“There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged?”– Henry David Thoreau, Walden
A classic of American literature, Walden describes the two years that Thoreau lived at Walden Pond to learn the wisdom of Mother Nature, to simplify his life, and to escape from the pursuit of materialism in which man works longer days for more money to enjoy “more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, hotter, and incessant fires, and the like.”
Walden Pond
Thoreau recognized that slavery assumes many forms, not just in the form of chains. He identified a problem in nineteenth century industrial America that afflicts many in the postmodern world: slavery to work, slavery to debt, and slavery to the accumulation of things—a way of life in which those who have accumulated dross “know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.” While this regimen of endless toil for the purchase of useless or unnecessary possessions appears common, Thoreau considers it unnatural and dehumanizing because the body receives more care than the soul. Man’s many burdens and cares rob him of “the finer fruits” of leisure and “the bloom” of man’s highest nature that he calls the poetic faculty.
Living at Walden Pond in 1845 for two years and two months, Thoreau built his own house, made his own furniture, grew his own food, baked his own bread, and provided his own recreation. In the use of his talents of mind and body Thoreau discovered man’s creative, resourceful powers that he called the poetic faculty, the notion of man as a maker, homo faber. The more man exercises the poetic faculty in doing things for himself, the more joy he experiences, the more alive he feels, and the more exalted he becomes, for he approaches work more as an artist than as a laborer.
The use of the poetic faculty, whether it takes the form of cooking homemade meals, growing one’s own food, creating one’s own fun, or teaching one’s own children naturally produces joy. Just as birds sing when building their nests, human beings rejoice when their minds, hearts, and souls are joined in the labors of love that create beauty and build civilization. The “bloom” of life that Thoreau finds in the creative, loving work of minds and hands gives man another identity than mere wage earner. Even though man performs strenuous physical labor or tiresome domestic work, the poetic faculty humanizes the work and elevates the spirit.
Thoreau observed that industrial man depended only on society for his standards and customs instead of learning wisdom from Mother Nature or being guided by “higher laws” or divine truths: “We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion.” Man is intended to live in accordance with the laws of Mother Nature and to follow a divine calling, that is, to transcend the economic life of getting and spending and borrowing and paying.
To do things with one’s own mind, hands, and body is to cooperate with higher powers than man, to be in touch with Mother Nature’s great laws, to be in tune with Nature’s eternal rhythms, and to be in touch with the real and the living. As more women work outside the home than in the domestic circle, as more children stay indoors and play video games rather than go outdoors, as more people spend money to be entertained than create their own fun in the atmosphere of the home and the family, and as more people depend on the media and technology to occupy their leisure hours rather than cultivate social life and conversation, the poetic faculty dwindles and diminishes.
Like all powers, whether it is walking with one’s legs or memorizing with one’s mind, the poetic faculty also atrophies when man expects outside services and agents to fulfill all his human needs.
Thoreau’s Walden shows the consequences of man’s divorce from Mother Nature.
Whereas Mother Nature’s laws are rhythmic and alternating in the cycle of day and night and the change of four seasons, man with his many types of enslavement fails to observe this balance of work and play.
Whereas Mother Nature is prolific and abundant, human beings in their obsession with population control choose not to be fruitful and multiply.
Whereas Mother Nature is life-giving and exhilarating, man as the victim of human ideologies develops a culture of death in its many forms.
Man, in other words, easily ignores Mother Nature’s wisdom and follows the way of the world, sacrificing his health, happiness, and higher life. The poetic faculty, which leads to a knowledge of nature’s goodness and God’s Providence, needs cultivation to be at the service of civilization, for without it life becomes dreary at home, work, and play.
Without the poetic faculty that develops the art of living simply, frugally, and wholesomely, life degenerates into the monotony of “always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent,” and man merely exists rather than lives. Without this art man never discovers the invisible things of God revealed by the visible. Consequently, instead of singing like birds reveling in the fact of being alive, “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Queen of Heaven Academy and part-time for Northeast Catholic College.
