Thoreau’s favorite literary form was the romantic excursion

ramble (“Walking”)
trip (Cape Cod)
sojourn (Walden)

In this romantic excursion, he narrates a spiritual quest as it proceeds. The latter half of Thoreau’s journals had a similar form.

The excursion does not feel obligated to be detailed in its description of a specific setting. Instead, it spends most of its time providing an account of the universe as a whole from the perspective of the author.

His choice of this form may in part be due to the fact that it was a popular form in his time. Thoreau has read over 146 travel books.

Travel literature could still be instructive while still being delightful. It was more literary than factual.

Among all of the travel books he read, William Gilpin’s Remarks of Forest Scenery and Other Woodland Views was perhaps closest to Thoreau’s taste.

His favorite form, as noted earlier, is the romantic excursion: a ramble (” Walking” )or trip (Cape Cod) or sojourn (Walden) which takes on overtones of a spiritual quest as the speaker proceeds. Thoreau’s later journals have the same rhythm.

Though somewhat more controlled by the obligation to describe a particular setting, it tends to become, in effect, an account of the whole universe as it appears to the speaker

Thoreau cycles between observation and speculation

Thoreau was excellent in inferring universal law from a single fact. He was very good at cycling between observation and speculation. His wide use of allusion is also remarkable.

He begins with his environment, imbue it with meaning, and proceeds to achieve temporal continuity, that is, the logical and coherent unfolding of events. This was more important to him than abstract ideas.

This comprehensiveness is due in large part to the extraordinary gift for microcosm which Emerson was the first to notice in him, the ability to infer the “universal law from the single fact” (W, X, 474). This very transcendental mode of perception gives rise to what John Broderick rightly calls the fundamental movement of Thoreau’s prose-from observation to speculation and back again-and to his breadth of allusion.

Thoreau began with his environment and tried to invest it with meaning. Temporal continuity in his writing is usualIy more important than the continuity of abstract ideas

The travel writing of Thoreau

The main theme of his travel writing is not really what is seen or experienced during the trip but how he portrays himself. What he sees or experiences are presented as they are reflected in his mind.

Thoreau’s travel writing presents his exploration of his spirituality. His desire to prophecy, which he shares with Walt Whitman, separates him from other excursion writers at his time. This makes him less popular but truer to transcendentalism.

Thoreau’s style mixes facts uncovered or representative of the place he is traveling, such as descriptive sketches and historical lore, with entertaining elements, such as verse fragments and prose poetry. Thoreau cycles between observation and speculation and neither of these two principles dominates.\

Thoreau’s work is then hybrid: it is “part sketch, part information, part narrative, part wit, part philosophy.”

Thoreau’s guiding principle when writing about a thing he observes is to be in total relation with it. Walden is the work where Thoreau’s most thorough and sophisticated level of observation. It could be considered a travelogue: Thoreau’s interior travel.

Among all of Thoreau’s works though, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is the most informed in the travel writing tradition. It is a narrative with philosophical interpolations.

Even when considered as a travelogue, Walden emerges as Thoreau’s masterpiece, of course, for not only does it carry the principle of significant travel as interior travel farther than any other Transcendentalist work, it is also more thorough and sophisticated on the level of observation than the rest of Thoreau’s writing.

Of all Thoreau’s books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is probably most illuminated by an understanding of the travel-writing tradition, because it presents on the surface the most perplexing mixture of subject matters and levels of style.

its attempt to intermix facts and entertainment, its academic wit, and its tendency to overrefine ideas.

The center of literary interest in such writing, Curtis goes on to say, is not what the traveler sees or the adventures he experiences, but the self-portrayal of the traveller himself.

stressing the importance of the individual mind over that of empirical fact.

what “we care to read about” in travel books is not paintings and churches and rivers and mountains, “but the reflection of these in genial and original minds.”

True travel is spiritual travel, an exploration of one’s own higher latitudes.

Thoreau interspersed descriptive sketches with verse fragments, prose poetry, and quaint bits of historical lore

In all these cases one becomes conscious of an interplay between the sequence of actual observations and the interests of a subjectively imposed mood or design. Neither dominates to the exclusion of the other; rather, the works oscillate between the two structural principles.

Thoreau had but a limited interest in the purely picturesque; but his mode of writing does resemble Irving’s in most of the ways listed here-in its descriptive, peripatetic, and miscellaneous or hybrid character: part sketch, part information, part narrative, part wit, part philosophy.

Thoreau demanded that the observer enter into a total relation with the thing observed.

Even when considered as a travelogue, Walden emerges as Thoreau’s masterpiece, of course, for not only does it carry the principle of significant travel as interior travel farther than any other Transcendentalist work, it is also more thorough and sophisticated on the level of observation than the rest of Thoreau’s writing.

Of all Thoreau’s books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is probably most illuminated by an understanding of the travel-writing tradition, because it presents on the surface the most perplexing mixture of subject matters and levels of style.

A Week primarily as a narrative with philosophical interpolations which mar its unity, and those who see it as a thematic progression with certain unassimilable elements.

The difference between Whitman and Thoreau and the popular excursion, in addition to the fact that their writing is simply more difficult, is that they refuse to do no more than daydream; they must also prophesy, whereas Margaret Fuller is largely content to remain on the level of description and anecdote. This made Whitman and Thoreau less popular but truer to Transcendentalist ideals of art.

Literary excursion

During Thoreau’s time, there were two models of travelogues: sequential and topical. He preferred to use the first but used the second in Walden. It was understood even at his time that a travelogue doesn’t have to have a coherent structure. While order was free, most travelogues at this time committed to totality.

Romantic travel writers needed to be very versed with observation, but they also had to go beyond this. In Thoreau’s words, they have to tell “how they have happened to the universe.” Generally, romantic excursions during Thoreau’s day portrayed lightness—that the the travelogue would bring both writer and reader to a pastoral dream-world where everything is pleasant.

In the popular romantic excursions of the era there is, so to speak, a convention of levity, a tacit assumption that the prevailing atmosphere is going to be bucolic reverie or musing, which will furnish both author and reader an escape from business and the city into a pastoral dream-world.

most travelogues used one of two models: the sequential, sometimes day-by-day (Tudor’s “A Tour,” lrving’s Tour, Brackenridge’s Journal), or the topical (Mme de Stael’s Germany, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Emerson’s English Traits). Thoreau preferred the former model in general, though he used the latter in Walden. A literary travel book was not expected to have a very coherent structure; one of its pleasures, indeed, as James Russell Lowell said in his review of Thoreau’s A Week, was in its ” happy fortuity.”

A talent for observation and description was a sine qua non, but romantic travelers were expected to go beyond this and tell not simply “what has happened to them,” but ” how they have happened to the universe,” in Thoreau’s words

there were no special ground rules for the order in which a travel writer should proceed-that would depend on the order of observation or reflection, but there was an unspoken commitment to totality.

In the popular romantic excursions of the era there is, so to speak, a convention of levity, a tacit assumption that the prevailing atmosphere is going to be bucolic reverie or musing, which will furnish both author and reader an escape from business and the city into a pastoral dream-world.

Thoreau prioritized vision over literary structure

Thoreau always begins with vision, which, in turn, dictates the form of his work. His vision demands the form his writing takes. Because of this, all of Thoreau’s books are not tightly unified. Each work is both a record of events and a poem, so there are many meanderings and digressions. This heterogeneity and unpredictability is what defines Thoreau’s works. To appreciate Thoreau’s work, one needs to see beyond the product and focus on the process that led to the book.

Walden, for example, mixes fact and fiction. Occurrences reported there were reshaped by the processes Thoreau went through: selection, reflection, ordering, heightening, and mythologizing.

the prevailing critical approach to Thoreau carries with it the somewhat misleading implication that literary architectonics was (or should have been) of immense concern to him. In fact, none of his books, not even Walden) is very tightly unified, nor probably designed to be, for the romantic excursion is as much a record of events and impressions as it is a poem. Even in the course of so analytical a work as Walden there are all sorts of meanderings and digressions

It is not that these passages bear no relation to the overall drift of the book, but that their charm lies more in their heterogeneity and unpredictableness than in their contribution to an overarching whole. Like a Whitman catalogue, Thoreau’s writing is to be more appreciated as process than as product, more for its irregular flow than for any patterns which can be abstracted from it, although the awareness of such patterns naturally enhances one’s pleasure in the work.

Like all literary travel narratives, Walden is an aesthetic mongrel, a mixture of the actual and the fictive, a report of real occurrences which have been reshaped, in different degrees, by the processes of selection, reflection, ordering, heightening, and mythologizing.

The excursion was both spiritual and writing method for Thoreau

For Thoreau, the literary excursion was both a spiritual and writing method. As a spiritual method, it allowed him to confront nature. In each confrontation, success for Thoreau was not defined by planning an itinerary but by the extraction of as much as he can (see my purpose statement) and in being as present as one is as the events of the excursion occur so as to see its wholeness. As a writing method, the excursion succeeds when it is able to convey this presence and wholeness through its imaginative rearrangement of events.

This gets at the heart of what the excursion meant for Thoreau, both in life and as a literary endeavor. It was a succession of confrontations with nature, from each of which the observer is expected to extract as much as he can, the mark of success being not so much in the planning of one’s itinerary or imaginative rearrangement of events as in the way in which he runs the gamut of events as they occur.

To Read

Broderick, “The Movement of Thoreau’s Prose,” American Literature, 33 (1961), 133-142.
Christie, Thoreau as World Traveler (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965).

References

Buell, Lawrence. “Thoreau and the Literary Excursion.” Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance, Cornell University Press, 1973, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1g69x7r.14.

Vince Imbat

Thoreau and the literary excursion — Buell