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    THOREAU: Walden
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• • 梭罗: 湖滨散记 / THOREAU: Walden
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  • HENRY DAVID THOREAUWaldenREAD BY WILLIAM HOPE ‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhapsit is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which hehears, however measured or far away.’ “I am a Schoolmaster – a Private Tutor, a Surveyor – a Gardener,a Farmer – a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, aDay-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glass-paper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes aPoetaster.” So wrote Henry David Thoreau.But he is remembered for two extraordinary years ofreflection while sojourning in nature, and his account of it, Walden, which was published in 1854. Though it had littleimpact during Thoreau’s lifetime, Walden is now recognized as one of the great works of American literature, asensitive but clear essay on life and living in nature, informed by an abidinginterest in classic literature and philosophy. Henry David Thoreau was born in the village of Concord,Massachusetts, in 1817, into an unremarkable family. His father owned a pencilfactory. Henry revealed academic potential early, and went to Harvard to study‘navigation’ (as he says in Walden), butspent much of his student years in the library, pursuing his own vicariousliterary interests. On his return in 1837 he became a teacher at the ConcordAcademy – for two weeks. His sensitive, poetic temperament was not suited tokeeping boisterous pupils in order. He left to join his father in thepencil-making business. The following year, in 1838, he started a school withhis brother John, putting into practice his more progressive ideas abouteducation, but John’s growing ill health forced closure. In 1839, he went, with John, on a canoe trip down theMcCormack and Concord rivers. It was a key experience, crystallizing his needto combine his interests in nature and writing. It resulted in the publicationof A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers ten years later. By this time, he had already formed a close friendship withthe poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the leading figures of theTranscendentalists, who by coincidence had settled in Concord. Here, in thismovement, and particularly in the fatherly figure of Emerson, Thoreau found anexternal, eloquent voice which accorded with his inner feelings: the concernfor the individual vision, the emphasis on living with an awareness of nature,and the elevation of intuition rather than reason in dealing with life. It was the vision that Thoreau craved, one that provided astance against the growing commercialism and materialism that he foundeverywhere in the burgeoning American society. Prompted by Emerson, Thoreaustarted a diary and wrote copiously. He began writing for The Dial, the Transcendentalist magazine, producing essays,reviews and poetry. It was here that his first writings on nature appeared.Between 1841 and 1843, Thoreau lived mainly with Emerson, his wife andchildren. It was a difficult period for Thoreau. His brother John died oflockjaw, and a time spent on Staten Island (with the family of Emerson’sbrother William) trying to establish himself as a poet in a more metropolitansociety failed. Thoreau went back to Concord, and to his father’s pencilfactory. And then early in 1845, he decided to live alone in the countryside.Emerson owned some land two miles outside Concord, by a small lake, Walden Pondand Thoreau, now aged 27, found it ideally suited to his purpose. There, hebuilt a small cabin and, sojourning in nature, read and observed, living onfood that he could gather, and beans that he grew. This combination of livingin nature, all senses alert, with his background in classic literature andphilosophy, and a sense of spiritual purpose produced Walden. Thoreau spent two years by Walden Pond – not exclusively,for he returned to Concord from time to time. When he left his cabin finally,in 1847, he went back to stay at the Emerson home while Emerson himself wasaway in Europe. And gradually, he accustomed himself to more conventionalsociety. He took charge of his father’s pencil factory though it never becameparticularly profitable; he developed a reputation as a reliable surveyor; hemade other naturalist trips. But he also became involved in a variety of causes,principally the abolition of slavery. He supported the Underground Railway; theclandestine movement that helped runaway slaves reach Canada and freedom. Headmired John Brown, the anti-slavery campaigner, who was hanged for the debacleat Harper’s Ferry. (His essay Civil Disobedience reflected his more proactivepolitical views, and widely influenced movements in the 20th century). Thoreau continued to work at his writings and memories ofhis time at Walden Pond. In 1854, Walden was finally published, but it wasn’t aovernight critical success. Yet it did reach a select circle. In 1855, GeorgeEliot, in London, praised it in a review in the Westminster Magazine, commenting on its ‘deep poetic sensibility’ andremarking on its ‘unworldliness’. When A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was published in 1849, 1,000 copies were printed.100 were sold, 75 were given away, and in 1853, the publisher dumped 706 copieson Thoreau’s doorstep. Walden faredbetter – the initial print run of 2,000 was sold within five years – though itwas only in the 20th century that it finally achieved status as a classic inits own right. Thoreau died, probably of tuberculosis, in 1862, at the ageof 44. It was said he went out into the woods to count tree rings, and caught abad cold. He was buried in Concord.His cabin didn’t last much longer. When Thoreau left it,Emerson who later sold it to his gardener, Hugh Whelan, bought the cabin. Itstarted to fall into repair, and in 1849, a farmer who moved it to his farmwhere it was used to store grain bought it. In 1868, the roof was used to makea pigsty and in 1875, the last pieces of timber shored up a barn. However, areplica has now been built and can be viewed, by Route 126, on the originalsite by Walden Pond. Notes by Nicolas Soames ABOUT THE READERThough American by birth, William Hope trained at RADA andhas appeared in theater on both sides of the Atlantic. His television and filmwork have been similarly extensive and have included leading roles for JamesCameron in Aliens, Clive Barker in HellraiserII and for Channel 4, Droppingthe Baby. A former member of the BBC RadioDrama Company, he is regularly heard on radio in both plays and books.
  • • 作品列表
    • • CD01
      • 作品编号：38608  Walden

      • Economy

      • 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation'

      • 'I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.'

      • 'Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets...'

      • 'My purpose in going to Walden Pond...'

      • 'As for a Shelter, man did not live long on earth...'

      • 'The farmer is endeavouring to solve the problem of a livelihood...'

      • 'Most men appear never to have considered what a house is...'

      • 'Near the end of March 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods...'

      • 'I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house...'

      • 'By surveying, carpentry and day-labour...'

      • 'I have learned from my two years' experience...'

      • 'My furniture, part of which I made myself...'

      • 'For more than five years I maintained myself thus...'

      • 'But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say,'

      • CD02
      • 作品编号：38608  Walden

      • Where I lived and what I lived for

      • 'When I first took up my abode in the woods...'

      • 'Every morning I got up early and bathed in the pond...'

      • 'Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner...'

      • Reading

      • Sounds

      • 'The Fitchburg Railroad touches the post about a hundred rods south of where I dwell.'

      • 'Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them..'

      • Solitude

      • Visitors

      • 'Many a traveller came out of his way to see me...'

      • 'Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric man...'

      • The Bean-Field

      • CD03
      • 作品编号：38608  Walden

      • The Village

      • The Ponds

      • 'In summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun..'

      • 'The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October..'

      • I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet...'

      • Baker Farm

      • Higher Laws

      • 'I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without failing a little. ..'

      • Brute Neighbours

      • 'I was witness to events of a less peaceful character.'

      • 'Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond..'

      • 'House-Warming

      • CD04
      • 作品编号：38608  Walden

      • 'The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves..'

      • Former inhabitants; and winter visitors

      • 'At this season I seldom had a visitor.'

      • Winter Animals

      • 'When the ground was not yet quite covered yet..'

      • The Pond in Winter

      • 'In the winter of '46-7, a hundred Irishmen with Yankee overseers..'

      • Spring

      • 'What is man but a mass of thawing clay?'

      • 'A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades

      • Conclusion