Walden

WALDEN By HENRY D. THOREAU With an Introduction by JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH New York HARPER 6-BROTHERS PUBLISHERS INTRODUCTION Joseph Wood Krtttch is the author of several commentaries on contemporary life and critical studies of modern litera ture. Born in Tennessee, he was educated at the state uni versity and at Columbia. At present he is a professor of dra matic literature at Columbia as well as drama critic for The Nation. Among his booths are Edgar Allan Poe A Study in Genius 7926 The Modern Temper 7929 Five Masters A Study in the Mutations of the Novel 1930 Experience and Art 1932 Was Europe a Success 1934 The Amer ican Drama Since 1918 1939 Samuel Johnson 1944 Thoreau 1948 and The Twelve Seasons 7949. On July 4, 1845, Henry Thoreau moved into a one-room cabin he had built near the edge of a pond about a mile from his native village of Concord, Massachusetts. He was twenty-eight years old, and, though a graduate of Harvard College, he had never adopted any business, trade, or pro fession. He believed that it was more important to live than to make a living., and that living was less interfered with if one got along with little instead of trying to earn much Until then He had worked occasionally at odd jobs about the village and had been for a time a sort of handy man in the household of his already famous neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Now he was determined to try living even more simply. The cabin cost him twenty-eight dollars and twelve cents to build. Food, clothing, and incidentals in addition vi INTRODUCTION to the food he raised in his garden cost a little over thirty three dollars for eight months. Since an unskilled laborer earned a dollar a day, it was, as he triumphantlyannounced, obviously not necessary to live in the sweat of ones brow. If one were willing to simplify, one could have plenty of leisure for meditation and study. Walden is ostensibly an account of the first Q f hLs twQ years in the cabin. It is full of specific homely details about his living arrangements, the cultivation of his garden, and the animals who shared the woods with him. But it is also a great deal more than merely an account of a very un spectacular experiment. Few writers have ever got into a single book so much of themselves. It is a remarkably com plete self-portrait, plus a brilliant exposition of nearly every thing Thoreau thought about his neighbors, his country, his century, and his universe. When the book was published in 1854, it had only a very modest success, and a second edition was not printed until just after Thoreau died in 1862. Since then, however, the whole world has come gradually to realize what a remark able book it is. By now it has been translated into nearly every important modern language. It is certainly one of the most often read as well as one of the most influential works ever written in America, and men as diverse as Mahatma Ghandi, Leo Tolstoi, and some of the leaders of the British Labour party have acknowledged Thoreau as one of the chief formative influences upon their lives, fjf Invfd insist that the whole universe is implied in ones own village, and so it is very proper that an adventure as mild as his should have had such large consequences. Different readers get out of Walden different things. To INTRODUCTION vii some, perhaps, it is chiefly the story of a sort of local Robin son Crusoe who discovered that one could live at the edge ofa village as though he were on a desert island for the simple reason that, as Thoreau insisted, every place is as wild as the wildness one imports into it. Others may find most interesting his account of his life in nature, of his sense of fellowship with other living creatures, and of the deep satisfaction he took in being so nearly self-sufficient, both physically and spiritually...

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