4 - Walden and the Rhetoric of Ascent

Summary

There was a man here, Samian born, but he

Had fled from Samos, for he hated tyrants

And chose, instead, an exile's lot. His thought

Reached far aloft, to the great Gods in Heaven,

And his imagination looked on visions

Beyond his mortal sight. All things he studied

With watchful eager mind, and he brought home

What he had learned and sat among the people

Teaching them what was worthy, and they listened

In silence, wondering at the revelations. …

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Literature. The author's work, no matter how intelligent, elaborate (Proust) or rich and vigorous in imagination, always turns out to constitute a justification for some particular set of values, … a melodrama in which, even if the hero is actually defeated, he is morally triumphant. … The effort of the author has thus been concentrated on making his life look as if it justified his own ideals – that is, his own desires – and it is the indestructible impulse to make experience, disappointing in actuality, wear a different and more satisfying aspect, which has provided the motive power to carry him through his book. When his work is done, he may feel reassured, half believing that what he has written, because he has asserted it and it has been printed and read by people who assume that the author had some divine revelation of the truth and adopt an attitude toward him based on that assumption – that what he has written must be true.

Edmund Wilson, The Twenties