Thoreau un-Muzzled; or, Beyond Politics and Piety with Henry David Thoreau : The Seer of Walden Sounds off on War, Words, Government and God (A Free-Speech Friendly Sampler)

by Thoreau, Henry David

• ISBN13: 9780978880606
• ISBN10: 0978880609
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-22
• Publisher: Akoba Communications Llc

Summary

Thoreau Unmuzzled is a compilation of extracts and quotations from the works of nineteenth-century naturalist, philosopher and literary icon Henry David Thoreau. The book features a thematic approach consisting of five primary areas of focus: 1) values/ideals; 2) freedom-of-speech, the press and gossip; 3) human rights, slavery, abolitionism; 4) government, civil disobedience, patriotism and protest; and 5) religion and spirituality.

Author Biography

It is an oft-recounted fact that by the time of naturalist-philosopher Henry D. Thoreau's passing in 1862, his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson felt exasperated by his brilliant friend's apparent lack of ambition and Thoreau's confessed dallianceùserious or notùwith the idea of becoming what Emerson, in undisguised frustration, termed ôthe captain of a huckleberry-party.ö But although it took decades for Thoreau to settle into his true callingùnot until he was approaching forty-four years old, the age at which tuberculosis fatally overtook him, were there substantial indications that he might be poised to become a widely recognized writerùEmerson's disappointment eventually proved to be misplaced. For by then Thoreau had completed what was to become one of the world's most influential literary masterpieces: Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. Henry David Thoreau is best known for the two years (1845 to 1847) he lived in contemplative seclusion at the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts, in a tiny cabin he built with his own hands near the shores of Walden Pond. While sequestered there he made entries in his journal, which doubled as a ôcommonplace-bookö from which he would later mine material for published works, and completed his first (unsuccessful) book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which was based on a camping trip he and his brother took in a small sailboat. He also worked intensively there on early drafts of Walden. The rustic setting, and the meditative character of his work at Walden Pond-- which for the most part was interrupted only by extended walks to study and enjoy the surrounding land and its creatures-- might lead one to believe that Thoreau was merely an ineffectual, reclusive hippie of sortsùa starry-eyed nature lover with a nub pen. But although he loved both nature and solitude, he can be thought of as neither hermit nor hippie by constitution. And despite his deeply contemplative personality, the word ôineffectualö could never properly be applied to Henry Thoreau. All his days, the man who exhorted his readers to ôtake time by the forelockö was doing just that, as he very consciously and determinedly worked to ôdrive life into a corner,ö the better to see for himself what it is made of. From ground levelùto the eye of a neighbor, or even that of a friend like Emersonùthere was no discernibly predictable arc to the trajectory of Thoreau's career, such as he was considered to have one during his living years. Yet as acquaintances no doubt went scratching their heads over this literal walking enigma, his life was (to borrow a metaphor) a river all the while sedulously seeking its own course to the seaùwhere it would widen, posthumously at least, to greatness. Just who was Henry Thoreau, then? He was at once a scientist and a poet; an empiricist and a transcendentalist; a realist and a romantic. He was a self-described ônatural philosopherö who possessed a poet's sensibility, a seer's clear eye, and a broadly encompassing, firmly hands-on approach to the pursuit of knowledge. Above all, however, Thoreau saw himself as a writer. In finding his way there, the philosopher headed down a number of more or less dead-end trails, some of which might more accurately be likened to service roads in support of his art and purposely Spartan lifestyle. By turns Thoreau was (briefly) a forward-looking new teacher who butted heads with his school's administrators over a matter of student discipline, before he abruptly resigned the position; a groundbreaking schoolmaster in partnership with his brother John (again, briefly); and a tutor for a well-to-do family on New York's Staten Island (very briefly). He was naturally gifted with his hands, for a time serving the Emerson family as a valued live-in handyman, gardener and babysitter, later serving in his own family's business as an ingenious innovator in world class pencil manufacture. Thoreau authored one of the earliest treatises on forest succession; he was a passionate abolitionist who served as a ôconductorö for slaves escaping to Canada via the Underground Railroad; and he taught himself surveying, becoming respected in the field--literally. And lest it be thought that the famously economizing philosopher who is said to have considered ôa poetic lifeö among the highest of aspirations cared nothing at all for money, he was an assertive collector of debts owed to him for his writing. If the foregoing does not adequately suggest the scope of Thoreau's interests and motivations, biographers such as Robert D. Richardson (author of a wonderfully insightful profile, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind) have noted that the author had an artist's fascination with color and the visual effects of light and darkùa musician's, with the interplay of sound and silence. He was an avid reader of travelogues despite the fact that (or perhaps because) he was not himself very well traveled. He also enjoyed searching for Indian artifacts, and somewhat later in life undertook an increasingly concerted study of native culture. He even conducted personal research on the ebb and flow of local rivers, recording careful measurements over time. As noted earlier, Thoreau did a lot of walking. Almost daily he ôsaunteredö the woods and fields around Concord for several hours. But as Richardson has pointed out, he was not only a serious walker but a dedicated scholar as well, who spent a like amount of time each day reading and writing about everything from botany to eastern philosophy. Finally, there are hints that, in the months before his death, he had hoped to newly publish on at least some of the myriad subjects that had captured his interest. Certainly Thoreau had an almost infinite fascination with this world. Down through the decades Henry David Thoreau has made an impression on countless readers from all walks of life and from practically every part of the globe. Among his more celebrated readers, Thoreau's pithy comments on architecture were appreciated by Frank Lloyd Wright; and his writings on civil disobedience influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their separate struggles to secure basic human rights for people of color through peaceful means. Like so many of Thoreau's contemporaries, however, it seems that the poet Walt Whitman (who twice met Thoreau) viewed him with considerable skepticism. Whatever one thinks of Henry David Thoreau, surely the world is a better place for his short but remarkable life having been so thoroughly and honorably lived in it.