Thoreau's "Doubleness": Wildness and Civilization

Having interpreted Thoreau’s political stance as a form of anarchism, Richard Drinnon writes: “But enough of this attempt to stuff the poet and mystic in one political slot. Actually Thoreau’s thought may yet help to explode all our conventional political categories” (372).

Drinnon traces a “perplexing doubleness” that rises to a higher unity in Thoreau’s political stance (372). The doubleness consists, for Drinnon, in Thoreau’s way to overcome the opposition between civilization and barbarism in his life and thought, in his living practice. On the one hand, Thoreau is drawn to wildness, outwardly and inwardly—to the ponds and woods around Concord and to the raw core of embodied human nature. On the other, he respects and pays homage to civilization, to the history of philosophy and literature and religion, Western and Eastern, in thought and action. This doubleness is present in Walden and in essays like “Walking” and “Life without Principle.” 

Instead of arguing for and following one or the other, Thoreau embraces both civilization and nature or wildness. This is Thoreau’s “doubleness” for Drinnon:

It was one of his great achievements to go beyond the polarities of ‘Civilization and Barbarism’…to come close to a creative fusion: ‘We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race,’ he wrote in the serene summary of his walks. ‘We go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.’ Thoreau wanted the best for his countrymen from both nature and civilization, past and present. (374)  

In this regard, I would link Thoreau to José Martí’s rejection of the civilization versus barbarism opposition by arguing for naturalness in his essay “Nuestra América” or "Our America"—the aim is not to be civilized but to be an authentic, creative, primal, natural being. Drinnon links Thoreau to William Blake, especially to a type of sensuous bodily mysticism that is evident in his pleasure in taking walks and in his delight in the senses in passages from Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. I’d like to trace this link in the future, even if the bodily sensuousness was more problematic to live for Thoreau than for Blake (375-376). After all, Thoreau does devalue the body in the chapter on “Higher Laws” in Walden and he remained celibate throughout his life.

That notwithstanding, I am drawn to the Thoreauvian vision of persons who are at once wild and civilized, who embrace both body and intellect, though I’d emphasize that body and intellect are mediated and joined by the heart. In Drinnon’s concluding words: “The vision of individuals with spiritual development and the simple animal strength to affirm their bodies was one of the important contributions of this paradoxical celibate” (376). I’d observe that for Thoreau, as a transcendentalist, Nature is shot through with Spirit.

Such individuals would be wild-spiritual beings who could invigorate civilized political life, and resist the injustices and excesses of its institutions, with their committed action aiming at justice.  

Reference: Richard Drinnon, “Thoreau’s Politics of the Upright Man,” in Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, Second Edition, Ed. William Rossi (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 366-377.