? Now, courtesy of the latest “tunneling” phenomenon of wave dynamics, and courtesy of an article in the current issue of Scientific American, we know the answer to this question — and the answer is “No, this doesn’t mean that your Irish companion has no soul.” THE SCIENCE OF THE GLORY

ROME ITALY BENVENUTO CELLINI HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: November 23, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: BENVENUTO CELLINI PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.