4 - Walden and the Rhetoric of Ascent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
Summary
There was a man here, Samian born, but he
Had fled from Samos, for he hated tyrants
And chose, instead, an exile's lot. His thought
Reached far aloft, to the great Gods in Heaven,
And his imagination looked on visions
Beyond his mortal sight. All things he studied
With watchful eager mind, and he brought home
What he had learned and sat among the people
Teaching them what was worthy, and they listened
In silence, wondering at the revelations. …
Ovid, MetamorphosesLiterature. The author's work, no matter how intelligent, elaborate (Proust) or rich and vigorous in imagination, always turns out to constitute a justification for some particular set of values, … a melodrama in which, even if the hero is actually defeated, he is morally triumphant. … The effort of the author has thus been concentrated on making his life look as if it justified his own ideals – that is, his own desires – and it is the indestructible impulse to make experience, disappointing in actuality, wear a different and more satisfying aspect, which has provided the motive power to carry him through his book. When his work is done, he may feel reassured, half believing that what he has written, because he has asserted it and it has been printed and read by people who assume that the author had some divine revelation of the truth and adopt an attitude toward him based on that assumption – that what he has written must be true.
Edmund Wilson, The Twenties- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reimagining Thoreau , pp. 57 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995