Because he was right", "Browse | Cornell University Library Making of America Collection", "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers from Project Gutenberg", "The Atlantic Monthly Volume 0012 Issue 71 (September 1863)", "The Atlantic Monthly Volume 0012 Issue 72 (November 1863)", "Thoreau's Cape Cod an annotated edition", "The bluebird carries the sky on his back", "Thoreau's "Wild Fruits" | Frances Richard", "The Foundations of Thoreau's 'Castles in the Air'", "Henry David Thoreau: Founding Father of American Libertarian Thought", American Writers: A Journey Through History, Works by Henry David Thoreau in eBook form, Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_David_Thoreau&oldid=1094297129, American non-fiction environmental writers, Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Articles containing Spanish-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, BalthropLewis, Alda. There he studied Greek and Latin as well as German. [26] Henry David (18171862) died at age 44, of tuberculosis. [62] In fact, this proved an opportunity to contrast American civic spirit and democratic values with a colony apparently ruled by illegitimate religious and military power. Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay titled "Resistance to Civil Government" (also known as "Civil Disobedience"). [9] Echoing this belief, he went on to write: "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. The book drew from a boating trip he took with his brother John in 1839. ", Sullivan, Mark W. "Henry David Thoreau in the American Art of the 1950s. For other uses, see, American essayist, poet, and philosopher (18171862), Reconstruction of the interior of Thoreau's cabin, Replica of Thoreau's cabin and a statue of him near Walden Pond, "Civil Disobedience" and the Walden years, 18451850, Intellectual interests, influences, and affinities. Thoreau held deeply felt political views, opposing slavery and the Mexican-American War. [101], Likewise, his condemnation of the MexicanAmerican War did not stem from pacifism, but rather because he considered Mexico "unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army" as a means to expand the slave territory.[102]. ", arguing the affirmative. In response to such criticisms, English novelist George Eliot, writing for the Westminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded: Peoplevery wise in their own eyeswho would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.[146]. [41] It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. Harding, Walter (1991). Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates nature and culture. [30] He was a member of the Institute of 1770[31] (now the Hasty Pudding Club). [43] There, from 1841 to 1844, he served as the children's tutor; he was also an editorial assistant, repairman and gardener. Martin Luther King Jr. noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of nonviolent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attending Morehouse College. "[59], Thoreau moved out of Emerson's house in July 1848 and stayed at a house on nearby Belknap Street. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. "Thoreau, Homer and Community", in, Miller, Barbara S. "Why Did Henry David Thoreau Take the Bhagavad-Gita to Walden Pond? I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the American Civil War entire armies of the North were literally singing Brown's praises. He spent a night in jail after refusing to pay a poll tax. [1] He disapproved of the subjugation of Native Americans, slavery, technological utopianism, consumerism, philistinism, mass entertainment, and frivolous applications of technology.[1]. We strive for accuracy and fairness. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of the four seasons to symbolize human development. Thoreau felt a need to concentrate and work more on his writing. And he knew that New England's ice merchants were shipping ice to foreign ports, including Calcutta. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. https://www.biography.com/writer/henry-david-thoreau. Midway in his Walden sojourn Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Edward Waldo Emerson wrote that the name should be pronounced "Th-row", with the h sounded and stress on the first syllable. Since its publication in 1849, "Civil Disobedience" has inspired many leaders of protest movements around the world. Gionfriddo, Michael. He admired William Bartram and Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson house. Transcendentalism strove for reform yet insisted that reform begin with the individual, not the group or organization. Over the years, Walden has inspired and informed the work of naturalists, environmentalists and writers. [90] One scholar has suggested that he wrote the poem to Edmund because he could not bring himself to write it to Edmund's sister Anna,[91] and another that Thoreau's "emotional experiences with women are memorialized under a camouflage of masculine pronouns",[92] but other scholars dismiss this. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. In his later years, Thoreau battled an illness that had plagued him for decades. He finally succumbed to the disease on May 6, 1862. Works of art are our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. Do you know who said this? For a time, Thoreau lived with Emerson as a caretaker for his home. [138], For the 200th anniversary of his birth, publishers released several new editions of his work: a recreation of Walden's 1902 edition with illustrations, a picture book with excerpts from Walden, and an annotated collection of Thoreau's essays on slavery. Captained by Emerson, the Transcendentalists started a magazine, The Dial. Sometimes Thoreau worked as a land surveyor or in the pencil factory. [43]:234 He self-published the book on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its 'incisive logic unanswerable' and referring to Thoreau as 'one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced'. Some scholars have suggested that homoerotic sentiments run through his writings and concluded that he was homosexual. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer.[5]. He lived in Hollis Hall[29] and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. And his major work, Walden, has offered up an interesting antidote to living in the modern rat race. He wrote some poemsa good many, in factfor several years. [147], Recent criticism has accused Thoreau of hypocrisy, misanthropy, and being sanctimonious, based on his writings in Walden,[148] although this criticism has been perceived as highly selective.[149][150][151]. [63], In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history and narratives of travel and expedition. [120] Mohandas Gandhi first read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights activist in Johannesburg, South Africa. [57] Over several years, as he worked to pay off his debts, he continuously revised the manuscript of what he eventually published as Walden, or Life in the Woods in 1854, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. Some of Thoreau's first works were published in The Dial, a Transcendentalist magazine. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres (5.7 hectares) that Emerson had bought,[51] .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}1+12 miles (2.5 kilometers) from his family home. "[5]), flute playing (reminiscent of the favorite musical pastime of Krishna),[105] and yoga.[106]. [85], Thoreau's sexuality has long been the subject of speculation, including by his contemporaries. Henry David Thoreau, (born July 12, 1817, Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.died May 6, 1862, Concord), American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorded in his masterwork, Walden (1854), and for having been a vigorous advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849). The traditional professions open to college graduateslaw, the church, business, medicinedid not interest Thoreau,[35]:25 so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught at a school in Canton, Massachusetts, living for two years at an earlier version of today's Colonial Inn in Concord. Blake, he wrote about yoga and its meaning to him: Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who practice yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruits of their works. This experience led him to write one of his best-known and most influential essays, "Civil Disobedience" (also known as "Resistance to Civil Government"). [96] Thoreau was strongly influenced by the moral reformers of his time, and this may have instilled anxiety and guilt over sexual desire.[97]. Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson; Johnson, Alvin Saunders, eds. "[81], He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet[82] and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819), which begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.[56]. These seeds are likely to germinate and grow should the squirrel die or abandon the stash. [18] His obituary was lumped in with others rather than as a separate article in an 1862 yearbook. Thoreau was ambivalent towards industrialization and capitalism. The book was a modest success, but it wasn't until much later that the book reached a larger audience. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for his work and spoke at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts", as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836). ", Hendrick, George and Oehlschlaeger, Fritz (eds.). Aware he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian". Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. "Thoreau" redirects here. He visited the woods of Maine and the shoreline of Cape Cod several times. Still fascinated with nature, Thoreau wrote down his observations on plant and wildlife in his native Concord and on his journeys. Thoreau eventually started writing about his Walden Pond experiment as well. [1] He participated as a conductor in the Underground Railroad, delivered lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law, and in opposition to the popular opinion of the time, supported radical abolitionist militia leader John Brown and his party. I Found No Peace. [22] David Henry was named after his recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience', written about 80years ago."[123]. he asked. At the end of each day players are invited to reflect on their journal which gradually fills up with reflections based on the player's journey and day-to-day experiences. Furthermore, in "The Pond in Winter", he equates Walden Pond with the sacred Ganges river, writing: In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. "The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right," he wrote. American-English poet, playwright, and literary critic. He studied at Harvard College between 1833 and 1837. [37][38] He died in Henry's arms.[39]. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. (1937). Thoreau also took a brave stand for Captain John Brown, a radical abolitionist who led an uprising against slavery in Virginia. Many were curious about his revolutionary lifestyle, and this interest provided the creative spark for a collection of essays. [86][88][89] The elegy "Sympathy" was inspired by the eleven-year-old Edmund Sewall, who had just spent five days in the Thoreau household in 1839. As a biographer of Brown put it, "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact. [125] In 1945 he wrote Walden Two, a fictional utopia about 1,000 members of a community living together inspired by the life of Thoreau. On the other hand, he wrote disparagingly of the factory system: I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. Out of their heady speculations and affirmatives came New England Transcendentalism. In an 1849 letter to his friend H.G.O. Frost, Robert (1968). But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. So I make my first entry to-day."[42]. These would be Thoreau's only travels outside the United States. Thoreaus literary activities went indifferently, however, and the effort to conquer New York failed. [5] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. With his magnetism Emerson attracted others to Concord. The next day Thoreau was freed when someone, likely to have been his aunt, paid the tax, against his wishes. [7][8] In "Civil Disobedience", Thoreau wrote: "I heartily accept the motto,'That government is best which governs least;' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. [79] Thoreau was buried in the Dunbar family plot; his remains and those of members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. The company's other source of graphite had been Tantiusques, a mine operated by Native Americans in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Thoreau himself also responded to the criticism in a paragraph of his work Walden by illustrating the irrelevance of their inquiries: I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. David Dinkins was the mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1994, and he was the first Black mayor of the city. Even when he grew ambivalent about the village after reaching adulthood, he never grew ambivalent about its lovely setting of woodlands, streams, and meadows. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26: Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the Statean admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages From the American Note-Books, entry for September 2, 1842. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched. The venture collapsed a few years later after John became ill. Thoreau then went to work for his father for a time. In Walden, there are many overt references to the sacred texts of India. "A Sage for All Seasons". [45]:68, Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. He noted that "He is a keen and delicate observer of naturea genuine observerwhich, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness. He wrote in his autobiography that it was, Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. The game also includes letters between Thoreau and his contemporaries, including Amos Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mark David Chapman is best known for murdering John Lennon outside of the musician's New York City apartment building in 1980. Despite its progressive nature, it lasted for three years, until John fell ill. Ralph Waldo Emerson settled in Concord during Thoreaus sophomore year at Harvard, and by the autumn of 1837 they were becoming friends. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings that were later combined. It was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers in May 1849. On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Other travels took him southwest to Philadelphia and New York City in 1854 and west across the Great Lakes region in 1861, when he visited Niagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Mackinac Island. [86][87] There is no evidence to suggest he had physical relations with anyone, man or woman. "[72], Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. His father operated a local pencil factory, and his mother rented out parts of the family's home to boarders. And Emerson gave Thoreau access to the lands that would inspire one of his greatest works. Later that year Thoreau became a tutor in the Staten Island household of Emersons brother, William, while trying to cultivate the New York literary market. [119] English writer Henry Stephens Salt wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890, which popularized Thoreau's ideas in Britain: George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter, and Robert Blatchford were among those who became Thoreau enthusiasts as a result of Salt's advocacy. Thoreau, Henry David (1862). In fact, the master's degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college". He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. [52] Whilst there, he wrote his only extended piece of literary criticism, "Thomas Carlyle and His Works".[53]. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and attention to practical detail. Thoreau's studies of nature were equally radical in their own way, earning him the moniker of "father of environmentalism." In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (120 hectares) of Walden Woods.[48]. 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. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his word.[64][65]. ", Hendrick, George. Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Updates? Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. His father was of French Protestant descent. While living at Walden Pond, Thoreau also had an encounter with the law. Seeking a simpler type of life, Thoreau flipped the standard routine of the times. American essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, in Concord, Massachusetts. ", This page was last edited on 21 June 2022, at 19:44. "The Influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' on Gandhi's Satyagraha. [78] Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at the funeral. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. One of America's most famous writers, Henry David Thoreau is remembered for his philosophical and naturalist writings. "[100] Furthermore, in a formal lyceum debate in 1841, he debated the subject "Is it ever proper to offer forcible resistance? [95] In 1840 he writes in his journal: "My friend is the apology for my life. [113] Thoreau was also an important influence on late-19th-century anarchist naturism. Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, The Dial, and lobbied the editor, Margaret Fuller, to publish those writings. After leaving Walden Pond, Thoreau spent some time looking after Emerson's house while he was on tour in England. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau once wrote. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you. According to legend, Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee (approximately equivalent to $136 in 2021) for a Harvard diploma. "[121][122] He told American reporter Webb Miller, "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu peu effac, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence). Amos Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn. Garden City, 1938. According to some reports, Thoreau had to take a break from his schooling for a time because of illness. [46] This invention allowed profitable use of a graphite source found in New Hampshire that had been purchased in 1821 by Thoreau's uncle, Charles Dunbar. In June 1838 he started a small school with the help of his brother John. Created by Tracy Fullerton, it is an open world, first person videogame adaptation of Thoreau's Walden. 'Do you keep a journal?' Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the MexicanAmerican War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. [5], Thoreau was aware his Ganges imagery could have been factual. While other writers from his time have faded into obscurity, Thoreau has endured because so much of what he wrote about is still relevant today. [60], In the summer of 1850, Thoreau and Channing journeyed from Boston to Montreal and Quebec City. [107], Thoreau read contemporary works in the new science of biology, including the works of Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Asa Gray (Charles Darwin's staunchest American ally). Political leaders and reformers like Mohandas Gandhi, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly Civil Disobedience, as did "right-wing theorist Frank Chodorov [who] devoted an entire issue of his monthly, Analysis, to an appreciation of Thoreau". "[68], He traveled to Canada East once, Cape Cod four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books, A Yankee in Canada, Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods, in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. [98] In addition, he lamented the newspaper editors who dismissed Brown and his scheme as "crazy". The Dial published more of Thoreaus poems and then, in July 1842, the first of his outdoor essays, Natural History of Massachusetts. Though disguised as a book review, it showed that a nature writer of distinction was in the making. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded, "I did not know we had ever quarreled."[76]. He decried the latter endlessly but felt that a teacher needs to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them.