Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

NATURE: As early as 16 July 1861, Thoreau was saying:Methinks my present experience is nothing; my past experience isall in all. I think that no experience which I have today comes up to,or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood. … Formerly,methought, nature developed as I developed, and grew up with me.My life was ecstasy. …The story of Thoreau’s love is only beginning to be pieced together.The obstacles that separated him from this woman were indeed graniteblocks. The expressions he gives to his love in his Journal are often strange“whirling words”:My sister, it is glorious to me that you live! … It is morning when Imeet thee in a still cool dewy white sun light in the hushed dawn—my young mother—I thy eldest son [lightly crossed through: “thyyoung father”] … whether art thou my mother or my sister—whetheram I thy son or thy brother. … Others are of my kindred by blood orof my acquaintance but you are part of me. I cannot tell where youleave off and I begin.In another passage, journal 1850, he says: “I am as much thy sister as thybrother. Thou art as much my brother as my sister.”We have reason to be surprised that the erotic emotion expressesitself in images borrowed from the family relationships. Yet such a coloringis present elsewhere in our writers of this period, in Whitman, in Melville(Pierre), and in Poe. In America the family is the nexus of an unusuallypowerful ambivalence. On the one hand, the child strains to break away andlead his own life. The young seldom settle down near their parents’ home;less and less frequently do the parents end their days in the homes of theirchildren; I have remarked that young people are increasingly eager for themoment when they are no longer financially dependent on their parents. Onthe other hand, the American—as we were saying—is exceptionally awareof the multitude of the human race; his loneliness is enhanced by his consciousnessof those numbers. The family is at once an encroachment on hisindividualism and a seductive invitation to rejoin the human community at alevel where he does not feel himself to be strange. Moreover, individualismhas its arrogance. It has long been a tag that every American is king. Royaltymarries only royalty. Other people aren’t good enough. Thoreau elevatesthe woman he loves to this kinship. Poe’s mother died when he was three;he lived the latter part of his life with his aunt and married his cousin. The211