HENDRY DAVID THOREAU

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.


Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

I stand in awe of my body.

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.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.


The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

[Water is] the only drink for a wise man.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Henry David Thoreau, 'Economy,' Walden, 1854
- More quotations on: [Prejudice]
But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1840
- More quotations on: [Relaxation]
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1838
- More quotations on: [Happiness]
There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1839
- More quotations on: [Love]
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Things do not change; we change.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1970)
- More quotations on: [Change]
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 1: Economy

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion, 1854
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Economy, 1854
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws, 1854
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Reading, 1854
- More quotations on: [Books]

Henry David Thoreau
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Thoreau" redirects here. For other uses, see Thoreau (disambiguation).Henry David Thoreau

Maxham daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau made in 1856
Full name Henry David Thoreau
Born July 12, 1817
Concord, Massachusetts
Died May 6, 1862 (aged 44)
Concord, Massachusetts
Era 19th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Transcendentalism
Main interests Natural history
Notable ideas Abolitionism, tax resistance, development criticism, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, direct action, environmentalism, nonviolent resistance, simple living


Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)[1] was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail.[2] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.[2]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[3] Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government – "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"[4] – the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."[4]Contents [hide]

Early life and education

He was born David Henry Thoreau[5] in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in Jersey.[6] His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion",[7] the first recorded student protest in the Colonies.[8] David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become "Henry David" until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change.[9] He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia.[10] Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.

Portrait of Thoreau from 1854

Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word "thorough", whose standard American pronunciation rhymes with "furrow".[11] In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called "my most prominent feature."[12] Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty."[13] Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive[14]. However, Louisa May Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."[15]

Thoreau studied at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the master's degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college."[16] His comment was: "Let every sheep keep its own skin",[17] a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written on sheepskin vellum.
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Return to Concord: 1837–1841

The traditional professions open to college graduates: law, the church, business, medicine; failed to interest Thoreau [18]:25 So he took a leave of absence and during that leave of absence from Harvard in 1835, Thoreau taught school in Canton, Massachusetts. After he graduated in 1837, he joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but resigned after a few weeks rather than administer corporal punishment.[18]:25 He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838 called Concord Academy.[18]:25 They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill from tetanus in 1842[19] after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother Henry's arms.[20]

Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.

Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, The Dial, and Emerson lobbied editor Margaret Fuller to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published there was Aulus Persius Flaccus, an essay on the playwright of the same name, published in The Dial in July 1840.[21] It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry on October 22, 1837, reads, "'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry today."

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts," as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836).

1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau

On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson house.[22] There, from 1841–1844, he served as the children's tutor, editorial assistant, and repair man/gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on Staten Island,[23] and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative Horace Greeley.[24]:68

Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, was patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795). His other source had been Tantiusques, an Indian operated mine in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to produce plumbago (graphite), which was used to ink typesetting machines.[25]

Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (1.2 km2) of Walden Woods.[26] He spoke often of finding a farm to buy or lease, which he felt would give him a means to support himself while also providing enough solitude to write his first book[citation needed].
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Civil Disobedience and the Walden years: 1845–1849Part of the Politics series on
Anarchism


Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home.[citation needed]

On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.[27]) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government"[28] explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:
Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.
—Bronson Alcott, Journals (1938)[29]

Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.[30]

At Walden Pond, he completed a first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, an elegy to his brother, John, that described their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. Thoreau did not find a publisher for this book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense, though fewer than 300 were sold.[22]:234 Thoreau self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's own publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book. Its failure put Thoreau into debt that took years to pay off, and Emerson's flawed advice caused a schism between the friends that never entirely healed.[citation needed]

In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in "Ktaadn," the first part of The Maine Woods.

Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.[22]:244 Over several years, he worked to pay off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript for what, in 1854, he would publish as Walden, or Life in the Woods, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but today critics[who?] regard it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.
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Later years: 1851–1862

Henry David Thoreau, taken August 1861

In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history and travel/expedition narratives. He read avidly on botany and often wrote observations on this topic into his journal. He admired William Bartram, and Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his words.[31]

He became a land surveyor and continued to write increasingly detailed natural history observations about the 26 square miles (67 km2) township in his journal, a two-million word document he kept for 24 years. He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source for Thoreau's late natural history writings, such as Autumnal Tints, The Succession of Trees, and Wild Apples, an essay bemoaning the destruction of indigenous and wild apple species.

Until the 1970s, literary critics[who?] dismissed Thoreau's late pursuits as amateur science and philosophy. With the rise of environmental history and ecocriticism, several new readings[who?] of this matter began to emerge, showing Thoreau to be both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots. For instance, his late essay, "The Succession of Forest Trees," shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through dispersal by seed-bearing winds or animals.

He traveled to Quebec once, Cape Cod four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books, A Yankee in Canada, Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods, in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest to Philadelphia and New York City in 1854, and west across the Great Lakes region in 1861, visiting Niagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Mackinac Island.[32] Although provincial in his physical travels, he was extraordinarily well-read and vicariously a world traveler. He obsessively devoured all the first-hand travel accounts available in his day, at a time when the last unmapped regions of the earth were being explored. He read Magellan and Cook, the arctic explorers Franklin, Mackenzie and Parry, Darwin's account of his voyage on the Beagle, Livingstone and Burton on Africa, Lewis and Clark; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers.[33] Astonishing amounts of global reading fed his endless curiosity about the peoples, cultures, religions and natural history of the world, and left its traces as commentaries in his voluminous journals. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "Live at home like a traveler."

After John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown, or damned him with faint praise. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a speech – A Plea for Captain John Brown – which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: first the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the American Civil War entire armies of the North were literally singing Brown's praises. As a contemporary biographer of John Brown put it: "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."[34]
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Death

Thoreau family graves at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1859, following a late night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rain storm, he became ill with bronchitis. His health declined over three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularly The Maine Woods and Excursions, and petitioning publishers to print revised editions of A Week and Walden. He also wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded: "I did not know we had ever quarreled."[35]

Aware he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian".[36] He died on May 6, 1862 at age 44. Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn.[37] Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral.[38] Originally buried in the Dunbar family plot, he and members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (N42° 27' 53.7" W71° 20' 33") in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing published his first biography, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, in 1873, and Channing and another friend Harrison Blake edited some poems, essays, and journal entries for posthumous publication in the 1890s. Thoreau's journals, which he often mined for his published works but which remained largely unpublished at his death, were first published in 1906 and helped to build his modern reputation. A new, expanded edition of the journals is underway, published by Princeton University Press. Today, Thoreau is regarded[who?] as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. His memory is honored by the international Thoreau Society.
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Beliefs

Thoreau memorial at Library Way, New York City
"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."
— Thoreau [39]

Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Thoreau was also one of the first American supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution. He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet[40] and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in Walden: "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."[41]

Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitration between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of North American humanity. He decried the latter endlessly but felt the teachers need to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. He was in many ways a 'visible saint', a point of contact with the wilds, even if the land he lived on had been gifted to him by Emerson and was far from cut-off. The wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country." His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail," but he also hiked on pristine untouched land. In the essay "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher" Roderick Nash writes: "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance."Template:Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the Smerican Mind: Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher

On alcohol, Thoreau wrote: "I would fain keep sober always... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"[41]
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Influence

A bust of Thoreau from the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at the Bronx Community College

Thoreau's writings influenced many public figures. Political leaders and reformers like Mahatma Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy, civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly Civil Disobedience. So did many artists and authors including Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair,[42] E. B. White, Lewis Mumford [43], Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Posey [44] and Gustav Stickley.[45] . Thoreau also influenced naturalists like John Burroughs, John Muir, E. O. Wilson, Edwin Way Teale, Joseph Wood Krutch, B. F. Skinner, David Brower and Loren Eiseley, whom Publisher's Weekly called "the modern Thoreau." [46] Anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman also appreciated Thoreau and referred to him as "the greatest American anarchist." English writer Henry Stephens Salt wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890,which popularized Thoreau's ideas in Britain: George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter and Robert Blatchford were among those who became Thoreau enthusiasts as a result of Salt's advocacy. [47]

Mahatma Gandhi first read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights activist in Johannesburg, South Africa. He told American reporter Webb Miller, "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,' written about 80 years ago."[48]

Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of non-violent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attending Morehouse College. He wrote in his autobiography that it was

Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.[49]

The University of Michigan's New England Literature Program is an experiential literature and writing program run through the university's Department of English Language and Literature which was started in the 1970s by professors Alan Howes and Walter Clark. Howes and Clark called upon Thoreauvian ideals of nature, independence and community to create an academic program modeled after Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond. Today, students at NELP study Thoreau's work – as well as that of several other New England writers from the 19th and 20th centuries – in relative isolation on Sebago Lake in Raymond, Maine.

American psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote that he carried a copy of Thoreau's Walden with him in his youth.[50] and, in 1945, wrote Walden Two, a fictional utopia about 1,000 members of a community living together inspired by the life of Thoreau.[51]

Thoreau inspired children's book author and illustrator D.B. Johnson to create a series of picture books based on Thoreau. The first book Henry Hikes to Fitchburg has become a bestseller.[citation needed]

Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists from Concord were a major inspiration of the composer Charles Ives. The 4th movement of the Concord Sonata for piano (with a part for flute, Thoreau's instrument) is a character picture and he also set Thoreau's words.[52]
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Anarchism This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)


Anarchism started to have an ecological view mainly in the writings of Thoreau. In his book Walden "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism represented today in John Zerzan. For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of american society in the mid XIX century."[53] Zerzan included Thoreau's text "Excursions" (1863) in his edited compilation titled Against civilization: Readings and reflections from 1999.[54] Anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman also appreciated Thoreau and referred to him as "the greatest American anarchist."

Thoreau was an important influence on late 19th century anarchist naturism, the combination of anarchist and naturist philosophies.[55][56] Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles[57][58] in Spain,[55][56][57] France,[57][59] and Portugal.[60]
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CritiqueHenry David Thoreau


Core works and topics[show]
Related topics[show]
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Thoreau's ideas were not universally applauded by some of his contemporaries in literary circles.

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreau's endorsement of living alone in natural simplicity, apart from modern society, to be a mark of effeminacy:

...Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences.[61]

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier detested what he deemed to be the message of Walden, decreeing that Thoreau wanted man to "lower himself to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs." He went further to castigate the work as "very wicked and heathenish", remarking "I prefer walking on two legs."[62]

In response to such criticisms, English novelist George Eliot, writing for the Westminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded:

People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.[63]

Modern historian Richard Zacks pokes fun at Thoreau, writing:

Thoreau's 'Walden, or Life in the Woods' deserves its status as a great American book but let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar. While living the simple life in the woods, Thoreau walked into nearby Concord, Mass., almost every day. And his mom, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodie baskets filled with meals, pies and doughnuts every Saturday. The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their tree-house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle.[64]

Thoreau's Journal: 14-May-1852
Most men are easily transplanted from here there, for they have so little root—no tap root,—or their roots penetrate so little way, that you can thrust a shovel quite under them and take them up, roots and all.
.Thoreau's Journal: 13-May-1852
Where are the men who dwell in thought? Talk,—that is palaver! at which men hurrah and clap! The manners of the bear are so far good that he does not pay you any compliments.
.Thoreau's Journal: 11-May-1854
While at the Falls, I feel the air cooled and hear the mutterings of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. And I make haste through the woods homeward via Hubbard’s Close. Hear the evergreen-forest note. The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird. The shower is apparently going by on the north. There is a low, dark, blue-black arch, crescent-like, in the horizon, sweeping the distant earth there with a dusky, rainy brush, and all men, like the earth, seem to wear an aspect of expectation. There is an uncommon stillness here, disturbed only by a rush of the wind from time to time. In the village I meet men making haste to their homes, for, though the heavy cloud has gone quite by, the shower will probably strike us with its tail. Rock maple keys, etc., now two inches long, probably been out some days. Those by the path on Common not out at all. Now I have got home there is at last a still cooler wind with a rush, and at last a smart shower, slanting to the ground, without thunder.

My errand this afternoon was chiefly to look at the gooseberry at Saw Mill Brook.
2 observations anyone? Links to this post
Monday, May 10, 2010
the May-gate
...Thoreau's Journal: 10-May-1853
I proceed down the Turnpike. The masses of the golden willow are seen in the distance on either side of the way, twice as high as the road is wide, conspicuous against the distant, still half-russet hills and forests, for the green grass hardly yet prevails over the dead stubble, and the woods are but just beginning to gray. The female willow is a shade greener. At this season the traveler passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha,—ah, willow, willow. Could not he truly arrange for us the difficult family of the willows better than Borrer, or Barrat of Middletown? And as he passes between the portals, a sweet fragrance is wafted to him; he not only breathes but scents and tastes the air, and he hears the low humming or susurrus of a myriad insects which are feeding on its sweets. It is, apparently, these that attract the yellowbird. The golden gates of the year, the May-gate. The traveler cannot pass out of Concord by the highways in any direction without passing between such portals,—graceful, curving, drooping, wand-like twigs, on which leaves and blossoms appear together.
Anything but black clothes
...Thoreau's Journal: 08-May-1857
Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now,—or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. Moreover I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes.


Henry David Thoreau

Nama lengkap Henry David Thoreau
Lahir 12 Juli 1817
Concord , Massachusetts
Meninggal 6 Mei 1862 (umur 44)
Concord, Massachusetts
Jaman Filsafat abad ke-19
Daerah Filsafat Barat
Sekolah Transendentalisme
Kepentingan Utama Ilmu pengetahuan alam
Gagasan penting: Abolitionism , perlawanan pajak , kritik pembangunan , pembangkangan sipil , keberatan hati nurani , tindakan langsung , environmentalisme , perlawanan tanpa kekerasan , hidup sederhana


Henry David Thoreau (lahir David Henry Thoreau, 12 Juli 1817 - 6 Mei 1862) [1] adalah seorang Amerika penulis, penyair , naturalis , yang melawan pajak , kritikus pembangunan , surveyor , sejarawan , filsuf , dan memimpin transcendentalist . Dia terkenal karena bukunya Walden , sebuah refleksi atas hidup sederhana dalam lingkungan alam, dan esainya, Ketidaktaatan Sipil , argumen untuk individu perlawanan kepada pemerintah sipil dalam oposisi moral untuk sebuah negara yang tidak adil.

Thoreau buku, artikel, esai, jurnal, dan jumlah puisi lebih dari 20 jilid. Di antara kontribusi abadi nya itu miliknya tulisan-tulisan tentang sejarah alam dan filsafat, di mana ia mengantisipasi metode dan temuan dari ekologi dan sejarah lingkungan , dua sumber modern environmentalisme . Nya sastra gaya interweaves dekat observasi alam, pengalaman pribadi, retorika menunjuk, simbolik makna dan pengetahuan historis, sedangkan menampilkan sensibilitas puitis, filosofis penghematan , dan "Yankee" kasih detail praktis. [2] Dia juga sangat tertarik pada ide bertahan hidup dalam menghadapi elemen bermusuhan, perubahan sejarah, dan kerusakan alam, pada saat yang sama memohon satu untuk meninggalkan limbah dan ilusi untuk mengetahui benar penting kebutuhan hidup. [2]

Dia adalah seumur hidup perbudakan , memberikan ceramah yang menyerang Fugitive Slave Hukum sementara memuji tulisan Wendell Phillips dan membela perbudakan John Brown . filosofi Thoreau dari pembangkangan sipil mempengaruhi pemikiran politik dan tindakan tokoh kemudian seperti Leo Tolstoy , Mahatma Gandhi , dan Martin Luther King, Jr

Thoreau kadang-kadang disebut sebagai seorang anarkis individualis . [3] Meskipun Ketidaktaatan Sipil panggilan untuk memperbaiki daripada menghapuskan pemerintah - "Saya minta, tidak sekaligus pemerintah, tapi sekaligus sebuah pemerintahan yang lebih baik" [4] - arah perbaikan ini Anarkisme bertujuan: "'pemerintah itu adalah yang terbaik yang mengatur tidak sama sekali;' dan bila orang siap untuk itu, yang akan jenis pemerintah yang mereka miliki." [4] Isi [hide]

Awal kehidupan dan pendidikan

Ia dilahirkan Henry David Thoreau [5] di Concord, Massachusetts , untuk John Thoreau (pembuat pensil) dan Cynthia Dunbar. kakek adalah berasal dari Perancis dan lahir di Jersey . [6] kakek-Nya, Asa Dunbar, dipimpin Harvard 1.766 mahasiswa " Mentega Pemberontakan ", [7] yang pertama protes dicatat siswa di Koloni. [8] David Henry dinamai seorang paman dari pihak ayah baru saja meninggal dunia, David Thoreau. Dia tidak menjadi "Henry David" sampai setelah kuliah, meskipun ia tidak pernah mengajukan permohonan untuk melakukan perubahan nama hukum. [9] Ia memiliki dua saudara kandung yang lebih tua, Helen dan John Jr, dan seorang adik perempuan, Sophia. [10] itu tempat kelahiran Thoreau masih ada di Virginia Road, Concord dan saat ini fokus upaya pelestarian. Rumah itu adalah asli, namun sekarang berdiri sekitar 100 meter dari situs pertama.

Potret Thoreau dari 1854

Amos Bronson Alcott dan's bibi Thoreau setiap menulis bahwa "Thoreau" diucapkan seperti kata "menyeluruh", yang standar sajak pengucapan Amerika dengan ". galur" [11] Dalam penampilan dia biasa-biasa saja, dengan hidung yang ia sebut "saya yang paling menonjol fitur. " [12] Dari wajahnya, Nathaniel Hawthorne menulis: "[Thoreau] adalah seburuk dosa, berhidung panjang, aneh-mulut, dan dengan kasar dan kasar, meskipun tata krama sopan, sangat baik sesuai dengan seperti sebuah eksterior. Namun keburukan itu adalah dari dan menyenangkan fashion jujur, dan dia menjadi lebih baik daripada keindahan ". [13] Thoreau juga memakai leher-jenggot selama bertahun-tahun, yang bersikeras banyak perempuan yang ditemukan menarik [14] . Namun, Louisa May Alcott disebutkan untuk Ralph Waldo Emerson bahwa wajah rambut's Thoreau "akan hampir pasti bias asmara uang muka dan melestarikan kebaikan manusia selama-lamanya". [15]

Thoreau belajar di Harvard University antara 1833 dan 1837. Dia tinggal di Hollis Hall dan mengambil kursus di retorika , klasik, filsafat, matematika, dan ilmu pengetahuan. Sebuah legenda menyatakan bahwa Thoreau menolak untuk membayar biaya lima dolar untuk ijazah Harvard. Bahkan, gelar master ia menolak untuk membeli tidak memiliki kemampuan akademis: Harvard College menawarkan kepada lulusan "yang terbukti nilai fisik mereka dengan menjadi hidup tiga tahun setelah lulus, dan tabungan mereka, produktif, atau mewarisi kualitas atau kondisi dengan memiliki Lima Dolar untuk memberikan kampus ". [16] komentar adalah: "Mari setiap menjaga kulit domba sendiri", [17] referensi untuk tradisi diploma ditulis pada kulit domba vellum .
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Kembali ke Concord: 1837-1841

Profesi tradisional terbuka untuk lulusan perguruan tinggi: hukum, gereja, bisnis, obat-obatan; gagal bunga Thoreau [18] : 25 Jadi, dia mengambil cuti dan selama cuti dari Harvard pada tahun 1835, Thoreau mengajar di sekolah di Kanton, Massachusetts . Setelah lulus pada tahun 1837, ia bergabung dengan fakultas masyarakat sekolah Concord, namun mengundurkan diri setelah beberapa minggu dan bukannya mengatur hukuman fisik . [18] : 25 Dia dan saudaranya Yohanes kemudian membuka sebuah sekolah dasar di Concord pada 1838 disebut Concord Academy . [18] : 25 Mereka memperkenalkan beberapa konsep progresif, termasuk alam berjalan dan kunjungan ke toko-toko dan bisnis. Sekolah berakhir ketika Yohanes menjadi sakit parah dari tetanus pada 1842 [19] setelah melukai dirinya saat bercukur. Ia meninggal di Henry saudara lengannya. [20]

Setelah lulus Thoreau pulang ke Concord, di mana ia bertemu Ralph Waldo Emerson . Emerson mengambil dan di kali ayah merendahkan bunga di Thoreau, menasihati orang muda dan memperkenalkan dia lingkaran penulis lokal dan pemikir, termasuk Ellery Channing , Margaret Fuller , Bronson Alcott, dan Nathaniel Hawthorne dan putranya Julian Hawthorne , yang merupakan anak pada saat itu.

Emerson mendesak Thoreau untuk berkontribusi esai dan puisi ke majalah triwulanan, The Dial , dan Emerson melobi editor Margaret Fuller untuk mempublikasikan tulisan-tulisan. pertama esai ini Thoreau diterbitkan ada Aulus Persius Flaccus , esai tentang dramawan dengan nama yang sama, diterbitkan dalam The Dial pada bulan Juli 1840. [21] ini terdiri dari bagian-bagian direvisi dari jurnal-nya, yang ia mulai menjaga di's saran Emerson. Jurnal entri pertama pada tanggal 22 Oktober 1837, berbunyi, "'Apa yang kamu lakukan sekarang?" ia bertanya 'Apakah Anda menyimpan jurnal?. " Jadi saya membuat entri pertama saya hari ini. "

Thoreau adalah seorang filsuf alam dan hubungannya dengan kondisi manusia. Dalam tahun-tahun awal, ia mengikuti transendentalisme , yang longgar dan eklektik idealis filsafat yang dianjurkan oleh Emerson, Fuller, dan Alcott. Mereka menyatakan bahwa keadaan spiritual yang ideal melampaui, atau melampaui, fisik dan empiris, dan yang satu mencapai wawasan yang melalui intuisi pribadi dan bukan doktrin agama. Dalam pandangan mereka, Alam adalah tanda lahiriah dari roh batin, mengungkapkan radikal korespondensi "dari sesuatu yang terlihat dan pikiran manusia," seperti Emerson menulis dalam Nature (1836).

1967 US perangko menghormati Thoreau

Pada tanggal 18 April 1841, Thoreau pindah ke rumah Emerson. [22] Ada, 1841-1844, ia menjabat sebagai anak-anak tutor, asisten editor, dan manusia memperbaiki / tukang kebun. Selama beberapa bulan di tahun 1843, ia pindah ke rumah William Emerson di Staten Island , [23] dan mengajari anak-anak keluarga sementara mencari kontak antara manusia sastra dan wartawan di kota yang mungkin membantu mempublikasikan tulisan-tulisannya, termasuk wakil masa depan sastra Horace Greeley . [24] : 68

Thoreau kembali ke Concord dan bekerja di keluarganya pensil pabrik, yang ia terus lakukan untuk sebagian besar masa dewasanya. Dia menemukan kembali proses untuk membuat pensil baik dari inferior grafit dengan menggunakan tanah liat sebagai bahan pengikat, penemuan ini diperbaiki grafit ditemukan di New Hampshire dan dibeli pada tahun 1821 oleh Charles Dunbar relatif. (Proses pencampuran grafit dan tanah liat, yang dikenal sebagai proses Conté, dipatenkan oleh Nicolas-Jacques Conté pada tahun 1795). sumber lain-Nya telah Tantiusques , tambang dioperasikan India di Sturbridge, Massachusetts . Kemudian, Thoreau dikonversi pabrik untuk memproduksi plumbago (grafit), yang digunakan untuk tinta typesetting mesin. [25]

Setelah kembali ke Concord, Thoreau pergi melalui periode gelisah. Pada April 1844 ia dan temannya sengaja Edward Hoar menetapkan api yang dikonsumsi 300 acre (1.2 km 2) Walden Woods. [26] Dia berbicara sering menemukan sebuah peternakan untuk membeli atau menyewa, yang menurutnya akan memberinya alat untuk mendukung dirinya sementara juga menyediakan kesendirian cukup untuk menulis buku pertamanya [ rujukan? ].
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Ketidaktaatan Sipil dan tahun-tahun Walden: 1845-1849 Bagian dari seri Politik pada
Anarkisme


Thoreau memulai sebuah percobaan dua tahun dalam hidup sederhana pada tanggal 4 Juli 1845, ketika ia pindah ke sebuah diri, dibangun rumah kecil di tanah milik Emerson dalam -pertumbuhan hutan kedua di sekitar pantai Walden Pond . Rumah itu tidak di padang gurun, tetapi di pinggir kota, 1,5 mil (2,4 km) dari rumah keluarganya. [ rujukan? ]

Pada tanggal 24 Juli atau 25 Juli 1846, Thoreau berlari ke dalam lokal pemungut pajak , Sam Staples, yang memintanya untuk membayar enam tahun tunggakan pajak jajak pendapat . Thoreau menolak karena menentang terhadap Perang Meksiko-Amerika dan perbudakan , dan ia menghabiskan malam di penjara karena penolakan ini. (Keesokan harinya Thoreau dibebaskan, keinginan, ketika bibinya dibayar pajaknya. [27] ) pengalaman itu memiliki dampak yang kuat pada Thoreau. Pada bulan Januari dan Februari 1848, ia menyampaikan ceramah tentang "Hak dan Tugas Individu dalam hubungannya dengan Pemerintah" [28] menjelaskan resistensi pajaknya di Lyceum Concord . Bronson Alcott menghadiri kuliah, menulis dalam jurnalnya pada Januari 26:
Thoreau mendengar ceramah sebelum Lyceum tentang hubungan dari individu pada laporan-Negara yang mengagumkan hak dari individu untuk diri-pemerintah, dan perhatian penonton. sindiran-Nya kepada Perang Meksiko , Hoar's pengusiran Mr dari Carolina, penjara sendiri di Concord Penjara untuk penolakan untuk membayar pajaknya, Hoar's Mr pembayaran saya ketika dibawa ke penjara karena penolakan yang sama, semuanya berhubungan, baik dipertimbangkan, dan beralasan. Saya mengambil kesenangan besar dalam akta ini Thoreau.
- Bronson Alcott , Jurnal (1938) [29]

Thoreau direvisi kuliah ke sebuah esai berjudul Perlawanan terhadap Pemerintah Sipil (juga dikenal sebagai Ketidaktaatan Sipil). Pada Mei 1849 itu diterbitkan oleh Elizabeth Peabody di Papers Aesthetic . Thoreau telah mengambil versi Percy Shelley prinsip s 'dalam puisi politik The Mask of Anarchy (1819), yang Shelley dimulai dengan gambar yang kuat dari bentuk-bentuk yang tidak adil dari otoritas waktu - dan kemudian membayangkan dengan kepeduliannya dari radikal baru bentuk aksi sosial. [30]

Pada Walden Pond, ia menyelesaikan draft pertama A Minggu di Concord dan Merrimack Sungai , sebuah syair ratapan kepada saudaranya, Yohanes, yang menggambarkan perjalanan mereka 1839 ke Pegunungan Putih . Thoreau tidak menemukan penerbit untuk buku ini dan bukan dicetak 1.000 eksemplar dengan biaya sendiri, meski lebih sedikit dari 300 yang dijual. [22] : 234 Thoreau menerbitkan sendiri atas saran Emerson, menggunakan sendiri penayang Emerson, Munroe, yang melakukan sedikit untuk mempublikasikan buku. Kegagalannya memasukkan Thoreau menjadi hutang yang waktu bertahun-tahun untuk melunasi, dan cacat nasihat's Emerson menyebabkan skisma antara teman-teman yang tidak pernah sepenuhnya sembuh. [ rujukan? ]

Pada bulan Agustus 1846, Thoreau sebentar meninggalkan Walden untuk melakukan perjalanan ke Gunung Katahdin di Maine , sebuah perjalanan kemudian dicatat dalam "Ktaadn," bagian pertama dari The Maine Woods .

Thoreau kiri Walden Pond pada tanggal 6 September 1847. [22] : 244 Selama beberapa tahun, ia bekerja untuk melunasi utang dan juga terus direvisi naskahnya untuk apa, pada 1854, ia akan menerbitkan sebagai Walden, atau Hidup di Rimba , menceritakan kembali dua tahun, dua bulan, dan dua hari dia menghabiskan di Kolam Walden. Buku kompres waktu itu menjadi satu tahun kalender, dengan menggunakan bagian dari empat musim untuk melambangkan pembangunan manusia. Bagian riwayat hidup dan spiritual quest bagian, Walden pada awalnya memenangkan beberapa pengagum, tetapi [kritikus hari ini siapa? ] menganggapnya sebagai karya klasik Amerika yang menjelajah kesederhanaan alam, keselarasan, dan keindahan sebagai model untuk kondisi sosial dan budaya saja.
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Kemudian tahun: 1851-1862

Henry David Thoreau, diambil Agustus 1861

Pada tahun 1851, Thoreau menjadi semakin tertarik dengan sejarah alam dan perjalanan / narasi ekspedisi. Dia rajin sekali membaca pada botani dan sering menulis tentang topik ini pengamatan ke dalam jurnalnya. Dia mengagumi William Bartram , dan Charles Darwin s ' Petualangan Beagle . Dia terus pengamatan rinci tentang pengetahuan alam Concord itu, rekaman mulai dari burung tertentu bagaimana buah matang waktu ke kedalaman berfluktuasi Walden Pond dan hari-hari bermigrasi. Titik tugas ini adalah untuk "mengantisipasi" musim alam, dalam kata-katanya. [31]

Ia menjadi surveyor tanah dan terus menulis sejarah alam semakin pengamatan rinci tentang 26 mil persegi (67 km 2) kota mandiri di jurnal-nya, dua-juta kata dokumen dia terus selama 24 tahun. Dia juga menyimpan serangkaian notebook, dan pengamatan ini menjadi sumber alam akhir tulisan-tulisan Thoreau sejarah, seperti autumnal tints , The Suksesi Pohon , dan Wild Apples , esai meratapi kehancuran apel liar spesies dan adat.

Sampai tahun 1970-an, kritikus sastra [ siapa? ] diberhentikan akhir pengejaran's Thoreau sebagai ilmu amatir dan filsafat. Dengan meningkatnya sejarah lingkungan dan ecocriticism , [beberapa bacaan baru siapa? ] masalah ini mulai muncul, menunjukkan Thoreau untuk menjadi seorang filsuf dan seorang analis pola ekologi di bidang dan woodlots. Misalnya, esai terlambat, "The Suksesi Hutan Pohon," menunjukkan bahwa dia menggunakan eksperimentasi dan analisis untuk menjelaskan bagaimana hutan beregenerasi setelah kebakaran atau kehancuran manusia, melalui penyebaran oleh angin benih-bantalan atau hewan.

Dia pergi ke Quebec sekali, Cape Cod empat kali, dan Maine tiga kali; ini terinspirasi lanskap wisata nya "" buku, A Yankee di Kanada , Cape Cod , dan The Maine Woods, di mana jadwal perjalanan bingkai pemikirannya tentang geografi, sejarah dan filsafat. perjalanan lain membawanya barat daya ke Philadelphia dan New York City pada 1854, dan barat di wilayah Danau Besar pada tahun 1861, mengunjungi Niagara Falls , Detroit , Chicago , Milwaukee , St Paulus dan Mackinac Island . [32] Meskipun provinsi perjalanan fisik, ia sangat baik membaca dan dialami sendiri penjelajah dunia. Dia obsesif melahap semua account perjalanan pertama-tangan tersedia pada zamannya, pada saat daerah belum dipetakan terakhir bumi sedang dieksplorasi. Dia membaca Magellan dan Cook, penjelajah Arktik Franklin, Mackenzie dan Parry,'s account Darwin perjalanannya di Beagle, Livingstone dan Burton pada Afrika, Lewis dan Clark, dan ratusan dikenal bekerja lebih kecil, oleh penjelajah dan pelancong melek huruf. [33] jumlah Mengagumkan membaca global tidak pernah habis makan keingintahuan tentang masyarakat, budaya, agama dan sejarah alam dunia, dan meninggalkan jejak sebagai komentar dalam jurnal beliau yang luas. Dia diproses semuanya ia membaca, di laboratorium lokal pengalaman Concord nya. Di antara aforisme yang terkenal adalah nasihatnya untuk "Live di rumah seperti seorang musafir."

Setelah Brown serangan John di Harpers Ferry , suara banyak terkemuka dalam gerakan abolisionis menjauhkan diri dari Brown, atau terkutuk dia dengan pujian samar. Thoreau muak dengan ini, dan ia menyusun pidato - A Plea untuk Kapten John Brown - yang tak kenal kompromi dalam pertahanan dari Brown dan tindakannya. pidato persuasif terbukti Thoreau: pertama gerakan perbudakan mulai menerima Brown sebagai martir, dan pada saat Perang Saudara Amerika Serikat seluruh pasukan dari Utara yang benar-benar menyanyi memuji Brown . Sebagai penulis biografi kontemporer John Brown mengatakan: "Jika, seperti Alfred Kazin menyarankan, tanpa John Brown di sana akan ada Perang Saudara, kami akan menambahkan bahwa tanpa Transcendentalists Concord, John Brown akan memiliki sedikit dampak budaya ". [34 ]
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Kematian

Thoreau makam keluarga di Pemakaman Sleepy Hollow

Thoreau dikontrak tuberkulosis pada tahun 1835 dan menderita dari itu secara sporadis sesudahnya. Pada tahun 1859, setelah perjalanan larut malam untuk menghitung cincin tunggul pohon selama badai hujan, dia menjadi sakit dengan bronkitis . Kesehatannya menurun selama tiga tahun dengan periode singkat tentang pengampunan, sampai ia akhirnya menjadi terbaring di tempat tidur. Menyadari sifat penyakitnya terminal, Thoreau menghabiskan tahun-tahun terakhirnya merevisi dan mengedit karya yang tidak diterbitkan, khususnya The Maine Woods dan Wisata, dan penerbit petisi untuk mencetak edisi revisi A Minggu dan Walden. Ia juga menulis surat dan entri jurnal sampai ia menjadi terlalu lemah untuk melanjutkan. Teman-temannya cemas penampilan berkurang dan terpesona oleh penerimaan tenang kematiannya. Ketika bibinya Louisa tanyanya dalam minggu terakhir jika ia telah berdamai dengan Allah, Thoreau menjawab: "Aku tidak tahu kita pernah bertengkar". [35]

Sadar dia sedang sekarat, kata-kata yang terakhir Thoreau adalah "Sekarang datang berlayar baik", diikuti oleh dua kata tunggal, "moose" dan "India". [36] Ia meninggal pada 6 Mei 1862 pada usia 44 tahun. Bronson Alcott direncanakan layanan tersebut dan membaca pilihan dari karya-karya Thoreau, dan Channing disajikan himne. [37] Emerson menulis pidato diucapkan pada saat pemakamannya. [38] Awalnya dimakamkan di plot keluarga Dunbar, ia dan anggota keluarga dekat akhirnya pindah ke Pemakaman Sleepy Hollow (N42 ° 27 '53,7 "W71 ° 20' 33") di Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau teman Ellery Channing menerbitkan biografi pertamanya, Thoreau si Penyair-Naturalist, pada tahun 1873, dan Channing dan satu lagi teman Blake Harrison edited beberapa puisi, esai, dan entri jurnal untuk publikasi anumerta di tahun 1890-an. jurnal Thoreau, yang ia sering ditambang untuk karya-karyanya diterbitkan tetapi sebagian besar tetap tidak dipublikasikan pada saat kematiannya, pertama kali diterbitkan pada tahun 1906 dan membantu membangun reputasi modernnya. Edisi, baru diperluas jurnal sedang berlangsung, diterbitkan oleh Princeton University Press. Hari ini, Thoreau dianggap [ siapa? ] sebagai salah satu penulis Amerika terkemuka, baik untuk kejelasan modern gaya prosanya dan pengetahuanNya pandangannya pada alam dan politik. memori-Nya dihormati oleh internasional Society Thoreau .
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Keyakinan

Peringatan di Perpustakaan Thoreau Way, New York City
"Sebagian besar kemewahan dan banyak dari kenikmatan yang disebut hidup tidak hanya tidak mutlak, tapi kendala yang positif sampai elevasi umat manusia."
- Thoreau [39]

Thoreau adalah pembela awal hiking rekreasi dan kano , pelestarian sumber daya alam di tanah pribadi, dan melestarikan hutan belantara sebagai lahan publik. Thoreau juga salah satu pendukung Amerika pertama dari Darwin s ' teori evolusi . Dia bukan ketat vegetarian , meskipun dia bilang dia lebih suka diet yang [40] dan menganjurkan itu sebagai sarana pengembangan diri. Dia menulis dalam Walden: "Keberatan praktis untuk makanan hewan dalam kasus saya adalah kenajisan tersebut; dan selain itu, ketika aku sudah tertangkap dan dibersihkan dan dimasak dan dimakan ikan saya, mereka sepertinya tidak memiliki dasarnya adalah memberi saya makan. Ini tidak penting dan tidak perlu, dan biaya lebih dari itu datang juga. sedikit Sebuah roti atau sedikit sebuah kentang akan dilakukan sebagai, dengan masalah kurang dan kotoran. " [41]

Thoreau peradaban tidak menolak sepenuhnya memeluk atau padang gurun. Alih-alih ia mencari jalan tengah, yang pastoral wilayah yang terintegrasi baik alam dan budaya. Filsafatnya menuntut agar ia menjadi arbitrase didaktik antara padang gurun ia berdasarkan begitu banyak dan penyebaran massa kemanusiaan Amerika Utara. Dia mencela kedua tanpa henti, tetapi merasa para guru harus dekat dengan mereka yang membutuhkan untuk mendengar apa yang ia ingin memberitahu mereka. Dia dalam banyak hal yang 'suci terlihat', titik kontak dengan liar, bahkan jika tanah yang telah tinggal di berbakat kepadanya oleh Emerson dan jauh dari cut-off. Keliaran ia menikmati adalah rawa dekat atau hutan, dan ia lebih suka "dibudidayakan sebagian negara." Nya ide menjadi "jauh di lubuk padang gurun" Maine adalah untuk "jalur perjalanan logger dan jejak India," tapi dia juga menaikkan di atas tanah murni tak tersentuh. Dalam esai "Henry David Thoreau, Filsuf" Roderick Nash menulis: "Thoreau meninggalkan Concord pada tahun 1846 untuk pertama dari tiga perjalanan ke Maine utara. Nya. ekspektasi yang tinggi karena dia berharap menemukan asli purba, Amerika Tapi kontak dengan nyata di padang gurun Maine mempengaruhinya jauh berbeda daripada memiliki ide liar di Concord. Alih-alih keluar dari hutan dengan memperdalam apresiasi dari hutan belantara, Thoreau merasa rasa hormat yang lebih besar untuk peradaban dan menyadari perlunya keseimbangan. " Templat: Roderick Nash, Wilderness dan Pikiran Smerican Henry David Thoreau:: Filsuf

Pada alkohol, Thoreau menulis: "Aku akan paksaan tetap sadar selalu ... Aku percaya bahwa air adalah minuman hanya untuk orang bijak; anggur tidak begitu mulia minuman keras yang ... Dari semua ebriosity, yang tidak lebih suka mabuk oleh udara ia bernafas "? [41]
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Pengaruh

Sebuah patung dada dari Thoreau dari Hall of Fame untuk Besar Amerika di Bronx Community College

tulisan-tulisan Thoreau dipengaruhi banyak tokoh masyarakat. Para pemimpin politik dan reformis seperti Mahatma Gandhi , Presiden John F. Kennedy , aktivis hak-hak sipil Martin Luther King, Jr , Hakim Agung William O. Douglas , dan Rusia penulis Leo Tolstoy semua berbicara tentang yang sangat dipengaruhi oleh pekerjaan Thoreau, khususnya Ketidaktaatan Sipil tidak. Jadi banyak seniman dan penulis termasuk Edward Abbey , Willa Cather , Marcel Proust , William Butler Yeats , Sinclair Lewis , Ernest Hemingway , Upton Sinclair , [42] EB White , Lewis Mumford [43] , Frank Lloyd Wright , Alexander Posey [44 ] dan Stickley Gustav . [45] . Thoreau juga dipengaruhi naturalis seperti John Burroughs , John Muir , EO Wilson , Edwin Way Teale , Joseph Wood Krutch , BF Skinner , David Brower dan Loren Eiseley , siapa Publisher's Weekly disebut "Thoreau modern". [46] Anarkis dan feminis Emma Goldman juga Thoreau dihargai dan menyebutnya sebagai "anarkis Amerika terbesar." Bahasa Inggris penulis Henry Stephens Salt menulis biografi Thoreau pada tahun 1890, yang dipopulerkan Ide Thoreau di Britania: George Bernard Shaw , Edward Carpenter dan Robert Blatchford termasuk di antara mereka yang menjadi penggemar Thoreau sebagai hasil dari advokasi Garam. [47]

Mahatma Gandhi pertama membaca Walden pada tahun 1906 saat bekerja sebagai aktivis hak-hak sipil di Johannesburg , Afrika Selatan . Dia mengatakan kepada wartawan Amerika Webb Miller , "'s] ide Thoreau [memengaruhi saya sangat.. Saya mengadopsi beberapa dari mereka dan merekomendasikan studi Thoreau kepada semua teman saya yang membantu saya di jalan Kemerdekaan India Mengapa saya benar-benar mengambil nama gerakan saya dari Thoreau's esai 'Pada Tugas Ketidaktaatan Sipil,' ditulis sekitar 80 tahun yang lalu ". [48]

Martin Luther King, Jr mencatat dalam otobiografinya bahwa pertemuan pertamanya dengan gagasan non-kekerasan perlawanan sedang membaca "Pada Ketidaktaatan Sipil" pada tahun 1944 ketika menghadiri Morehouse College . Dia menulis dalam otobiografinya bahwa itu

Di sini, dalam penolakan ini New Englander berani untuk membayar pajak dan pilihan-Nya dari penjara daripada mendukung perang yang akan menyebar ke dalam wilayah perbudakan Mexico, aku membuat kontak pertama saya dengan teori perlawanan tanpa kekerasan. Terpesona oleh gagasan menolak untuk bekerja sama dengan sistem yang jahat, saya begitu terharu bahwa aku membaca kembali bekerja beberapa kali.

Saya menjadi yakin bahwa nonkoperasi dengan kejahatan adalah sebanyak kewajiban moral seperti kerjasama dengan baik. Tidak ada orang lain telah lebih fasih dan penuh semangat dalam mendapatkan ide ini di dari Henry David Thoreau. Sebagai hasil dari tulisan-tulisannya dan kesaksian pribadi, kita adalah ahli waris dari warisan protes kreatif. Ajaran-ajaran Thoreau datang hidup dalam gerakan hak-hak sipil kami memang, mereka lebih hidup daripada sebelumnya. Apakah dinyatakan dalam duduk-in di counter makan siang, perjalanan kebebasan ke Mississippi, sebuah protes damai di Albany, Georgia, boikot bus di Montgomery, Alabama, ini outgrowths dari desakan Thoreau yang jahat harus dilawan dan bahwa tidak ada orang yang bermoral dapat sabar mengatur untuk ketidakadilan. [49]

The University of Michigan 's New England Sastra Program adalah pengalaman sastra dan menulis program yang dijalankan melalui universitas Departemen Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris yang dimulai pada 1970-an oleh profesor Alan Howes dan Walter Clark. Howes dan Clark dipanggil cita-cita Thoreauvian alam, kemerdekaan dan masyarakat untuk membuat program akademis model setelah percobaan Thoreau di Walden Pond. Hari ini, siswa pada studi Thoreau bekerja NELP - serta beberapa yang lain penulis New England dari abad ke-19 dan ke-20 - dalam isolasi relatif pada Sebago Danau di Raymond, Maine .

Amerika psikolog BF Skinner menulis bahwa ia membawa salinan Thoreau's Walden dengan dia di masa mudanya. [50] dan, pada tahun 1945, menulis Walden Dua , sebuah utopia fiktif sekitar 1.000 anggota dari komunitas hidup bersama yang terinspirasi oleh kehidupan Thoreau. [ 51]

Thoreau terinspirasi penulis buku anak-anak dan ilustrator DB Johnson untuk membuat serangkaian gambar berdasarkan buku Thoreau. Buku pertama Henry kenaikan untuk Fitchburg telah menjadi buku laris. [ rujukan? ]

Thoreau dan rekan-rekannya Transcendentalists dari Concord adalah inspirasi utama dari komponis Charles Ives . Gerakan 4 dari Concord Sonata untuk piano (dengan bagian untuk flute,'s instrumen Thoreau) adalah gambar karakter dan dia juga menetapkan kata-kata Thoreau. [52]

Anarkisme mulai memiliki pandangan ekologis terutama dalam tulisan-tulisan Thoreau. Dalam bukunya Walden "Banyak dilihat di Thoreau salah satu precursor ecologism dan anarko-primitivisme diwakili hari ini di John Zerzan . Untuk George Woodcock sikap ini dapat juga termotivasi oleh ide tertentu perlawanan terhadap kemajuan dan penolakan dari materialisme yang tumbuh adalah sifat masyarakat amerika pada abad XIX pertengahan. " [53] Zerzan termasuk's teks Thoreau "Perjalanan" (1863) dalam penyusunan edited berjudul Menentang peradaban: Pembacaan dan refleksi dari 1999. [54] Anarkis dan feminis Emma Goldman juga menghargai Thoreau dan menyebutnya sebagai "anarkis Amerika terbesar."

Thoreau adalah pengaruh penting pada akhir abad 19 anarkis naturism , kombinasi anarkis dan filosofi Naturist. [55] [56] Terutama itu penting dalam anarkis individualis kalangan [57] [58] di Spanyol, [55] [56] [ 57] France, [57] [59] , dan Portugal. [60]
Ide Thoreau tidak universal bertepuk tangan oleh beberapa orang sezamannya di kalangan sastra.

Penulis Skotlandia Robert Louis Stevenson dinilai's pengesahan Thoreau hidup sendirian dalam kesederhanaan alam, selain dari masyarakat modern, menjadi tanda kebancian :

konten ... Thoreau dan ekstasi dalam hidup adalah, kita dapat mengatakan, seperti tanaman bahwa ia telah disiram dengan perhatian dan cenderung kewanita-wanitaan, karena ada cenderung menjadi sesuatu yang tidak jantan, sesuatu yang hampir pengecut, dalam kehidupan yang tidak bergerak dengan dash dan kebebasan, dan bahwa ketakutan kontak bracing dunia. Dalam satu kata, Thoreau adalah sebuah skulker. Dia tidak ingin kebajikan untuk keluar dari dirinya di antara rekan-rekannya sesama manusia, tetapi menyelinap ke sudut untuk menimbun untuk dirinya sendiri. Dia meninggalkan semua demi kebaikan diri tertentu indulgensi. [61]

Penyair John Greenleaf Whittier membenci apa yang dianggap pesan Walden, decreeing bahwa Thoreau ingin manusia untuk "merendahkan diri ke tingkat yang Woodchuck dan berjalan di atas empat kaki. " Dia pergi lebih lanjut untuk menghukum yang bekerja sebagai "sangat jahat dan biadab", berkomentar "Aku lebih suka berjalan di atas dua kaki". [62]

Menanggapi kritik tersebut, novelis Inggris George Eliot , menulis untuk Westminster Review , dicirikan kritikus seperti tak bersemangat dan berpikiran sempit:

Orang-sangat bijaksana di mata mereka sendiri-yang akan hidup memerintahkan setiap orang menurut pola tertentu, dan yang tidak toleran dari setiap keberadaan utilitas yang tidak jelas bagi mereka, mungkin menganggap enteng Mr Thoreau dan episode ini di sejarahnya, sebagai tidak praktis dan melamun. [63]

Modern sejarawan Richard Zacks pokes fun at Thoreau, menulis:

Thoreau's "Walden, atau Hidup di Rimba 'pantas statusnya sebagai sebuah buku besar Amerika, tetapi nyatakanlah bahwa Alam Boy pulang ke rumah pada akhir pekan untuk menyerang stoples kue keluarga. While living the simple life in the woods, Thoreau walked into nearby Concord, Mass., almost every day. And his mom, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodie baskets filled with meals, pies and doughnuts every Saturday. The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their tree-house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle. [ 6

Bagaimana kita dapat mengingat ketidaktahuan kita, yang diperlukan oleh pertumbuhan, jika kita menggunakan pengetahuan kita sepanjang waktu. Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862, pengarang AS).

Jika Anda ingin menunjukkan kesalahan seseorang, lakukanlah hal yang benar. Orang lebih mudah percaya pada apa yang mereka lihat ketimbang apa yang Anda katakan. Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862, pengarang AS).

Saya tidak tahu fakta lain yang lebih membesarkan hati selain kemampuan manusia yang tidak diragukan untuk dapat meningkatkan kehidupannya melalui upaya yang disadarinya. Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862, pengarang AS).

Kebahagiaan kaum intelektual bersifat permanen, sementara kebahagiaan hati hanya sementara. Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862, pengarang AS).

Bacalah buku yang bermutu terlebih dahulu, atau Anda mungkin kehilangan kesempatan untuk membaca buku tersebut sama sekali. Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862, pengarang AS).