综合英语.西方思想经典选读(常俊跃黄滔)_Text B Solitude（1 / 1）_综合英语.西方思想经典选读最新章节免费阅读无弹窗

Henry David Thoreau

Pre-reading

Henry David Thoreau (July 1817-May 1862) was an American thinker, essayist, and naturalist. Thoreau graduated from Harvard University and taught school for several years before leaving his job to become a poet of nature. Back in Concord, he came under the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson and began to publish pieces in the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial. Thoreau reflected on a night he spent in jail protesting the Mexican-American War in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849).

Although his actions attracted only local attention at the time, his essay achieved fame as the clear, well-reasoned justification of an honest citizen protesting an immoral policy of his government. As such, Civil Disobedience became an influential manifesto for subsequent antiwar protesters and freedom fighters such as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In later years his interest in Transcendentalism waned, and he became a dedicated abolitionist. His many nature writings and records of his wanderings in Canada, Maine, and Cape Cod display the mind of a keen naturalist. After his death his collected writings were published in 20 volumes, and further writings have continued to appear in print.

Walden (1854) is based on the two years (1845-1847) he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, and describes his simple way of life, along with meditations on nature and society. It has become a classic for environmentalists, nature mystics, and advocates of the simple life, while embodying one aspect of the transcendentalist creed.

In Solitude, Thoreau reflects on the feeling of solitude. He explains how loneliness can occur even amid companions if one’s heart is not open to them. Thoreau meditates on the pleasures of escaping society and the petty things that society entails (gossip, fights, etc.). He also reflects on his new companion, an old settler who arrives nearby and an old woman with great memory (“memory runs back farther than mythology”). Thoreau repeatedly reflects on the benefits of nature and of his deep communion with it and states that the only “medicine he needs is a draught of morning air”.

Prompts for Your Reading

1.What have you learned about solitude in Emerson’s passage?

2.Would you expect solitude to mean different things to a philosopher?

3.Where is the Walden Pond located? Search the internet to find some maps and pictures of the lake.

4.How does Thoreau make life truly simple? What is his life like?

5.How does Thoreau describe the scenery of Walden? What detail about the lake impresses you the most?

6.How does Thoreau describe society?

7.Is Thoreau truly alone or lonely in solitude? If not, what are his companions?

8.Why does Thoreau believe it to be wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time?

9.How would you describe the writing style of this passage?

10.What is the general idea of this passage?

[1] This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself.

[2] As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s watchmen — links which connect the days of animated life.

[3] When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table.

[4] I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay1, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.

[5] There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men?

[6] My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there was never a traveler passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts — they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond2 of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness — but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left “the world to darkness and to me”, and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

[7] Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. ... While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. ...

[8] Men frequently say to me, “I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to such — This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way3? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called “a handsome property” — though I never got a fair view of it —on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton — or Bright town — which place he would reach some time in the morning.

[9] Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

[10]“How vast and profound is the influence of the subtle powers of Heaven and of Earth!”

[11] “We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them.”

[12] “They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtle intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides. ”

[13] We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances — have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors. ”4...

[14] I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College5 is as solitary as a dervish6 in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks”, and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui7 and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

[15] Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory — never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

[16] I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

[17] I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that someone may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue8 devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone — but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion9. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star10, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

Notes

1.Nay: not only so but, especially when talking about people voting against something or refusing to give consent for something

2.Walden Pond: a lake in Concord, Massachusetts in the United States, and it is the part of Walden Pond State Reservation that was designated national Historic Landmark in 1962; Thoreau’s account of his experience there in Walden and Life in the Woods made the pond famous.

3.the Milky Way: the barred spiral galaxy that is visible as a dim glowing band arching in the night sky, containing an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars

4.Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors:“德不孤，必有邻”（出自《论语·里仁》），意思是道德并不孤立存在，必有与其相伴而生的社会基础。

5.Cambridge College: a private, non-profit college based in Cambridge, Massachusetts

6.dervish: a member of a Muslim religious group which has a very active and lively dance as part of its worship

7.ennui: a feeling of being tired, bored, and dissatisfied

8.blue: low in spirits, usually sad or depressed when there is no particular reason

9.legion: a large group of soldiers who form one section of an army

10.the north star: the star at the end of the handle of the little dipper, also called Polaris or pole star

Questions for Further Thinking

1.Compare the solitude in Thoreau’s work with that in Emerson’s. What are the similarities and differences between the two types of solitude? Find adequate evidence from the passages.

2.How is Transcendentalism expressed by Thoreau?

3.There are many nature elements around Walden Pond, such as plants and animals. What are the possible implications of these natural elements?

4.Why do you think most people are afraid of solitude?

5.A paradox is a statement that seems to contradict itself. The statement “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” can be called a paradox. How would you interpret this paradox? Does it truly contradict itself or can it make good sense?

6.Some say books are men’s best companion, some say family or friends, and still others pets are men’s best companion. What do you say?

7.In the age of information technology and social networking, is solitude more or less accessible?

8.If solitude is not to be feared or avoided, would it be a good habit for one to set some time aside each day just to be alone? Why or why not?

After-reading Assignment

Oral Work

1.As an essential part of the whole system, human beings are only among all the elements of the universe, trivial but important. How should mankind interpret its position in the universe? Find some proverbs about man and nature and read them aloud in class.

2.Many Chinese thinkers have also valued nature and taken joy in solitude. Some even retreated into nature and lived as hermits in search of meaning and immortality. What might be the physical and psychological reasons behind their behaviors? What significance there is to live a reclusive life like a hermit? Study the life and thoughts of these people and present your findings in a 3-minute presentation.

3.Solitude means simplicity; society brings complexity. Do you think people nowadays are living in a far more complicated way than they need to? Examine some of the complexities — either the ones you welcome or the ones you don’t — in your life and find out what has caused them. Discuss with your partner and figure out some ways to deal with the complexities. Then share your ideas with your classmates.

Written Work

1.Find some Chinese proverbs concerning the topics of nature and solitude. Write them down and try to match them with ideas from the two passages in this unit.

2.What kind of life style do you want to pursue now? Is it different from what you want some years ago? How can you account for the change if there is any? Or why hasn’t it changed? Write a journal recording your choices of life style and explore what these choices mean to you.

3.Thoreau calls for improving the government, and he is also called an anarchist. He says that government is best which governs not at all. Study on anarchism and find how it is related to transcendentalism. Write a paragraph explaining the connection between the two.

4.Find at least five more examples of paradox (either in Chinese or in English), write them down, and share them with your partner. Study the meaning of the paradoxes you have found and explore the wisdom within them.