About Thoreau

by Henry David Thoreau:

"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.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

From "Walden, or Life in the Woods"

About Walden

"Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer who uses surgically precise language, extended,allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence.

Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres.

He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers.

And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal insights into truth.

Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand."

— Ken Kifer

This is not to suggest that those people today who wish to live simply or want a small home are Transcendentalists, ... but here is something about this philosophical current that Thorough was part of:

About Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School.

Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature.

Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual.

They had faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.

It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

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