But How Many Inches is Walden Pond?: The Dueling Desires for Concision and Comprehensiveness in Thoreau’s Walden
Let us not presume to understand the mechanisms of a long-dead man’s mind — Henry David Thoreau passed beyond the vale over a century and a half ago; it would be folly to say we know what passed through his mind as he wrote his seminal novel. However, we are unusually gifted in this case — while with most authors we can only speculate based upon the final product, we can witness Walden’s revisions firsthand. Through this privilege, we can begin to speculate on some of the motivating drives behind Thoreau’s process. This blog post will focus on two equal opposites: comprehension and precision, and will do so by examining paragraph 5 of “The Ponds”, where the tension between them is quite clearly evident.
An Additional Introduction
Version E adds an introduction that describes Walden to the reader. The introduction contextualizes the pond before Thoreau begins to describe its measurements and surroundings. This addition shows the tension between concision and comprehensiveness in Thoreau.
Concision Versus Description
“The Ponds” paragraph 5 contains many examples of edits made in favor of descriptive imagery and precise detail. Version E of Thoreau’s Walden includes additions such as sections 5a, 5c, 5e, and 5g. These sections do not appear in Version D. Section 5a acts as an introduction, as aforementioned, the rest of the added sections are descriptions of Walden Pond’s differing colors and imagery relating to the beauty of the pond. Paragraph 5 also includes examples of intended concision, where Thoreau chooses succinctness over long-windedness. 5d is a good example of this as he removes and rewords certain phrases to shorten the overall description. Thoreau continues his battle between focused and precise writing with vivid imagery and layered description. He aims to provide in-depth imagery of the beauty of the pond and its connection to its viewers and its environment while also keeping the reader focused and interested throughout the chapter. The manuscript image from version E shows an entire passage originally written in pencil describing the color of water, which is deleted from paragraph 5 with a vertical line through it.
Measurements
The sudden changes in measurements is a prime example of Thoreau attempting to be precise. Thoreau, in both versions D and E, either adds or refines measurements to make sure that readers can picture the ponds that Thoreau is describing. This precision with the measurements is possibly done to make sure that readers do not waste time trying to imagine what the pond might be, rather than trying to imagine what it could be like. In version D, it added more concise measurements by adding an accurate range and adding a more specific height when talking about the measurement of a hill. Then in version E, he edited version D by adding a different range with cardinal directions and adding miles for a distance. This is all at the beginning at 5c in the chapter “The Ponds”. On top of this, version 5a, as mentioned before, was added to version E out of the blue. Thoreau decides to add miles and acres measurements again to make sure that readers are able to envision the distance of the land. As a reader, looking at the difference in measurements and adding measurements seems like a slight detail, but the significance of these small changes shows Thoreau’s obsession with being precise, but this detail is not wasting readers’ time, as he wants to make sure they can witness the beauty of it. One difficulty we had with noticing the measurements was trying to figure out how it was important. This was one of the first changes that was noticed, and sparked the hypothesis that was created. It is still subjective on what it could mean, but it was one of the sparks that helped build up this project.
Transcribing with TEI
The biggest difficulty in transcribing the manuscripts in the XML file was marking the deletions in the correct order as they appear on the manuscript. Other than that, learning basic HTML was easy, and I was able to look up different tags if I didn’t understand them.
Color
Throughout section 5 between versions D and E, there are edits made having to do with color that are both added to the text, deleted from the text, and interlined in pencil. For example, in 5C version E, “But near at hand, it is of a yellowish tint next to the shore, where you can see the sand, then a light green gradually deepening to a uniform dark green in the bosy of the pond”. This section is added to enhance detail within the color of the pond and add more detail to emphasize the natural beauty and complexity of Walden Pond. This edition takes the reader on a journey of color throughout the physical pond. He starts with the shore, describing it as yellowish, then to light green, then to dark green seen in the deeper water, and finally describing the color reflecting from the sky. The word yellowish is used rather than simply yellow because it conveys subtlety and precision in observation. It humanizes the description rather than making it a scientific one.