A story about this — 4 years ago
Apparently I read this before, because I signed and dated it this exact week in 1993, and scribbled notes and highlighted passages. But I remember almost nothing other than disliking it. We read in such a perverted way in college,
skimming through to find chunks that would support whatever inane essay we’d
been assigned to argue that week.
It reads differently now, after eighteen months living out of a backpack, and six months in a log cabin in the woods. Monsieur Thoreau, c’est moi-earnest absurdity and all. His self-righteousness makes me laugh with recognitions-a great reminder to zip it on my endless prescriptions for a better world. But I feel such affection for this guy, working out his own system in the woods. A crank, but dear to my heart.
Comments
Amazingkae
United States
Let me guess... Philosophy Major? :-)
Somewhere along the line you encountered the joys of being a philosophy major, too? It has taken me a while to get over the sheer trauma of being forced to so strictly analyze concepts and phrases that so delicately ring true to your heart and having to bash them with the iron anvil of “critique”. You are right, completely, that having the luxury now of going back to re-read all those classics in literature without a paper on them due is delightful.
“Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau”... this is the exact book I have by my bed right now, only the edition is so old my mother and father both read it college together during the 50’s. I suppose his desire to live well by removing himself from an undesired life of chaos through learning to live on his own, simply, had a large impact on me. We moved to create a very quiet and peaceful place for our lives quiet some time ago and through the experience have come away with much greater focus, determination, and clarity.
Thoreau caught my attention closely about 25 years ago with his writings on civil disobedience. I have never forgotten his spirit and essence, and the impact of his suggestions strikes deeper and deeper into my heart each time I can steal away a moment with his works. Though as a child his works fueled my rebelliousness, now they serve only to strengthen my own inner resolve.
Great minds endure throughout time… and it is the cranks and quacks from history that make us laugh with pride at the eclectic group we call humanity. [Diogenes?] It was only when I was able to complete my Philo-dough degree and move on to the more palpable world of studying History and Humanities that I was able to enjoy reading philosophy “for sharing the love of knowledge across the bridge of time” without cringing.
If you are enjoying Thoreau’s works, then you might enjoy taking a step to stumble upon Rousseau’s “Solitary Walker” writings, too. Although all my fem teachers hated him with a passion, his more personal entries are like having a conversation with a truly endearing mind and heart. He was eccentric, too… but I think, truly in his own mind he always meant well, no matter what his nutty philosophical proposals.
At any rate, keep on reading… and enjoy every moment of every day.
amazingkae
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ H. D. Thoreau
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.” ~ H. D. Thoreau
Pretty contemporary for a guy writing in the 1840’s… There are no truly original thoughts: only new minds that discover them.