"The only real elysium”: Thoreau’s Meeting of Spirit and Matter

I wish to suggest two things: first, that Thoreau’s writings reveal his understanding of spirit as inherent in matter—that is, Thoreau knew the physical world as simultaneously and essentially material and spiritual; and, second, that Thoreau’s experience of spirit offers promising avenues for historicizing New Materialist attempts to theorize the relation between humanity and the rest of the material world.

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On October 18, 1856, Thoreau wrote in his Journal about an afternoon spent “a-chestnutting.”  He describes various aspects of his experience--a tree where he gathered the nuts, the anatomy of chestnut burrs, and the shapes of the fruits within each burr.  The journal entry focuses primarily on the physical characteristics of this particular form of matter: the chestnut.  Thoreau then shifts his focus briefly, addressing his neighbors’ views of his typical afternoon practice—namely, walking and closely observing aspects of the material world.  He writes that in spite of his neighbors’ concern over how he spends his days engaged with natural phenomena, he finds his practice profoundly edifying—even spiritual.  He calls it, in fact, “the only real elysium.”  Here is the statement within its fuller context, where Thoreau describes the great satisfaction he experiences through his daily practice: “I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me--that they think it is a mean & unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields & woods so much & sail on this river alone-- But so long as I find here the only real elysium I cannot hesitate in my choice” (Journal, Ms. Vol. 21: 67).¹ 

For our purposes here today, it’s notable that Thoreau’s phrase, “real elysium,” is actually an oxymoron, as “elysium” invokes the fanciful, figurative Elysian fields of mythology and therefore can hardly be deemed “real.”  A real, earthly Elysium is comparable to a real fairy, or a real Narnia--but Thoreau knew this, of course, and for him this was likely just the point of his rhetorical construction.  As he would write in his journal for August 3, 1852 of his feelings of what he called feeling “affected” and experiencing “enchantment” when immersed in the natural world, “this enchantment is no delusion”; rather, he writes, it is “fact”—as much a part of “reality” as the ground on which he stands (Journal 5: 271-72).  Similarly, here in October of 1856, Thoreau’s encounters with the natural world produced not merely a glimpse into that ideal, blessed afterlife of the gods and the chosen heroic, but a real state of heightened spirituality.²

Indeed, Thoreau implies, the only route to the ultimate spiritual state available to humankind comes through close attention to the material realm.  What his neighbors can look upon only with compassion—with pity, that is, for his suffering and unfortunate circumstances—Thoreau looks upon as akin to what environmental philosopher Bruce Foltz calls, drawing on the Greek, a noetics of nature.  Foltz defines “noetics” as “the highest kind of knowledge, and therefore the highest moment of earthly life”—namely, “the unencumbered exercise of that highest faculty of alertness and heedfulness and comprehension,” one “‘open to the presence of the invisible within the visible” (7).  Thoreau’s engagements with matter enable his practice of noetics or, in his phrasing, his pursuit of the “only real elysium”—his experience, that is, of the meeting of spirit and matter.

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Bruce Foltz has asked the intriguing question, “Could it be that an environmental aesthetic must ultimately entail something like an environmental theology?” (xii).  In the last few decades, several additional thinkers have similarly suggested that the present environmental crisis is a crisis of culture and, ultimately, of spirit.  In this light, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theoretical pursuit known as the New Materialism is its theorists’ desire to articulate a conception of the nonhuman material world that is strikingly similar to the one Thoreau pursues—that is, a position that at once acknowledges both the complex natural history of physical life forms and their interactions, and the evasive, unquantifiable, and enigmatic qualities of all matter that seem unfathomable to humans but that nonetheless affect us.  Put differently: in its theory of matter, New Materialism insists upon both the scientifically demonstrable intricate physicality of matter and its indefinable, ineffable nature.  Given its impulse to give both scientific understanding and the elusive vitality of matter their due, I have come to see the New Materialism as an academic-theoretical attempt to ameliorate this crisis of spirit. 

On the one hand, New Materialists emphasize the material world in physical and bio-chemical terms—matter as the hard stuff of reality.  We see this, for example, in Jane Bennett’s work on “things”: she explores the materiality of food, metal, and stem cells (see Vibrant Matter).  We also find this emphasis on the physical essence of matter in Stacy Alaimo’s focus on the complex “trans-corporeality” of all life forms in the universe—that is, in the interconnectedness of all forms of materiality (“Trans-Corporeal Feminisms”).  In the graceful words of Ian Bogost, “[b]eing is various and unitary all at once” (19).  Or as Joni Mitchell sings, we are stardust—yet we are also plastics and pesticides.  The material world, then, is both physical and physically (and chemically) interconnected.

On the other hand, New Materialism also insists upon an aspect of materiality at once part and parcel of its physicality but also beyond it, and this aspect of matter evades easy capitulation to language.  Bennett uses the term “vital” to get at this  aspect of materiality (vii); she explains that she seeks to theorize a “vital materiality” as opposed to the modern “idea of matter as passive stuff, as raw, brute . . . inert” or “dull” (vii).  She wants “to theorize a vitality intrinsic to materiality” (xiii) and to recognize “the lively powers of material formations” (vii), which she dubs “thing-power” (xvi).  Other scholars have different names for this ineffable, vibrant quality of matter: Manuel De Landa refers to the “inherent creativity” of matter (de Landa 16), whereas Alaimo focuses on “matter as activity rather than passive substance” (Alaimo, “Trans-Corporeal” 245).  Physicist Karen Barad’s terms differ still; she describes the material world as “agential,” explaining that “[a]gency is not an attribute whatsoever—it is ‘doing’/‘being’ in its” interconnectivity with all other matter (“Posthumanist” 827).  While these theorists certainly differ in important respects that I do want to diminish here, they also share the conviction that matter contains, embodies, and exists as a heretofore largely overlooked life force.

The point that I wish to emphasize here in that these various theorists emphasize, in their distinct ways, the material world not merely as a conglomeration of interconnected and interrelated, ultimately physical, phenomena, but also, and different from this, the material realm as interconnected forces of vitality, power, and agency.  Bennett goes so far as to suggest that the vitality of matter has the ability to inform feeling or emotion when she uses the phase “impersonal affect” to describe vital materiality; that is, she understands matter to hold a “power” that is “impersonal,” in the sense that it is not responsive to or expressive of human personalities.  Bennett wants to “equate affect with materiality,” not to imagine affect as something additional to materiality (xii, xiii emphasis mine).  This sort of conception of matter’s vitality prevents the sort of naively romantic projection of human emotion onto material life forms that has plagued much nature writing; humans may bring their emotions to encounters with matter, but in this view, matter itself literally embodies affective power, and humans may choose to recognize this or not.  Arguably, however, recognizing this aspect of matter alters one’s relation to matter, leading humans to recognize this vitality as it “produce[s]” “enchantment” in us, or invites humans to be conscious of our own relation to the “‘colliding of particle-forces’” that comprise the universe and our own bodies (Bennett xiii).

Thoreau’s writings suggest a similar conception of the material world—one based in biology, chemistry, and the other sciences—but one also possessing a certain vital materiality, which he sometimes refers to as “spirit.”  Perhaps a reclaiming of the Thoreauvian notion of spirit might help provide historical contexts for—as well as deepen—the New Materialist efforts to articulate a vital power that pervades the material world.³

I invoke this word, “spirit,” in spite of its being a disparaged term in theoretical (and even many popular) circles.  In fact, I invoke the word “spirit” even though Bennett explicitly argues that her conception of the vitality of matter does not suppose “a spiritual supplement” to matter (xiii).  But Bennett’s phrasing here signals an adherence to a fairly modern (and widely embraced) conception of “spirit”--one that causes many of our own contemporaries to bristle but that Thoreau would not have held.  This modern view sees spirit precisely as a “supplement” injected into matter, or added into and thus emanating forth from matter, usually by means of a religious worldview either imposed by the human mind or “divinely infused” (Bennett xiii).  To this understanding, spirit is a faith-based supplement to matter.  For Thoreau, however, spirit is not a religious supplement, nor is it “the raw material for the creative activity of humans or God” (Bennett xiii).  Rather, spirit is both secular and of this world, present whether humans acknowledge it or not; and meaningful in and of itself—in fact, bearing a meaning that most often eludes humanity, rather than that answers its questions.  Spirit is intrinsic to matter, inherent in matter, an inextricable part of materiality itself⁴--much like the vitality, agency, and inherent creativity which theorists seek to claim today.

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Thoreau’s uses the term “spirit” in many ways in his writings—often casually, to refer to his own mood, to what we would call an alcoholic drink, or to the liquid solution in which he stores specimens. He also, however, uses the term to invoke his own interconnectedness with the rest of the material world, as well as a certain energy that pervades matter.  He writes, for instance, of his own “spirit” being affected by a cranberry bog, explaining that he “believe[s] almost in the personality of . . . planetary matter—feel[s] something akin to reverence for it” (Journal: Ms. Vol. 21: 304, 305).  On August 17, 1851, he similarly refers to his own spirit when he writes of attending to nature’s sounds—the wind, the cricket, the stream, and the goldfinch—precisely so he might recover the fullness of his being.  He describes himself as “recovering my spirits, my spirituality,” referring specifically to regaining a sense of his own relatedness to the world around him and of “the steady onward progress of the universe” (Journal 3: 368).  There are many moments like this when, even despite feeling pensive or melancholy, through his self-consciousness regarding his material connection to the world Thoreau says he is led to “endear the earth to me—make me value myself & rejoice.”  This, for Thoreau, is the zenith of spirituality (Journal 3: 369).  Recovering his spirituality, then, means, first, recalling his own corporeal participation in a materiality that transcends any specific moment or place—and then, second, valuing the vast material interconnections in which he is enmeshed.

Sometimes Thoreau experiences this sense of his own interconnectivity with the rest of matter and mentions the spirit of another life form (other than his own).  He speaks, for instance, of the “spirits” of the huckleberry (Journal, Ms. Vol. 33: 42) and of fungus as “so obviously . . . related to ourselves,” “the expression of an idea--growth according to a law--Matter not dormant--not raw--but inspired appropriated by spirit.”  Moreover, he notes, “the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own” (Journal, Ms. Vol. 27: 211).  He also recognizes spirit as it pertains to forces that are not specific life forms.  In Cape Cod, for instance, he acknowledges the “spiritual ocean” (127) and refers to a strong wind as “Spirit’s breath” (11).  In his Journal, he declares that the autumnal browning leaves of a shrub oak, in spite of having lost their summer green, “still have a kind of life in them” and are “spiritual” (Journal, Ms. Vol. 22: 147).  On May 12, 1857, he hears the song of a “bay-wing” and recognizes “the spirit of its earth song,” which recalls for Thoreau “the world that we jointly inhabit” (Journal, Ms. Vol. 23: 65).  These are clearly significant moments for Thoreau; indeed, it seems that only when he is reminded to think beyond his own corporeality and toward his interconnectedness with other forms of matter does he deem himself “a competent witness” to the world (Journal, Ms. Vol. 23: 67).

At times, Thoreau’s notion of spirit seems nearly religious--if we acknowledge what one scholar has called Thoreau’s :somewhat indefinite concept of deity” (Friesen 118; see also 117-122)—and if we allow the term “religious” to broadly encompass what John Steinbeck once referred to as “the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable.”⁵  For example, in the “Chesuncook” section of The Maine Woods, he asserts that pine trees possess a “living spirit . . . as immortal as” his own (125).  Later in “The Allegash and East Branch” section, Thoreau laments, “The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells” (314).  In fact, he argues, “there are spirits”--“not only [of the] stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises” [sic: orchids] (212).

A tour through Thoreau’s writings suggests that, for him, spirit is the generativeness of the physical world—a vitality that pervades forms of matter.  Spirit also entails the essential connectivity and interactivity of all forms of matter (including human being and mind), as well as--crucially--a self-consciousness of one’s own place in the vitality of matter.  Only when he engages spirit does Thoreau consider himself to be living fully.

Thoreau once wrote in his journal about his spiritual fulfillment in recognizing the mysterious vitality of material “things”:

I seem to see somewhat more of my own kith and kin in the lichens on the rocks that in any books. . . .  I know of no redeeming qualities in me—but a sincere love for some things. . . .  When I condemned and condemn myself utterly—I think straightaway—but I rely on my love for some things. 

Therein I am whole and entire. Therein I am God-propt. (Journal I: 344-45)

At the start of this same journal entry, Thoreau had written, “our spirits never go beyond nature” (Journal 1:343), suggesting his beliefs both that the highest human experiences occur here on earth, and that earth serves as the only source of what some wish for in heaven.  That is, nature—the material realm—provides for Thoreau a deeply spiritual experience, “the only real elysium,” precisely through his own recognition and communion with what he understood as nature’s inherent spirituality.

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Thoreau’s writings demand that we acknowledge that there is nothing “new” about efforts to deepen our knowledge of our own human relatedness to the rest of the material world.⁶  Yet undoubtedly there is much to be gained through this effort to know what Bruce Foltz describes as “the visible elements that are manifest” as well as “the invisible elements that elude the perception of the senses” and “the darkness and mystery that still remain” (4).  As we seek this knowledge in this age of increasing environmental challenge, we will benefit from exploring further Thoreau’s engagements with the vitality of matter, the relation of these engagements to his sense of spirit as inherent in matter, and the undoubtedly related topic of what he elsewhere calls “higher law.”  We might thereby more fully realize Thoreau’s contributions to nineteenth-century efforts to arrive at the environmental aesthetic now sought through the New Materialism.

Notes

I am grateful to Samantha C. Harvey, James Finley, Kathleen Kelly for thoughtful readings of an earlier version of this essay.

1. References to Thoreau’s Journal are, whenever possible, from the Princeton Edition, cited by volume and page number.  Passages drawn from Thoreau’s journal manuscript volumes not yet published by Princeton are quoted from the on-line transcripts made available through the related University of Santa Barbara “The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau” site (http://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/writings_journals.html); parenthetical citations point to manuscript volume and page numbers of this on-line transcript.

2. Thoreau’s sense of a “real elysium” is particularly interesting in light of the recent work of Dr. John Ratey, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, who demonstrates in his 2014 book titled Go Wild that active walking in outdoor settings triggers chemical effects on our brains and bodies that make us not only healthier but also happier individuals.

3.  Thoreau’s understanding of spirit was deeply rooted in his historical moment, as well as steeped in the scientific efforts of his time to articulate a theory of all life forms—neither of which I have the space to discuss here, unfortunately.  The notion of a “dynamic and spiritual creative power in nature” dates back to early philosophy, as is conveyed by the philosophical concept Natura naturans, which has a long history in western thought--including in Coleridge and Emerson (Harvey 63; see also 177-78 n. 35).  Two recent studies suggest the category of “spirit” as central to understandings of Thoreau’s place in American Romanticism; both Samantha Harvey and David Greenham reclaim “spirit” as a crucial foundational concept in Transatlantic Romanticism.  In an important study of Emerson, Coleridge, and Transatlantic Transcendentalism, Harvey demonstrates that “Coleridge’s commitment to mediating the categories of nature, spirit, and humanity characterized an overarching Romantic concern that transcended national boundaries” (2). Greenham argues that spirit functions in the Romantic era not as a notion imposed upon the world or inserted into reality by the mind; nor, he suggests, is spirit necessarily related to a specific theological position.  Spirit is not “a self responding to some mere thing”; rather, spirit is both an “action which unifies subject and object and from which both emerge in their identity and difference,” and “a principle of unity” which “cannot be found in either the subject or in the object but rather in an identity which contains them both” (73).

4.  As Laura Dassow Walls demonstrates, for Alexander von Humboldt and for Thoreau after him, “matter does not embody spirit; it is in itself” (86).

5.  My thanks to Samantha C. Harvey for drawing my attention to this quotation.

6.  I am grateful to Kristen Case for encouraging me through an informal conversation to consider what makes the New Materialism “new.”

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