Henry David Thoreau’s Diary: Learning to See and to Write
Period: 1837–1840
Early dated fragments turn questions of solitude, imagination and daily perception into a habit of composition.
Literary reading guide
A question about keeping a journal introduces a writing practice that will continually test the relationship between looking and thinking. The early notes shift between concrete scenes, verbal experiments and propositions that try to discover what an observation means. Do not expect every date to carry a completed insight; the fragment can be an authentic unit of thought.
For your own journal, begin with something encountered rather than a subject you believe you ought to discuss. Describe a sound or a change in light; only then ask what it brings to mind. The journal can be a workspace in which perception precedes interpretation, and unfinished sentences of thought have a legitimate place.
Excerpts from this period
Short excerpts from the public-domain edition named on the guide page. An excerpt that ends mid-sentence is an excerpt, not a whole entry.
22 October 1837
“What are you doing now?” he asked. “Do you keep a journal?” So I make my first entry to-day.
The first entry makes the journal itself the subject. Source edition
24 October 1837
Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another.
A natural process becomes the beginning of a general reflection. Source edition
27 October 1837
The prospect is limited to Nobscot and Annursnack.
He starts with the visible limits of a landscape before discussing fogged perception. Source edition
29 October 1837
Two ducks, of the summer or wood species, which were merrily dabbling in their favorite basin, struck up a retreat on my approach
Close observation is enlivened by playfully human verbs. Source edition
16 November 1837
The snow gives the landscape a washing-day appearance,—here a streak of white, there a streak of dark; it is spread like a napkin over the hills and meadows.
A domestic image makes a winter view newly legible. Source edition
17 November 1837
We have always a resource in the skies.
A short proposition grows out of the day’s passage about changing light. Source edition
8 December 1837
It would thus be possible for inferior minds to produce invaluable books.
His reading inspires a reflection on faithful description rather than celebrity. Source edition
10 December 1837
Not the carpenter alone carries his rule in his pocket.
A tool for measuring becomes a metaphor for human perception. Source edition
19 December 1837
Hell itself may be contained within the compass of a spark.
A startlingly compressed image shows the aphoristic edge of the journal. Source edition
An essay by the TAEONIA editors. Quotations are limited to texts in the public domain.