Henry D. Thoreau

 

 

David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years, he accepted the ideas of Transcendentalism. Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a second-growth forest around the shores of beautiful Walden Pond and lived in a tiny self-built house. Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. Over several years, he worked off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript. In 1854, he published 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 regard it as a classic American book that explores natural

The

 

 

simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions. Thoreau's retreat to Walden is often seen as a rejection of civilization. However Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor did he fully embrace wilderness in the sense of pristine untouched land. Instead he sought a balance, appreciating both nature and civilization. The wildness Thoreau enjoyed was the nearby swamp. He preferred "partially cultivated country." He saw the wilderness of Maine as a place to visit to re-create but not to remain. Thoreau's concept of wilderness was a place used by man. For Thoreau "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail" rather then the pristine untouched wilderness we often associate with the word wilderness today.

 
 
 

Thoreau´s work

 

 
  • A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
  • Walden (1854)
  • Excursions (1863)
  • Life Without Principle
  • The Maine Woods (1864)
  • Cape Cod (1865)
  • Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881)
  • Summer (1884)
  • Winter (1888)
  • Autumn (1892)
  • Miscellanies (1894)
  • Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1906)

 

 
  English