Stumbled on this passage from Thoreau’s first book (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers) about the sachem Passaconaway, which reminded me of some other passages I’ve been collecting on what I perceive to be similar themes.
In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Pasaconaway, who was seen by Gookin “at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty years old.” He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained his people from going to war with the English. They believed “that he could make water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one, and many similar miracles.”
‘Wednesday,’ A Week, Thoreau
I was immediately reminded of some passages from the Zhuangzi that mention similar abilities, like:
Shoulder Self said to Unk Linkin, “I was listening to the words of the madman Jieyu.” He talked big without getting at anything, going on and on without getting anywhere. I was shocked and rather scared by what he said, which seemed as limitless as the Milky Way—vast and excessive, with no regard for the way people really are.
“What in the world did he say?”
“‘There are imponderable Spiritlike Persons who live on distant Mt. Guye with skin like ice and snow, gentle and yielding like virgin girls. They do not eat the five grains, but rather live by breathing in the wind and drinking in the dew. They ride upon the air and clouds, charioting upon soaring dragons, wandering beyond the four seas. They just concentrate their spirits and straightaway all things are free from sickness and the harvest matures.’ I regard this as crazy talk, which I refuse to believe.
“No surprise there,” said Unk Linkin’. “The blind have no access to the beauty of visual patterns, and the deaf have no part in the sounds of bells and drums. It is not only the physical body that can be blind and deaf; the understanding can also be so. If you were then to ‘agree’ with his words, you would be acting like a virgin girl who has just reached her time. Such persons, or the virtuosity in them, would be spreading everywhere through the ten thousand things until all are made one, while the current world is busy groping toward its own chaotic order—why would they wear themselves out fretting about the world as if it were something to be managed? Such persons are harmed by no thing. A flood may reach the sky without drowning them, a drought may melt the stones and scorch the mountains without scalding them. From their dust and chaff you could mold yourself a Yao or a Shun. How could they consider any particular thing worth bothering about? It is like a ceremonial cap salesman of Song traveling to Yue, where the people shave their heads and tattoo their bodies—they have no use for such things. After Yao brought all the people of the world under his rule and put all within the four seas into good order, he went off to see four of these masters of distant Mt. Guye at the bright side of the Fen River. Astonished at what he saw there, he forgot all about his empire.”
Chapter 1, Zhuangzi, Ziporyn trans.
and:
And what would the Genuine-Human be like? The Genuine-Humans of old did not revolt against their inadequacies, did not aspire to heroic accomplishments or perfection, made no plans to be distinguished persons. In this way, they could be mistaken without feeling any regret, could be correct without self-satisfaction. And thus they could ascend the heights without fear, submerge into the depths without getting drenched, enter the flame without feeling hot. Such was the way their understanding was able, in its very demise, to climb along its various borrowings and ascend through the remotest vistas of the Course.
The Genuine-Humans of old slept without dreaming and awoke without worries. Their food was plain but their breathing was deep. Genuine-Humans breathe from their heels, while the mass of men breathe from their throats, submissive and defeated, gulping down their words and just as soon vomiting them back up. Their preferences and desires run deep, but their Heavenly impulse runs shallow.
The Genuine-Humans of old understood nothing about delighting in life or abhorring death. They emerged without delight, sank back in without resistance. Whooshing in they came and whooshing out they went, nothing more. They neither forgot where they came from nor inquired into where they would go. Receiving it, they delighted in it. Forgetting all about it, they gave it back. This is what is means not to use the mind to fend off the Course, not to use the human to try to help out the Heavenly. Such is what I’d call being human yet genuine, genuine yet human: the Genuine-Human.
Such persons—their minds are intent, their faces are tranquil, their foreheads are broad and plain. They are cool like the autumn, warm like the spring; their joy and their anger intermingle with the four seasons. They find something fitting in their encounter with each thing; their ultimate end is unknown.
Chapter 6, Zhuangzi, Ziporyn trans.
I’d have to do some more research to know for sure, but I do wonder if the end of the following passage from the penultimate chapter in Walden wasn’t in some way inspired by the story of Passaconaway:
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp,—tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal.
‘Spring,’ Walden, Thoreau
Finally, a story about Merlin’s beginnings from the Vita Merlini:
Merlin called his companions out from the battle and bade them bury the brothers in a richly colored chapel and he bewailed the men and did not cease to pour out laments, and he strewed dust on his hair and rent his garments, and prostrate on the ground rolled now hither and now thither. Peredur strove to console him and so did the nobles and the princes, but he would not be comforted nor put up with their beseeching words. He had now lamented for three whole days and had refused food, so great was the grief that consumed him. Then when he had filled the air with so many and so great complaints, new fury seized him and he departed secretly, and fled to the woods not wishing to be seen as he fled. He entered the wood and rejoiced to lie hidden under the ash trees; he marvelled at the wild beasts feeding on the grass of the glades; now he chased after them and again he flew past them; he lived on the roots of grasses and on the grass, on the fruit of the trees and on the mulberries of the thicket. He became a silvan man just as though devoted to the woods. For a whole summer after this, hidden like a wild animal, he remained buried in the woods found by no one and forgetful of himself and of his kindred.
Vita Merlini, Parry trans.
I keep, in various locations (I should really try to consolidate these), notes and excerpts I find resonate with each other. Usually, when reading I will be reminded of something else, something very specific, that I have read previously, typically something wholly unrelated, like Thoreau and Zhuangzi. I had in my notes the passages from the Zhuangzi and Walden but today, after reading that passage from A Week, I was reminded of the Vita Merlini passage as well. As is the case most of the time for me, I’m not entirely sure why I am reminded of such disparate passages, but try to find out what connects them—sometimes it’s nothing, often it takes some digging and I can find it, rarely it’s obvious.
The passage about Merlin stands out to me now as the odd one out, yet I can’t help but feel there is some thread there. The vision of grief stricken Merlin turning away from the world of men and fleeing to a different way of existing beyond the reach of the human society that killed his companions and brothers is striking. The organizing principle in the Caledonian forest is just as deadly and just as maddening (he is alternately described as a madman and a prophet after this escape) as the kingdom he flees, but there is something different about it.
A little bit later in the text Merlin says the following:
You, O wolf, dear companion, accustomed to roam with me through the secluded paths of the woods and meadows, now can scarcely get across the fields; hard hunger has weakened both you and me. You lived in these woods before I did and age has whitened your hairs first. You have nothing to put into your mouth and do not know how to get anything, at which I marvel, since the wood abounds in so many goats and other wild beasts that you might catch. Perhaps that detestable old age of yours has taken away your strength and prevented your following the chase. Now, as the only thing left, you you fill the air with howlings, and stretched out on the ground you extend your wasted limbs.
Vita Merlini, Parry trans.
The wolf, facing extreme hunger and his own death, can do nothing but howl and lie prostrate on the earth, much like Merlin wailed on the dusty ground after the death of his companions. But there is something odd about this, which Merlin addresses—there is plenty of food to eat, so why does the wolf not at least attempt a chase? Is it because of old age?
My (current) interpretation of this is that the wolf is adhering to a different logic than Merlin is familiar with. It is a logic that is completely at odds with the human world that Merlin left behind, contradictory and backwards. It isn’t the case that the woods offer some idyllic escape from the world of men: it’s a hard and difficult life living on roots and berries alone, and Merlin is hungry. But there is something about life in those places that is attractive to Merlin. Perhaps it is what Thoreau points to when he says, “We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
The other passages that I think are more directly or more easily connected (poison isn’t poisonous after all, no wounds are fatal, submerging in the depths without getting wet, entering fire without getting burned, making water burn and stones move, etc.) all seem impossible and contradictory and make no sense. But perhaps they are all pointing to a way of existing and being in the world that is completely different from anything we can conceive of from within the human world only. Put differently, there are many human narratives about ‘how things are,’ and these madmen and prophets are turning that upside down and inside out.
For Thoreau, I think part of what he is hinting at when speaking of poisons not being poisonous and wounds not being fatal is that these things depend on your perspective of them. In the endless chain of events that is life it isn’t always clear where you are in that chain at any given moment: you are at once the poisoned and the poison itself, at once the living and the dead, at once feeding and being fed upon. Death is life rearranged and reconfigured; it is an impersonal event in which your identity, that thing you thought you were, is revealed to be different than what you thought it was—‘you’ don’t exist in the way you thought you did.