Visionary Promises: Thoreau

George P. Landow

From Chapter One, "The Prophetic Pattern."

Carlyle and The Act of Interpretation

Ruskin and the Trivial

Joan Didion and Twentieth-Century Acts of Interpretation

John McPhee

Opposing the Audience

Thoreau and Arnold

Ruskin and Thoreau

The Prophet's Warning

Carlyle, Ruskin, and Others

Visonary Promises

Thomas Carlyle

John Ruskin

Henry David Thoreau

W. E. DuBois

Matthew Arnold

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Decorative Initial Thoreau uses similar shifts of tone and rhetoric to close his exercises in this form of writing. The lyrical "Walking" concludes with the hope of an earthly Eden: "So we saunter toward the Holy land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn" (226). "Slavery in Massachusetts," which is more properly a pronouncement of the sage, uses the beauty of nature to suggest a positive vision and a possible good after much pointed satire and bitter invective. [Albert A. Funk, "Henry David Thoreau's 'Slavery in Massachusetts,"' Western Speech 36 (1972): 159-68, provides useful background to this work, as do the items listed in note 7. Walking toward a pond, Thoreau confesses that the crimes of his society spoil his pleasure in nature: "Who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her." He then remembers that "the other day" he scented a water lily, "the emblem of purity," which served to show him "what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth," and he therefore realizes: "What confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of Northern men" (108) .

"The Last Days of John Brown," which presents the great abolitionist in terms of Christian and even Christic martyrdom, argues that in his death Brown achieved a true victory of the spirit. The essential part of John Brown, claims Thoreau, still remains alive and indeed grows ever stronger throughout the land.

Therefore, although he has heard that Brown died on the gallows, he refused and still refuses to believe it:

On the day of his translation, I heard, to be sure, that he was g, but I did not know what that meant; I felt no sorrow on that account; but not for a day or two did I even hear that he was dead, and not after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. . . I never hear of any particularly brave and earnest man, but my first thought is of John Brown, and what relation he may be to him. I meet him at every turn. He is more alive than he ever was. He has earned immortality. He is not confined to North Elba nor to Kansas. He is no longer working in secret. He works in public, and in the clearest light that shines on this land. (152-53)

'A Plea for Captain John Brown," which presents its subject as the contemporary incarnation of Christ, again uses this imagery of visionary promise when Thoreau translates Brown from earth to heaven and from a human being and hero into an angelic presence: "Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an Angel of Light" (137).

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