Embedded Files
HENRY THOREAU CONCEPTS
WALDEN 1854
CONCEPTS FOR “WHERE I LIVED, WHAT I LIVED FOR”:
1 PARADOX OF POSSESSION:
2 EYE IS THE GREATEST ARTIST:
3 NATURE EVOKES RENEWAL, SIMPLICITY, AND INNOCENCE in HUMANS:
4 NATURAL TIME v HUMAN TIME:
5 A LIFE WORTHY OF CONTEMPLATION:
6 EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE DIVINE:
7 SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE:
8 OPPORTUNITY COST :
9 GOD CULMINATES IN THE PRESENT MOMENT:
10 ETERNITY CULMINATES IN EACH MOMENT:
Burning the Small Dead Branches
Burning the small dead
branches
broke from beneath
thick spreading whitebark pine.
a hundred summers
snowmelt rock and air
hiss in a twisted bough.
sierra granite;
Mt. Ritter-
black rock twice as old.
Deneb, Altair
windy fire
--Gary Snyder
TERMS FOR “WHERE I LIVED” AND “SOUNDS”
Machine in the Garden (Leo Marx):
---HUMAN TIME / RAILROAD TIME:
---no yard! No nature! AND ECOCENTRISM:
CONCEPTS ON “SOLITUDE”:
THREE REASONS HENRY THOREAU ACHIEVED WAS NOT LONELY WHILE ALONE AT WALDEN POND:
1 ORGANIC TRANSCENDENCE:
2 APPERCEPTION:
3 SPIRITUALITY:
HENRY THOREAU’S “SPRING” and “CONCLUSION” CONCEPTS:
Goal 1: Use your concept sheet to answer at least one of the essential questions below.
Goal 2: Complete the entire concept sheet by listening to others define their concepts and connect it to the essential
Essential Questions from Thoreau:
1 Why is Thoreau still considered the father of modern envrionmentalism?
2 How does Thoreau’s “organic transcendence” differ from Emerson’s
“deified transcendence”?
3 Why is it significant that Thoreau has the spring thaw reclaim the manmade railroad sandbank right next to Walden pond?
THOREAU TERMS FOR “SPRING” and “CONCLUSION”
---Nature reclaims the railroad / artificial:
“there is an indemnity (protection against loss) in the inviolable order for the world” (Emerson)
---God as Landscape Artist: “never more present than now”
---Nothing inorganic= “no nature”
---Interconnectivity and microcosm-macrocosm: spiritually and ecologically
“one hillside illustrated the principle of all of nature”
---- Organic Transcendence: “Am I not partly leaves a vegetable myself?"
-----“Preserve the Equilibrium of Nature” 553
--- Human Animal: “Live like a plant or animal without living an animal life.”
--- Wilderness Preservation: must have “unexplored forests and meadows” surrounding our “villages”
--- THEORY OF ACTION: Perception--> Understanding--> Action: 557 “land and sea must be infinitely wild, unsurveyed, and unfathomed by us because unfathomable”
--- Paradox of Perceiving wilderness: 557 desire to know nature stems from our inability to know nature
-wilderness preservation stems from knowledge that wilderness is unknowable.
“we need the tonic of wildness…to witness our limits transgressed”
UNIVERSAL INNOCENCE OF NATURE: what seems amoral to humans is innocent and in equilibrium beyond our measure.
“CONCLUSION”
1. “The universe is wider than our views of it” : humility leads to respect for wilderness
2. “Other lives to live”:
3. Simplify life for true perception of “solitude, poverty, and weakness”:
4. Self Reliance and Drumbeats:
5. Metamorphic Motifs: 571-2
-table larva-butterfly
-societal self to natural self
-impure to pure
-animal to spiritual
-railroad bank to nature
-seed to flower
-cold to warmth
-winter to spring
-anthropocentric to ecocentric
Page updated
Report abuse