Journal 02, 1850-September 15, 1851
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 2 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 658 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Journal 02, 1850-September 15, 1851. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-02-1850-september-15-1851
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. Journal 02, 1850-September 15, 1851. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-02-1850-september-15-1851.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Journal 02, 1850-September 15, 1851. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-02-1850-september-15-1851.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The second volume of Thoreau's journal: a little over a year, after Walden, when the journal becomes his main work.
Context and history
Thoreau's journal is his real work, and very few people know it. He kept it for twenty-four years, from the age of twenty until nearly his death, and it runs to some two million words: more than ten times everything he published in his lifetime. It is not an intimate diary nor a notebook of jottings: it is a daily record of what he saw — what day each plant flowered, when the pond froze, which bird returned and when — mixed with philosophical thinking and with pages of prose among the best he wrote. His books come out of it; this is the material of which 'Walden' is a distillation. The botanical and ice records he kept for decades are being used today to measure climate change, which he could not have foreseen. NOTE: the catalogue holds two volumes of the journal, not the whole of it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
the same commotion in the waters over the same spot, and at length I observed the snout of some creature slyly raised above the surface after each commotion, as if to see if it were observed by foes, and then but a few rods distant I saw another snout above the water and began to divine the cause of the disturbance. Putting off my shoes and stockings, I crept stealthily down the hill and waded out slowly and noiselessly about a rod from the firm land, keeping behind the tussocks, till I stood behind the tussock near which I had observed the splashing. Then, suddenly stooping over it, I saw through the shallow but muddy water that there was a mud turtle there, and thrusting in my hand at once caught him by the claw, and, quicker than I can tell it, heaved him high and dry ashore; and there came out with him a large pout just dead and partly devoured, which he held in his jaws. It was the pout in his flurry and the turtle in his struggles to hold him fast which had created the commotion. There he had lain, probably buried in the mud at the bottom up to his eyes, till the pout came sailing over, and then this musky lagune had put forth in the direction of his ventral fins, expanding suddenly under the influence of a more than vernal heat,—there are sermons in stones, aye and mud turtles at the bottoms of the pools,—in the direction of his ventral fins, his tender white belly, where he kept no eye; and the minister squeaked his last.[9] Oh, what an eye was there, my countrymen! buried in mud up to the lids, meditating on what? sleepless at the bottom of the pool, at the top of the bottom, directed heavenward, in no danger from motes. Pouts expect their foes not from below. Suddenly a mud volcano swallowed him up, seized his midriff; he fell into those relentless jaws from which there is no escape, which relax not their hold even in death.[10] There the pout might calculate on remaining until nine days after the head was cut off.…