LOOKING AT ANIMALS: THOREAU AT THE MENAGERIE

Some passages from Thoreau's journal entry for June 26, 1851:

Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always surprised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia, and also from South America, on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard, and their general similarity.

All these wild animals, lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc., have one hue, tawny commonly, and spotted or striped, what you may call pard color, a color and marking which I had not associated with America.

These are wild animals (beasts). What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one? How much more human the one than the other!

Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or the leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men. The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title.

I was struck by the gem-like, changeable, greenish reflections from the eyes of the grizzly bear, so glassy that you never saw the surface of the eye. They are quite demonic. Its claws, though extremely large and long, look weak and made for digging or pawing the earth and leaves. It is unavoidable, the idea of transmigration not merely a fancy of the poets, but an instinct of the race.

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At the menagerie, that prototype of zoo, no mention of these "wild animals" as tame, or that the wild animal in a menagerie is a constructed wildness.

Strange that Thoreau describes the grizzly bear's claws as "weak" versus supple or subtle, though perhaps they were weak from clawing at the cage floor.

These sorts of observations on "general similarity" among animals go back to prehistorical times, of course, but it's remarkable to read these comments just eight years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, where Darwin would draw on similar observations to profound conclusions. Thoreau was familiar with Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle," which he cites in his journals from the same year. Also historically significant: the menagerie's transcontinental vision of animals, so to bring into focus similarities among species that transcend whatever immediate environment (Thoreau's animal context of "America," or more properly "New England").

I wonder what makes the grizzly's eyes "demonic." Their "changeable" quality? Their "glassy" transparency? No surface? No face?

Daemon: "dematerialized," but also "distributed," "scattered." A scattering face of light?

Transmigration (in/as writing). . . exact, careful descriptions of animal pelts and paws; an anthropomorphic veil thrown over "animal."

Thoreau seems to slide into anthropomorphism not only at the point of considering differences between "wild" and "tame," but also where his attention turns from animal bodies to animal voices. Writing animals, speaking animals.

Animal: object and subject, transparent and opaque.