I. Introduction
In the chapter “Where I lived and What I lived for”, Thoreau explains what he wanted to achieve by his experiment:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and such out all the marrow of life […] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it […]. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God […]. (W, 72)
This passage demonstrates Thoreau’s desire to establish a relationship to the world around him. Feeling that, like most people, he lived “what was not life”, he moves to Walden Pond in order to find out for himself what life actually was. He feels that nature can reveal truths and meanings to him and thus help him to overcome the “strange uncertainty” about the character of the world and of his own life. But if nature seemed to “communicate” with man, how could he make sure to understand its message?
...
In order to ‘translate’ his experience to his readers, Thoreau uses natural imagery in a highly symbolic way.
...
In the book we find the pond described in a very detailed way: its size, the depth, the flora and fauna. The meanings of these descriptions are various and at the end this small body of water comes to symbolize almost everything of Thoreau’s spiritual, philosophical and personal message. In order to demonstrate this, it is necessary to look closely at what Thoreau has to say about the pond and his relationship to it.
Because water, the element of the pond, is a powerful symbol in itself, I will begin by a short
introduction of a universal symbolism of water and examine how this symbolism is applied in
Walden. I will then proceed to a more specific analysis of the pond imaginary, which is
particularly concentrated in the chapters “The Ponds” and “The Pond in Winter” and “Spring”. [...]
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Water: a universal symbol
III. Pond as a symbol
1. The “pure” pond (“The Ponds”)
2. The frozen pond (“Pond in Winter”)
3. The deep pond (“Pond in Winter”)
4. The melting pond (“Spring”)
IV. Conclusion
V. Bibliography:
Selected Articles and Essays:
I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol.
(Walden, 227)
I. Introduction
In the chapter “Where I lived and What I lived for”, Thoreau explains what he wanted to achieve by his experiment:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and such out all the marrow of life […] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it […]. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God […]. (W, 72)
This passage demonstrates Thoreau’s desire to establish a relationship to the world around him. Feeling that, like most people, he lived “what was not life”, he moves to Walden Pond in order to find out for himself what life actually was. He feels that nature can reveal truths and meanings to him and thus help him to overcome the “strange uncertainty” about the character of the world and of his own life. But if nature seemed to “communicate” with man, how could he make sure to understand its message?
In Emerson’s famous essay Nature, considered by many as the very foundation of the transcendentalism, we find the idea of correspondence – “the relationship between the spiritual and the material, the natural and the man-made, the object and the idea”[1]. Emerson suggests that there is a universal relationship between natural imagery and human thought and that this relationship can be expressed through language. Indeed, “the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”[2] In chapter IV, “Language”, he lists three principles of language:
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
Walden can be said to illustrate the various kinds of perception found in Emerson’s essay.
As his mentor, Thoreau felt that the correct interpretation of a single natural phenomenon would illuminate “the principle of all the operations of Nature” (W, 244). And like Emerson, he believed that by studying nature one could arrive at the absolute ground of being. However, he realised that in order to interpret it correctly, he needed to learn the ‘language’ that nature speaks, first. By getting as ‘familiar’ with nature as possible, he hoped to learn how he himself was connected to it.
In order to ‘translate’ his experience to his readers, Thoreau uses natural imagery in a highly symbolic way. Emerson recognized this tendency in describing the “cardinal fact” about Thoreau as they way he could regard “the material world as a means and a symbol”[3]. In its attempt to find a correspondence between nature and spirit, Walden itself is to be seen as a symbolic work.
Walden Pond, near which Thoreau moved on 4 July 1845, became the geographic symbol of the Transcendental movement. In the book we find the pond described in a very detailed way: its size, the depth, the flora and fauna. The meanings of these descriptions are various and at the end this small body of water comes to symbolize almost everything of Thoreau’s spiritual, philosophical and personal message. In order to demonstrate this, it is necessary to look closely at what Thoreau has to say about the pond and his relationship to it.
Because water, the element of the pond, is a powerful symbol in itself, I will begin by a short introduction of a universal symbolism of water and examine how this symbolism is applied in Walden. I will then proceed to a more specific analysis of the pond imaginary, which is particularly concentrated in the chapters “The Ponds” and “The Pond in Winter” and “Spring”.
II. Water: a universal symbol
Water seems a middle element between earth and air. The most fluid in which man can float.
Thoreau, Journal, 2 December 1840[4]
The element water has a central meaning in most religions and mythologies. Most creation myths include water as the origin of the universe. Water is also associated with the water of the womb where individual life comes from and with the water of the oceans where life evolved from.
Water has ability of changing shapes and transforming itself. This ability of transformation refers to birth, death and regeneration. The symbol of rebirth is found in the biblical story of the Great Flood: only after sin and evil are washed away and dissolved, can the (re)birth of the world take place.[5]
By building his home near water, Thoreau finds a way of rooting himself more closely to the natural element of the universe, to the origin of life itself. He hopes to cleanse himself of all distractions that would keep him from true perception of nature and himself. Through his concept of ‘economy of living’, he simplified his life in order to face “essential facts” of life. The goal of Thoreau’s physical discipline – getting up early, bathing in the pond, maintaining a natural diet, and exercising his senses whenever possible – was to “purify” his body in order open himself to nature. Only in a healthy “temple” of the body, Thorough thought, could the inner spiritual self develop.
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. (W, 176-177)
Thoreau himself emphasises the purifying qualities of the pond several times. He says that its water is of “crystalline purity” and the few plants in it “are clean and bright like the element they grow in” (W, 142). Purity means freedom from all feelings, thoughts, and desires which do not come from the spiritual core of the individual. “I fear,” he writes, “that it [the sensual] may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.” (W, 174) And later, he clarifies, “a command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind’s approximation to God” (W, 175). For his mind to approach God, he knew that severest discipline was necessary.
The aspects of water relating to birth, death and regression are found in baptism, one of the major rituals of religion. This association reaches its climax in the description of the daily bath Thoreau takes in it. “I got up early and bathed in the pond,” he says; “that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did” (W, 71). This sacramental act is a means of renewing himself “completely each day” (W, 71). This demand for renewal is mirrored in the metaphor of awaking, which is associated with the morning:
The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius […]. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labours of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. (W, 71-72)
Finally, the unique quality of water is to take the shape of that which surrounds it but to never possess a specific shape by itself. This quality of fluidity, as opposed to earth as the embodiment of form, symbolises flexibility as a pre-condition for creativity; this analogy is mirrored in our language: it “flows” when we are creative; we read “fluently”[6]. Walden, which is at the same time the name of a pond and the title of a book, is Thoreau’s inspiration and a means to understand Nature through language.
III. Pond as a symbol
As opposed to water’s most extreme downward movement expressed in the symbolism of waterfalls, water as its most passive is symbolized by lakes and ponds. This type of water reflects because of its smooth surface and it is not surprising that this type of water draws people close to it to engage in the act of reflection.[7]
In order to understand the process of reflection as experienced by Thoreau’s mind, it is useful to examine different aspects of the pond’s description, as expressed in the chapters “The Ponds”, “Pond in Winter” and “Spring”.
1. The “pure” pond (“The Ponds”)
At the beginning of this chapter Thoreau explains that when he feels tired of life in his village he would often “ramble” westward to the local woods and ponds, where he would pick berries for supper and enjoy their “ambrosial” flavors. Berries, he says, have their true flavor only in the countryside, but not on the market. Here, Thoreau is subtly introducing a theme he will deal in this chapter: the spiritual “fruits”, which can’t be found in the city and through economic progress. Further, he tells us that he would often stay out at the ponds and go fishing during the night. The description of his magical experience in the dark resembles the beginning of Novalis’ mystical prose-poem “Hymns to the Night”[8]:
It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and ink you to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook. (W, 140)
Fishing at night is a symbolic act of self-reflection, which integrates him into nature and thus, helps him to overcome the duality that separated the material from the spiritual, the body from the mind. His “lines” connected him to both, Nature (downwards, fish) and Spirit (upward, air). Finally catching the fish brings him back to reality; but the fish also illustrates his connection with Nature, which persists even when the dreaming comes to an end. Walden Pond, as a meeting point for the Narrator’s lines, operates as an intermediate between the two realms: “Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook.” In “Higher Laws” Thoreau mentions that legislators prescribe the number of fish-hooks to be permitted at Walden, “but they know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait” (W, 170).
[...]
[1] Mott, Wesley T. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism (Westport, Con.: Greenwood, 1996), 45
[2] Emerson, Ralph Waldo: “Nature”. Nina Baym (ed.) et al. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol 1 (New York: 4th ed., Norton & Company, 1994) 1006.
[3] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. „Thoreau“. Nina Baym et al. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 1130
[4] Schneider, Richard J.(ed), Henry David Thoreau: A Documentary Volume (Detroit: Gale, 2004)
[5] From: Selbmann, Sybille, Myth os Wasser: Symbolik und Kulturgeschichte (Karlsruhe: Badenia Verlag, 1995)
[6] Selbmann, Mythos Wasser, 144
[7] See symbolism of ‘lake’, in: Vries, Ad de. Dictionary of Symbolism (Amsterdam: North Holland Publ.Comp., 1974)289
[8] According to Wesley T. Mott, Thoreau knew and was deeply moved by the romanticism of Hymns to the Night (Mott, Wesley, T. Encyclopedia of Transcedentalism, 143)
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- Ilona Kramer (Autor:in), 2007, “Deep and Pure for a Symbol”, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/144148
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