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29 November 1843, Wednesday; 7:00 p.m.
Concord, Massachusetts; Unitarian Church, Vestry
"Ancient Poets"
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: On 25 October
1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson, then serving as curator for the Concord Lyceum, wrote to
Thoreau, "If as we have heard, you will come home to Thanksgiving, you must bring
something that will serve for Lyceum lecture—the craving thankless town!" In the
same letter, Emerson asked, "Where are my translations of Pindar for the Dial? Fail
not to send me something good and strong" (C, p. 149). Since May of that year,
Thoreau had been residing in the Staten Island home of Emerson’s brother William,
tutoring the family’s children, attempting to establish contacts with the literary
world of New York City, and battling both illness and an equally chronic homesickness.
Emerson soon had his answer because on 8 November he and the other two curators were able
to announce the first seven lectures in what would eventually expand to an
eighteen-lecture season, with "H. D. Thoreau, of New York city" slated for the
fourth presentation on 29 November (see advertisement below). Thoreau left New York City
for Concord on 15 November, purportedly for a holiday visit. When he returned to Staten
Island in early December, however, it was for two weeks only, enough time to retrieve his
belongings and end both his employment and his residence away from Concord. As noted by
Lyceum secretary A. G. Fay, "Nov. 29th A Lecture was read before the Lyceum by H. D.
Thoreau upon the Ancient Poets" (MassLyc, p. 158). In January of 1844,
Thoreau published a condensed version of his lecture in the Dial,
"condensed" because under the title of the essay he wrote, "Extracts from a
Lecture on Poety, Read before the Concord Lyceum, November 29, 1843, by Henry D.
Thoreau" (EEM, p. 154). Also in that issue of the Dial was his
translation of Pindar requested by Emerson three months earlier.
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: The following advertisement appeared in the Concord Freeman on 10,
17, and 24 November 1843:
Concord Lyceum.
The Curators are enabled to announce the
following Lectures:
Wednesday Evening, Nov. 8, introductory
lecture by Dr. Chs. Jackson, of Boston. Agricultural Chemistry.
Thursday Evening, Nov. 16, R. W. Emerson,
of Concord. New England Character.
Thursday Evening, Nov. 23, O. A. Brownson,
of Boston. On Demagogues.
Wednesday Evening, Nov. 29, H. D. Thoreau,
of New York city.
Thursday Evening, Dec. 7, Rev. Henry
Giles, of England. Daniel O’Connel and Irish agitation.
Thursday Evening, Dec. 14, Rev. Henry
Giles, of England.
Wednesday Evening, Dec. 20, John S. Keyes,
Esq., of Concord.
The lectures will commence precisely at 7
o’clock.—All interested are invited to attend.
Samuel
Hoar,
Curators, R.
W. Emerson,
Chas.
W. Goodnow.
Concord, Nov. 8, ‘43.
In a review of the Dial in the
25 January 1844 New-York Daily Tribune, the printed version of Thoreau’s
lecture was singled out for praise: "We deeply desire to quote many pages, by
different writers, from this number, but must be content for to-day with the following
extracts from a Lecture on Poetry, by Henry D. Thoreau, a young disciple and companion of
Emerson, in whom the true spirit of the author’s philosophy is reproduced, without
the egotism and indifference to practical life we have regretted to see it cherish in less
genial natures."
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: The
manuscript leaves Thoreau read from apparently were lost as a consequence either of his
submitting them as printer’s copy for the Dial or of his using them in writing
one or another of the early drafts of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
We know from the title of the essay version of the lecture in the Dial that at
least three of the "Ancient Poets" Thoreau lectured on were Homer, Ossian, and
Chaucer; no evidence exists to indicate that he lectured on any other poets, ancient or
otherwise. Very likely, the authoritative text of the essay, "Homer. Ossian.
Chaucer." in EEM (pp. 154-73), which takes between thirty-five and forty
minutes to read aloud, represents somewhat more than half of the lecture Thoreau read. |