The wildness of genius

February 16. 

February 16, 2019

P. M. — From the entrance of the Mill road I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth so far beneath. They are like a flaky crust of the earth, a more ethereal, terebinthine, evergreen earth. 

It occurs to me that my eyes rest on them with the same pleasure as do those of the hen-hawk which has been nestled in them. 

My eyes nibble the piny sierra which makes the horizon’s edge, as a hungry man nibbles a cracker. 

FEBRUARY 16 2019

The hen-hawk and the pine are friends. The same thing which keeps the hen-hawk in the woods, away from the cities, keeps me here. That bird settles with confidence on a white pine top and not upon your weathercock. That bird will not be poultry of yours, lays no eggs for you, forever hides its nest. Though willed, or wild, it is not willful in its wildness. 

The unsympathizing man regards the wildness of some animals, their strangeness to him, as a sin; as if all their virtue consisted in their tamableness. He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. 

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. 

It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. 

So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution. 

It can never be poet laureate, to say “Pretty Poll” and “Polly want a cracker.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1859

I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops. See February 16, 1855 (“In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me.”) See also February 5, 1852 (“The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.”);  November 11, 1851 (“There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan's.”)

He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. See June 13, 1853  ("I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens. It was worth more to see them soar, especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs, but not to buy hen-hawks")

Any surpassing work of art is strange and wild as is genius itself. See February 1 6, 1857(“Genius has evanescent boundaries.”); May 11, 1854 (“The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.”)

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