reading (Walden)
Mar. 24th, 2006 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorI finished Walden last weekend. It wasn't at all what I expected from the bits I'd heard about it, but then again I didn't know what to expect.
I have garnered a nice little collection of pithy quotes and I don't think I even scratched the surface of potential quotes to save. Thoreau amazes me by how he can be so economical in thought and word in places and so much a typical philosopher in others. For a few pages there would be this incredible concise, witty, curmudgeon talking to me. Then I'd spend five pages wading in Walden's cold spring waters with my nuggets freezing off, wondering when we're going to come back to shore. Thoreau brings up many valid economic and philosophical points. But sometimes his prejudices (it's not smarter just because it's written in Greek and it's not more holy just because it's from the East) wear thin as does the axe he has ground for a bit too long.
His descriptions of the woods, animals, and water take me back to the woods myself. Does he manage to capture that for those who've never witnessed the four seasons in New England? I don't know. Reading Walden has definitely given me the itch to get back out into New England again. He may not be a poet, but he loved his woods.
9. Henry David Thoreau "Walden"
I have garnered a nice little collection of pithy quotes and I don't think I even scratched the surface of potential quotes to save. Thoreau amazes me by how he can be so economical in thought and word in places and so much a typical philosopher in others. For a few pages there would be this incredible concise, witty, curmudgeon talking to me. Then I'd spend five pages wading in Walden's cold spring waters with my nuggets freezing off, wondering when we're going to come back to shore. Thoreau brings up many valid economic and philosophical points. But sometimes his prejudices (it's not smarter just because it's written in Greek and it's not more holy just because it's from the East) wear thin as does the axe he has ground for a bit too long.
His descriptions of the woods, animals, and water take me back to the woods myself. Does he manage to capture that for those who've never witnessed the four seasons in New England? I don't know. Reading Walden has definitely given me the itch to get back out into New England again. He may not be a poet, but he loved his woods.
9. Henry David Thoreau "Walden"
