Chapter 3 of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is entitled “Reading,” and aptly so. The chapter describes Thoreau’s reading habits during the two years that he spent at Walden Pond. However, it is not a chronicle of what Thoreau read during that time, but it is instead a philosophical investigation into why and how reading is done. Thoreau insists that reading, at least of meritorious ancient works, has a purpose and effect beyond that of merely speaking and hearing ideas. Still, he is somewhat vague about what exactly this distinction actually is-though he is quite convicted about its sublimity. The haziness surrounding what Thoreau thinks are the merits of noble literature is quite understandable as Thoreau explains that the barriers of language and mental proclivity that separate most men from the Classics. It still might seem that Thoreau is being an intellectual elitist at times, but that is because “Reading” is a fine example of the intuitive approach to explanation. Thoreau does not list in an orderly manner the pros and cons of both literature and oratory but instead alludes to the greater excellence of literature while describing its greatest impediments-linguistics and intellectual temperament-so that readers might feel their own way to Thoreau’s point of view.
However much we may admire the orator’s occasional burst of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds” (Thoreau 73). Thoreau writes about how there is “a memorable interval between the spoken and written language. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that” (73). What we see is that Thoreau holds good writing in very high esteem, but this may be a little off-putting to some readers-especially those who are not of such a literary bent.
Thoreau uses strong prose to make his opinion of literature’s merits quite clear, and what a biting opinion it is. It might seem from such strong opinions that Thoreau has something of bias due to his own scholarly inclinations. Speaking on reading, Thoreau says that “It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole to this object” (72). Such statements also might seem to have a defensive tone, almost as if Thoreau were trying to justify his “steady intention almost of the whole” to the object of reading and writing. The problem is that if a reader starts to infer various personal insecurities as Thoreau’s motivation in “Reading”, then they are missing his whole point. Thoreau is not trying to argue for the superiority of literature so much as he is trying to guide the reader into it-and this approach really only works if the reader, instead of being defensive about personal habits, has the necessary scholarly experience and psychological inclination to identify with Thoreau’s message.
This is the crux of Thoreau’s point: “To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem” (72). These are the barriers between most men and Thoreau’s point of view. They cannot read the “true books”, or if they can, they do not read them in a “true spirit”.
When Thoreau speaks about “true books”, he is speaking primarily about the classics of the ancient world, “For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man?” (72). The problem, however, is that one must read the books in their original language. “The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line” (72). What he is referring to hear is the maturation process of a language mentioned earlier: how “men who merely spoke the Greek or Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages” (73). Basically, the idea is that while a language is still be spoken commonly there is contempt bred of familiarity that ignores the true value of works written in that language, but after that language has fallen into disuse then the care and energy that must be expended just to understand it reveals the true light of genius within its written works. “Those who have not read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race” (Thoreau 74).
However, even if a reader has the kind of linguistic training that Thoreau had and endorsed, there must also be a spiritual capacity for the influence of the great thoughts. “Indeed, there is hardly a professor at in our colleges , who, having mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader” (Thoreau 76). Reading is not just a mechanical process of translating symbol to sound; that mechanical process is exactly what Thoreau abhors about the commonly spoken languages of his day. Everyone knows how to do it, and so it is done frequently and without… deliberation. To Thoreau’s philosophy of deliberate living, this attitude smacks of the deplorable, and even more so when this slack-minded communicative approach is also applied to the ancient languages. However, if a reader is willing to have an alert and heroic approach to reading, then one will truly be able to benefit from the preserved genius of man. This kind of reading, this spirit, is possible with a common tongue, but it is much easier in a dead language that an individual has spent much deliberate effort in learning. Either way, the most important part of truly benefiting from literature is being able to open the mind and connect with writer. Then a reader can truly say, even as Thoreau did, that “The oldest Egyptian of Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision” (71).
Works Cited
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience. New York, Penguin Books, 1960.
