Sunday, May 23, 2010

Walden experience.

Sorry guys I have been so busy trying to read all the materials and getting acquainted with all the history and events from that time.
I want to write about my experience with Walden. I am so new to all this and I have been looking to these materials with an English view as well as with a little of the historical background that possess.
Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin at Walden Pond. Nice years later Thoreau published Walden about his life at the pond, a document that is just as revolutionary as Karls Marx's Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848.
The interesting thing in my mind is that in 1862, Thoreau was little known outside the Concord, Massachussetts. He had just published two books with unsatisfactory sales.
To summarize my experience I think Walden was a very hard book to read for a couple of reasons. One of them is the fact that it was written by a somebody that was a very good writer. The use of accurate use of language, allegorical metaphors, and long complex paragraphs and sentences, and a vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. It is a great book to review metaphors, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdocho, and oxymorons, and the logic of the book, is based on a different perspective of life, quite contrary to what most people believe. I really thought that he liked to tease and challenge , if not fool me as reader.
I think that the purpose of the book is to argue for, explain, and demonstrate a new philosophy of life, something that is poetic, personal, and universal.
A Thoreauvian lifestyle is almost exactly the opposit of the consumer treadmill that most people find themselves running on today "Does wisdom work on a tread-mil?" asked Thoreau. Invisible wealth cannot be bought, sold, or stolen according to the book.
I am certain that it is not easy to be a Thoreauvian. Throreau wrote: "I learned this, at least, by my experiement: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, whe will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them." Is that easy to be Thoreauvian? I do not think so...I will try to write my notes from my reading now.
I will ask you all to be patient with me as I do this today. I do not have English as a first language and it was super challenging to me to appreciate in full the reading. I had to read the book 3 times. I also bought the book on tape and listen on my way to my job could be thought in a different way and do not concentrate in the meaning of all the words, metaphors, and etc.
I will post my journey of reflections from chapter on to the last one here. Sorry to be a little late one this but I am so excited about this that I need to let it out.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for your comments about Thoreau and Walden, and I admire your tenacity. I had a hard time the first time I read Walden, but to read it three - kudos to you. And your knowledge of your second language is amazing! I agree - being a Thoreauvian would be difficult today. But he certainly had a way with words!

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  3. You cannot imagine my panic on reading this book. My feelings were so different. I had moments of happiness and moments when I hated him for his selfish ways. However, I try to be pro-active so, I had to read this book three times. I bought a version of the book in a CD (Books on Tape) and listen to the entire book again to make sure I could keep my thoughts clear and get the peace of mind about comprehension. Thank you about the complements! It is not easy to have 3 languages in your brain.

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  4. Wow, you read Thoreau three times! Ahhh, i am persuading myself to read through it one time. I find him almost totally swallowed up in himself. I admire your perseverence in trying to get a grasp of what he is trying to say, but i think that that is part of his elusiveness.

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  5. Way to go Helema! Your passion to see something through to its conclusion is admirable. I know what it is like to try and live where the language is not my native tongue, so for your forthright attitude and humility, I salute you, my friend. I had a love/hate thing going while reading Waldon. He is funny, but I think he was full of himself.

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