Translations by Henry D. Thoreau (review)

262 Shorter Book Reviews constructional techniques were sound, just as advertised. This Comfortable House has withstood a lot of living.'' They were available in all the historic styles of North American architecture and in four of the now easily recognisable formsbungalow , 2-storey foursquare, "workingman's" foursquare, and homestead temple-house. The latter was a "downmarket" representation of Jefferson's utopian prospect of recreating Rome in America. Gowans examines the architects and companies which gave America its comfortable houses, the feuds between architects, near-architects and non-architects, the ferocity of commercial competition , and the welter of styles employed (four essays alone on classical, medieval and colonial revival). With its wide, double-columned pages, studded with photographs of houses, prefabricated designs, measured floor plans, promotional catalogue samples, and wood and plaster ornamentation, The Conzfortable House is something of a tour deforce. This important pioneer study is authoritative and suitably provocative in its assertions, absorbing, elegant for the most part (only the cover tints grate), and a real pleasure to possess. Gordon Dodds Manitoba Archives Henry D. Thoreau, ed. K.P. Van Anglen. Translations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. 281 pp. Translations, the eighth volume to appear in the Princeton edition of Thoreau's collected writings, gathers for the first time all of Thoreau's literary translations, and includes a:swell two undergraduate compositions by Thoreau, one in Latin and the other in Greek. The editor, K.P. Van Anglen, defines "literary translations " as "substantial, independent works conceived for an audience even if not published" (159), as opposed to translated passages from foreign languages which appear in Thoreau's other writings, including his journal. This is a sensible editorial decision and is not likely to be controversial. The translations included are Prometheus Bound, Anacreon, Pindar, Fragments of Pindar, Pindaric Odes, Seven Against Thebes and Transmigrations of the Seven Brahmans. They are accompanied by a full Editorial Appendix, the core of which is Van Anglen's discussion of the style and intellectual background of Thoreau's work as a translator. The book is attractively printed and easy to use and in every respect adheres to the scrupulous standards of its predecessors in the Princeton edition. Van Anglen places Thoreau's translations in the broader context of his interest in ancient writings and primitive cultures as an inspiration to modem man. The translations thus represent Thoreau's attempt "to recapture the vision of the Shorter Book Reviews 263 primitive bard for his contemporaries" (199). Van Anglen also connects these translations to transcendentalist theories of language and words, suggesting that they show Thoreau's concern to refresh the language by returning words to their original, primitive meanings. Van Anglen 's discussion of these points-more detailed than can be suggested here-is both lucid and convincing. At the same time, it raises an interesting question. All of Thoreau's literary translations date from the 1840s. Given his life-long passion for ancient scriptures and the root meanings of words, why did Thoreau essentially abandon substantive literary translation after 1850? The answer, it seems to me, lies in the reason Thoreau gave at the end of Walden for leaving the pond. He discontinued serious literary translating because he had several more (literary) lives to live. In effect, his translations mark an early apprenticeship to a continuing concern with poetry and language. He did not abandon this concern when he stopped substantive translation; he only expressed it differently. Thoreau's first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, appeared in 1849, the year he undertook his last literary translation. He may have seen his path veering toward the writing of his own books, works in which he would "translate" the "texts" of nature and his inner thoughts into words of his own choosing. Perhaps, too, he recalled Emerson's words from·'The American Scholar'': ''When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.'' William G. Heath Department of English Lakehead University Donald E. Pease. Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. xiv + 303 pp. Visionary Compacts, Donald Pease's "transcript" of his readings in...