GLR September-October 2023

future poet James Russell Lowell was “ exquisitely amused ” by the results of the same experiment. Biographers have always expected readers to shut their eyes to the remarkable contrast between Emerson ’ s delight in finding Thoreau and his fussy remarks about the women in his life. In April 1838, with Thoreau by his side, his familiar sur roundings suddenly acquired a novel and compelling salience: the valley forming a “ great mountain amphitheatre ” that echoed “ with gladness ” to the voices of crows and piping frogs. The valley now made “ worlds enough for us. ” Whenhe ventured out of doors to view the first glimmering star, the piping of a frog seemed to challenge him: “ Well do not these suffice? Here is a new scene, a new experience. Ponder it, Emerson. ” Thoreau responded in the same month with a poem about his “ Friendship ” with Emerson. Although their “ Love cannot speak, ” the rhapsody acknowledges their “ kindred shape ” and similar “ loves and hates ”— especially their “ kindred nature, ” which proclaims them to be “ mates,/ Exposed to equal fates,/ Eternally. ” The poem marks them as two stalwart oak trees who could, with pride, withstand any storm. The secret to their sur vival was to “ barely touch ” above ground, while “ Down to their deepest source ... [t]heir roots are intertwined. ” A year later, Thoreau handed Emerson his poem “ Sympa thy, ” dedicated to “ a gentle boy, ” the preadolescent Edmund Sewell. It was premised upon the dicey notion that “ I might have loved him,/ Had I loved him less. ” Emerson called it “ The purest strain, and the loftiest, I think, that has yet pealed from this unpoetic American forest. ” On the other hand, one finds it difficult to gloss over the physicality of another Thoreau poem, which begins: “ I was made erect and lone,/ And within me is the bone. ” During two prolonged periods between 1841 and 1848, Thoreau lived in Emerson ’ s house. On April 26, 1841, he moved into the “ prophet ’ s chamber ” at the head of Emerson ’ s stairs and began a phase of his life that included fawning over Lydia via unctuous notes, doing the family ’ s gardening, and repairing anything that broke. He delighted in Emerson ’ s children, be coming a second father to them. In November 1847, when Emerson was away in Europe and Thoreau was acting head of the household, little Eddy asked him pointedly: “ Mr. Thoreau, will you be my father? ” By June 1841, Emerson was seeing in Thoreau a “ wood god, ” probably a reference to Pan. Presumably the legs that Emerson called “ strong ” were as hirsute as his arms, further ce menting his association with a satyr. Thoreau himself delighted in the comparison: “ Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at [Pan ’ s] shrine. ” Being Thoreau, however, meant also being deeply conflicted about its sexual connotations. In the “ Higher Laws ” chapter of Walden , he acknowledged his fear that humans are “ such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent our very life is our disgrace. ” He could not speak about purity, he said, “ with out betraying my impurity. ” Shape-shifting into a “ good river-god, ”“ my valiant Henry ” introduced Emerson to “ the riches of his shadowy starlit, moon lit stream. ” This “ lovely new world ” had all along lain close to the “ vulgar trite one of streets & shops. ” On the river, they left

all that behind with a stroke of a paddle. “ Take care, good friend! ” Emerson thought, “ as I looked west into the sunset overhead & underneath, & he with his face toward me rowed to wards it, — take care; you know not what you do, dipping your wooden oar into this enchanted liquid, painted with all reds & purples & yellows which glows under & behind you. ” In truth, there was more than a trace of wishful thinking in Thoreau ’ s vision of “ two oaks ” withstanding the frigid storm of hostility. Concord ’ s general store became “ a great news room, ” as some locals sat constantly on its porch, letting kernels of gossip “ simmer and whisper through ” the community. He found these “ worthies ” leering at him “ with a voluptuous ex pression. ” Every traveler, he swore, “ had to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. ” His torment was increased by “ a still more terrible standing invita tion to call at every one of these houses. ” His primary recourse was to carry out his errands as quickly as possible, or to turn away from the incivility and focus on loftier thoughts. Some times, however, “ I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts. ” In 1851, looking back on his years in Concord, he wrote: “ There is some advantage in being the humblest cheapest least dignified man in the village — so that the very sta ble boys shall damn you. ... Methinks I enjoy the advantage to an unusual extent. ” All the ink that has been spilled about Thoreau ’ s motives for retreating to his Walden hermitage may just be so much poppycock if it doesn ’ t include this feeling of persecution. But Thoreau also learned to distrust Emerson ’ s position as his only safe refuge. By September 1841, his once-flattering habit of aping all things Emersonian, coupled with his lack of ambition, was beginning to wear even upon Emerson. Even more galling was what Emerson called in 1843 the “ old fault of unlimited contradiction ” : Thoreau the provocateur habitu ally replaced an obvious and sensible word with its exact op posite. In 1853, Emerson complained: “ He wants a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory ... requires a little sense of vic tory. ” Thoreau ’ s most toxic, maddening perversity took the form of his love-hate relationships — although in all fairness, Emerson ’ s other friends often accused him of the same thing. Richard Bridgman concludes: “ The paradox is evident. Thoreau resented criticism but at the same time, privately charged with self-disgust, felt the need for it. But his champi oning of hate as an essential component of friendship reached such obsessive proportions at times as to become grotesque. ” Indeed, Thoreau ’ s poem “ Indeed, Indeed I Cannot Tell ” in cludes the lines: “ O, I hate thee with a hate/ That would fain annihilate;/ Yet sometimes against my will,/ My dear friend, I love thee still. ” By 1843, Emerson felt forced to contrive a plan for Thoreau to escape small-minded Concord, offering him a position as a tutor to Emerson ’ s young nephew in New York. Thoreau was a fish out of water on Staten Island. In the midst of his despair, he sent Emerson a marvelously schizoid letter thanking him for years of kind treatment, while mocking his own genius for turn ing love into hate: “ But know, my friends, that I a good deal hate you all in my most private thoughts — as the substratum of the little love I bear you. ” Thoreau ’ s sojourn in the real world was short-lived. For the rest of the decade, Emerson and Thoreau accused, bruised, and

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