Life and Background of Thoreau
In his lifetime, Ralph Waldo Emerson became the most widely known man of letters in . In , Emerson also purchased the land on the shore of Walden Pond where he was . never imitate” for if the relationship is secondary the connection is lost. . Emerson's advice for the conduct of life is to learn to swim with the tide. Recent articles focusing upon the relationship of Emerson and Thoreau in- clude Leonard Writings of Henry D. Thoreau (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press). 3The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Wil- . ing Emerson's advice, he had underwritten the cost of pro- ducing the . Henry David Thoreau was a twenty-year-old scholarship student at Harvard when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in Despite the disparity in their circumstances, Thoreau and Emerson quickly formed a close relationship that lasted until of feelings Emerson and Thoreau had for one another in ways that assume a.
Oxford Dictionary of English. The transcendental question turns towards the subject, assuming that the subject in the process of cognition constitutes the object in his consciousness. Accordingly, cognition is not to be understood as a passive acceptance of a given fact, but as an active accomplishment of the subject. Thus, Kant deduces that we are able to recognize certain general regularities and phenomena of reality, because they already exist a priori in our cognitive faculty and are projected into objects.
He saw reason as a higher spiritual faculty, where ideas in their significance - according to Plato 23 - as unique, true and original images dwell. The opening sentences of the essay have a spontaneous and self-reliant character in their denial of all tradition. It builds the sepulchers of our fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. Emerson calls for breaking with conformity, and insists on becoming more self-reliant. As manifestations of Divine Creation, they are all accessible to the human mind.
We, through their eyes. Gazing at the stars, he becomes aware of his own separateness from the material world. Visible every night, they demonstrate that God is ever-present. Emerson saw a special bond between the object of observation and the observer, especially in the human capacity to rejoice in something. When retreating oneself in nature, the individual can experience them as parallel creations of the same omnipresent Spirit.
He discloses that the human being is endowed with a particular property which enables him to recognize the identity of man and nature. Thus, the image of the subject and object sharing one particular property is similar to the Kantian a priori idea: In nature, the individual casts off his earthly existence and experiences the divine universal spirit as a force which flows through man and nature.
Due to this energy which dwells also in man, the individual is able to experience a moment of confidence and delight in the eternal universal energy: In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life is always a child.
In the woods there is a perpetual youth.
My Friend, My Friend
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. I am standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into the infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes.
I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God.
In the contemplative removal of all ontological restrictions between subjectivity and the absolute being by abolishment of all egotistic aspirations, the individual experiences a sameness among nature, God and himself. In the moment of immersion with the Universal Soul, the individual encounters the greatest form of blessedness. To experience awe in the presence of nature, means to approach it with a balance between our inner and outer senses.
Therefore, it is the particular harmony between man's inner processes and the outer world that enables the soul to elevate itself. Thus, Emerson shifts religious significance towards the moral responsibility of the individual.
He makes clear that only he, who pays attention to his conscience, may live in harmony with his own self and the surrounding world: He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted […] If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being.
Thus, he discerns that every decision, every action has its equilibrating counterpart in the universe of causality. In this self-regulating system each action is followed by its consequence and falls back on the actor himself. Reward and punishment are not issued by an external divine power, but are the result of a continuously balancing universe: There is no other separate, ultimate resource, for God is within him, God about him, he is a part of God himself. In order to be perpetually open to its sound, the soul must be free from material attachments and egotistic interests.
The individual should be self-sufficient, self-reliant and should be able to rest within his own self. Here the idea of a divine spirit dwelling in the individual is manifested: At the same time, it carries the idea forward, representing the subject not only as the originator, but grounding the relationship pertaining to cognition in the shared essence between man and nature.
It therefore accentuates the identity between man, nature and God. Blinde Figuren in Texten sehender Autoren. The Teachers of Emerson. As maintained by this theory, the genesis of the world is a repercussion of the emanation of the Highest Being. This emanation occurred gradually, wherein lower forms emerged from higher stages of existence. In line with this system, the individual is part of the world soul, which implies, vice versa, that the world soul is inherent in each individual soul.
This mystical experience requires the identity of the individual soul with the world soul. Furthermore, he identifies the human soul as an emanation of the universally existent sublime spirit: Nevertheless, he did not accept him entirely, because Goethe had not committed himself to the moral instance of the individual. In he withdrew from society for more than two years and, building a simple cabin at Walden Pond, 48 sought a deep and true relation to life.
His account of this experience was recorded in Walden; or, Life in the Woods Or, life in the Woods. 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. He discovered that simplicity in the physical aspects of life brings depth to our mind, carries our soul to its fullest potential, and causes our imagination to be uplifted in sucha a way as to change our lives.
Like Emerson, he recognized that, in nature, mean egotism vanishes and primitive needs do not arise. In his chapter on economics he reveals the first premise of his philosophy: He saw in the simplicity of life a major condition of the achievement of a natural relation between man and nature: I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit.
So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots are. Thoreau as a romantic naturalist. His shifting stance toward nature. Hence, he propagated a close observation of the natural world and, in particular, of the various interrelations between animals, plants and birds. Thoreau himself filled numerous pages with the most detailed observation of the natural phenomena and processes which were displayed in front of his eyes during his stay in the woods.
He illustrates the cyclical course of the seasons, giving each observation his personal note of impression. The most abundant and delightful portrayal is devoted to the spring.
Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism
Here his rejoicing in the majesty of nature as well as in the harmony of renewal is most evident: At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
In order to partake in nature this way we must let go of our thoughts because they tend to separate us from nature: To establish an intimate relation to nature, the human needs to detach himself from his observant position and surrender himself to the respect due to the very source of his being. The Thoreau brothers shunned physical punishment.
Successful though the school was, John's declining health forced its closing in This journey later provided the raw material for Thoreau's first published work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers published in Also during the period when they were teaching colleagues, Henry and John fell in love with the same girl, Ellen Sewall of Scituate, older sister of their pupil Edmund Sewall. Both proposed marriage — John in July ofHenry later that year. Neither won Ellen's hand.
Ellen later married the Reverend Joseph Osgood. None of John and Cynthia Thoreau's four children ever married. Emerson's sisterand Mary Moody Emerson Emerson's strong-minded, forthright, and eccentric aunt. Having closed his Concord Academy, Thoreau accepted an invitation to move into the Emerson household as a live-in handyman.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
He stayed with the Emersons from to Emerson, fourteen years older than Thoreau, had moved to Concord inwhile Thoreau was a student at Harvard. After Thoreau's graduation from Harvard and his return to Concord ina close bond had developed between the two. Because Emerson was older, published, and already a leader among Transcendental thinkers, he filled the roles of teacher and patron as well as friend to Thoreau.
But in the early s, it suited both men. Under Emerson's influence, Thoreau increasingly turned his thoughts to writing. While living in the Emerson home, he enjoyed the benefits of Emerson's encouragement, support, and advice.
He also benefited from access to Emerson's library, which included important works of Oriental literature of great interest to Thoreau, books not readily available elsewhere. Members of the Transcendental Club came to Concord to converse with Emerson, and Thoreau was welcome among them. Thoreau contributed to The Dial during this period, and edited the April issue for Emerson, who became editor of the periodical after Margaret Fuller's resignation in Thoreau and Emerson also shared the common bond of grief from January ofwhen Thoreau's brother John died of lockjaw and Emerson's first child Waldo died of scarlet fever.
Thoreau would again live in the Emerson household from towhile Emerson was in Europe. Byhowever, the friendship was strained. Despite their respect for one another, Emerson's sense of Thoreau's promise and Thoreau's idealization of Emerson did not quite fit the reality of how each conducted his life. Thoreau did not vigorously pursue the visible success as a writer of which Emerson thought him capable.
Emerson increasingly became a man of the world and traveled in literary and social circles that Thoreau disdained. When Thoreau died inEmerson delivered the eulogy at the First Parish in Concord; it was later expanded for publication in the August issue of Atlantic Monthly.
The piece, titled "Thoreau," clearly conveys Emerson's disappointment in what Thoreau had achieved. He delighted in observing the local plant life, so different from that of his native town; he enjoyed the ocean; he visited New York City; he read and was able to take books out of the New York Society Library; he met Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, who helped him to publish some of his work in magazines.
But Thoreau was unable to sell as many of his pieces as he had hoped he might. Moreover, he did not feel much intellectual kinship with the William Emersons, and he missed Concord. By the end ofThoreau was ready to return to the landscape and the community that formed such a large part of his identity. Thoreau once again applied himself to the family pencil-making business, so improving the product that it was widely acknowledged as superior.
He remained involved with the pencil business to one degree or another until the end of his life, taking it over with his sister Sophia after their father's death in Thoreau also renewed his association with the Concord Lyceum, both as lecturer and as curator for the — season.
Although he also lectured outside Concord, Thoreau was never one of those popular lecturers who were solidly booked and who spoke to packed halls on the lyceum circuit. Thoreau's friends and associates ranged from philosophers and authors to local farmers, whose ingenuity and simplicity he admired, to the outcast Irish who came to town to build the Fitchburg Railroad in the early s. Concord at the time was home not only to Emerson, but also to Bronson Alcott; the poet William Ellery Channing nephew and namesake of the liberal minister who had been so important in establishing American Unitarianism ; and Nathaniel Hawthorne who lived in the Old Manse from towhile it was vacant following the death of Ezra Ripley.
This community of thinkers and writers was extended by the many visitors — Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, and Theodore Parker, for example — who visited Emerson. Thoreau and Edward Hoar accidentally set fire to the woods near Concord's Fairhaven Bay in April ofan event described in detail in Thoreau's journal. Late inEmerson purchased land around Walden Pond. Thoreau had for some time been drawn to the idea of living with nature, away from town life.
Thoreau himself had tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission to build a cabin on Sandy Pond. Emerson's purchase of land at Walden provided Thoreau with the opportunity he craved to live simply in nature and to devote himself to writing. He wanted to work the story of his journey with his brother John on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers into a book.
In March ofThoreau began cutting pines at Walden for lumber to build his cabin. The cabin was sufficiently finished to live in by July 4 of that year, when he moved in, although the chimney had not yet been built nor the shingling and plastering completed.
Between the time he moved in and his departure from Walden on September 6,Thoreau lived self-sufficiently, as he wrote in the first paragraph of Walden "earning my living by the labor of my hands only.
He focused on the essentials only and spent the time that was not necessary for obtaining them on what was most important to him — observing the world around him and writing. Thoreau looked for the higher laws behind the facts of his existence. He did not, contrary to popular misconception in his own time and ours, live the life of a hermit or misanthrope.
He visited family and friends in town often, and they returned the gesture. The experiment at Walden did what Thoreau had hoped and intended it would.
He left Walden with the completed manuscript of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and with much material that would eventually form his Walden as well.
Inas Thoreau was preparing to build his cabin at the pond, he became involved in a local controversy that resulted in his taking a public stand on the side of abolition. There was opposition within the Concord Lyceum to inviting abolitionist Wendell Phillips to speak, ending in an abrupt change of Lyceum management and in the extension of the invitation to Phillips. Phillips had earlier spoken before the Concord Lyceum, to the discomfort of some of the more conservative members of the community.
The letter was published in the March 28,issue. Thoreau's stance was in keeping with his family's ardent abolitionism. In July ofwhile living at Walden, Thoreau was arrested and jailed for nonpayment of the poll tax, which he had refused to pay since in protest against government complicity in slavery. Although Thoreau's debt was paid by an anonymous benefactor, and he therefore spent only one night behind bars, the event was significant because it led directly to the preparation of one of his most influential writings.
The piece was later published under the title Civil Disobedience. Thoreau had had difficulty in arranging for the book's publication, and had finally had one thousand copies published at his own expense. Most of those copies remained unsold and eventually came back to him. In the fall ofThoreau again took up residence in the Emerson home, where he remained until July ofwhen he moved back into his parents' home and took odd jobs to earn money.
In the late s, he became proficient and sought-after as a land and property surveyor, a line of work that allowed him to spend time outdoors. He worked not only for private property owners, but also for the Town of Concord, assisting in laying out roads and walking the bounds in his capacity as "Civil Engineer. Thoreau's precision and accuracy as a surveyor were highly valued.
In the period after he returned from Walden, Thoreau reveled in tramping about the woods and fields of Concord, sometimes with the Emerson children and other young companions, and explored in his journal what Concord meant to him. He wrote repeatedly of the place as a sufficient microcosm of the world, at least as hospitable to individual development and self-realization as any larger, older, or more cosmopolitan place.
In his journal entry for March 11,for example, he wrote: If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss. At best, Paris could only be a school in which to learn to live here, a stepping stone to Concord, a school in which to fit for this university.
I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events. As deeply as Thoreau loved Concord, there was undeniably a certain philosophical detachment in his appreciation of it.
The search for transcendent truth outweighed the attractions of specific locality for him.
The simplification of and deliberate approach to life had been the crucial aspects of his experiment at Walden. Others, he knew, could find meaning in Waldens of their own, without ever setting foot in Concord. During the late s and the s, Thoreau made a number of excursions beyond Concord — to Maine first visited by Thoreau inwhile he lived at Walden in and ; to Cape Cod in,and ; to Quebec in ; to Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire which he visited repeatedly over the years in and ; and to the White Mountains to which he first journeyed in with his brother John in In July ofThoreau made a somber trip to Fire Island, off New York, to search for the body of Margaret Fuller, who had died in a shipwreck on her return to America with her Italian husband and their young child.
Thoreau sometimes took companions when he traveled, among them Ellery Channing and Edward Sherman Hoar. Thoreau's trips to Maine afforded him the chance to observe Native Americans. Since boyhood, Thoreau had been fascinated by Indians. There were Indians in Concord even in the s, but their culture had long since lost its integrity. In Maine, Indians were still to a degree able to live "free and unconstrained in Nature.
In Concord, Thoreau was a collector of arrowheads and other artifacts, highly skilled at finding them in places where others never suspected they might lay.
He also kept volumes of research notes on the Indians, intending but ultimately unable to write a book on the subject. For seven years after Thoreau's return from Walden Pond inhe worked and reworked his material about his sojourn there, extensively and repeatedly revising what he had produced. The book was published in August of by the Boston company of Ticknor and Fields, publishers of a number of major authors of the American Renaissance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
Walden was more widely and better reviewed than A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers had been, and it sold well. Thoreau found fellowship with others after the cooling of his relationship with Emerson.
Ellery Channing — who accompanied him on walks around Concord — was chief among them. With the publication of his Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist inChanning later became the first biographer of Thoreau.