ebook img

Thoreau, Henry D. - Walden PDF

371 Pages·2012·2.41 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Thoreau, Henry D. - Walden

The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau Walden 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. HENRY D. THOREAU Walden EDITED BY J. LYNDON SHANLEY INTRODUCTION BY JOYCE CAROL OATES PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS The Center emblem means that one of a panel of textual experts serving the Center has reviewed the text and textual apparatus of the original volume by thorough and scrupulous sampling, and has approved them for sound and consistent editorial principles employed and maximum accuracy attained. The accuracy of the text has been guarded by careful and repeated proofreading of printer's copy according to standards set by the Center. Editorial expenses for this volume have been met in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities administered through the Center for Editions of American Authors of the Modern Language Association Copyright © 1971 by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 First paperback printing, 1989 Introduction to the paperback edition © 1988 by The Ontario Review, and reprinted by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved. LCC 72-120764 ISBN 0-691-06194-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862. Walden. I. Shanley, J. Lyndon (James Lyndon), 1910- II. Title. PS3048.A2S5 1988 813'303 88-32507 Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief, Elizabeth Hall Witherell Executive Committee Walter Harding William L. Howarth Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Textual Editor William Rossi Robert Sattelmeyer, General Editor for the Journal Heather Kirk Thomas The Writings Walden, J. Lyndon Shanley (1971) The Maine Woods, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1972) Reform Papers, Wendell Glick (1973) Early Essays and Miscellanies, Joseph J. Moldenhauer et al. (1975) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Carl F. Hovde et al. (1980) Journal 1: 1837-1844, Elizabeth Hall Witherell et al. (1981) Journal 2: 1842-1848, Robert Sattelmeyer (1984) Translations,K.P. Van Anglen (1986) Cape Cod, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1988) Journal 3: 1848-1851, Robert Sattelmeyer et al. (1990) Journal 4: 1851-1852, Leonard N. Neufeldt and Nancy Craig Simmons (1992) Journal 5: 1852-1853, Patrick F. O'Connell (1997) This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates ix Economy 3 Where I Lived, and What I Lived For 81 Reading 99 Sounds 111 Solitude 129 Visitors 140 The Bean-Field 155 The Village 167 The Ponds 173 Baker Farm 201 Higher Laws 210 Brute Neighbors 223 House-Warming 238 Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors 256 Winter Animals 271 The Pond in Winter 282 Spring 299 Conclusion 320 Index by Paul O. Williams 335 This page intentionally left blank Introduction I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one . . . but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!— Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we? —Thoreau, "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," 1848 Of our classic American writers Henry David Thoreau is the supreme poet of doubleness, of evasion and mystery. Who is he? Where does he stand? Is he to be defined even by his own words, deliberately and fastidiously chosen as they are, and famously much revised? The facts of his life, available in any Thoreau "chronology," seem more detached from the man himself than such facts commonly do: Thoreau warns us that the outward aspect of his life may be "no more I than it is you." He boasts of having the capacity to stand as remote from himself as from another. He is both actor and spectator. He views himself as a participant in Time as if he were a kind of fiction—"a work of the imagination only." We know with certainty of the historical man, born 12 July 1817, Concord, Massachusetts, and who died 6 May 1862, Concord, Massachusetts; what lies between is a mystery. Perhaps for these reasons, and because of the redoubt- able tone of Thoreau's voice, he is the most controversial of American writers. Whether he writes with oneiric precision of thawing earth, or a ferocious war between red and black ants, or the primeval beauty of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, or in angry defense of the martyred John Brown ("I do not wish to kill or be killed but I can foresee circumstances in which both of these things would be by me unavoidable"), he as-

Description:
this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!— a context of other social beings similarly hypnotized by the mystery of their own .. maimed soldier ants under a microscope; the analogue with the human world is too
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.