All the true growth and experience, the
living speech, they would fain reject as 'Americanisms.' It is the
old error which the church, the state, the school, ever commit,
choosing darkness rather than light, holding fast to the old and
to tradition. When I really know that our river pursues a
serpentine course to the Merrimac, shall I continue to describe it
by referring to some other river, no older than itself, which is
like it, and call it a meander? It is no more meandering than the
Meander is musketaquiding."
This for Thoreau was going back to nature. Our historians of
literature who cite him as an example of how to be American
without being strenuous, as an instance of leisure nobly earned,
are quite wrong. If any man has striven to make us at home in
America, it is Thoreau. He gave his life to it; and in some
measure it is thanks to him that with most Americans you reach
intimacy most quickly by talking about "the woods."
Thoreau gave to this American tendency the touch of genius and the
depth of real thought. After his day the "back-to-nature" idea
became more popular and perhaps more picturesque. Our literature
becomes more and more aware of an American background.
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