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Higher Laws
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
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[51] Higher Laws an impulse to eat woodchuck not for my hunger but for his wildness seeking venison loving the wild not less than the good into the forest a hunter at first then leaving the gun behind fishing sediment sinking to the bottom a hook of hooks angling for the pond itself [52] fishing less and less a faint intimation the first streaks of morning harvest of daily life the tint of morning a little star-dust caught inspired through the palate berries eaten on a hillside jawbone of a hog sound teeth and tusks a creature that succeeded a cool evening the sound of a flute stars over far fields [3.137.178.133] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 23:18 GMT) [53] Perhaps a chapter that is entitled “Higher Laws” and that opens with a yearning to devour a woodchuck raw is a good place to discuss the trait of haiku aesthetics that Blyth describes as “non-morality.” The reference is to haiku’s tendency to avoid judgment and preconception according to any moral code, so that something like a fly settling on dung is as noteworthy as a magnificent sunset—even more so, in fact, since haiku is more likely to focus on the common than the spectacular. Thoreau makes the point that he finds in himself both “an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one.” He adds: “I reverence them both . . . the wild not less than the good” (210). Later in the chapter, of course, Thoreau sounds more moralistic, even prudish, in singing the praises of cleanliness, asceticism, and purity. Even then, though, he suggests that the animal part of ourselves, “reptile and sensual,” is never far from the surface (219). It is in his acceptance of both the wild and the good, the physical and the spiritual, the particular instance and the higher law, the base and the moral—it is in his juxtaposition of these that the haiku moments of Walden often surface. ...