In some editions of Walden, there is included an inscription page which precedes the first chapter. On this page, the narrator of Walden declares:
I DO NOT PROPOSE TO WRITE AN ODE TO DEJECTION, BUT TO BRAG AS LUSTILY AS CHANTICLEER IN THE MORNING, STANDING ON HIS ROOST, IF ONLY TO WAKE MY NEIGHBORS UP.
The reader attempting to approach an understanding and appreciation of Walden should immediately note that here, in this inscription, the germ of the book may be found. The tone is one of great confidence and joy; the pages to follow will be the narrator's optimistic proclamation of the richness and fullness of his life at Walden Pond. He will brag lustily, with a full-throated voice, that he, like the rooster that greets the dawn, has successfully created a way of living that has enabled him to find a "new day" in his life. It is a new world and a new self that he has discovered through his thought and activity at his woodland retreat. He feels as though he has been reborn into a fresh and new, more satisfying life; he celebrates the feeling of having left behind his old self, the spiritually asleep creature made lifeless by "the dead dry life of society," for the sake of a new and ecstatic spiritual life.
In light of what has been said about Thoreau's transcendentalism, one might rightly expect Walden to begin on just such a note of buoyancy and high-spiritedness. This is a fitting way to begin the artistic depiction of how one man moved away from the state of being a "god in ruins" and moved toward a god-like state of fulfillment. Thus commences one of the most sophisticated and artistic "brags" in the history of American literature. And before the student decides to term the book the work of a rabid egomaniac, a further word about the nature of this "brag" should be offered.
