Henry David Thoreau: An American Landscape: Selected Writings From His Journals

By Robert L. Rothwell

paperback book This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569248524
• ISBN13: 9781569248522
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Sublime Excerpts

Mr Rothwell, hats off to you! You have made a fine-toothed culling of all that is most sublime in Thoreau's Journals and closest to the spirit of Walden. That is to say, you have spirited out the passages which capture Thoreau's Transcendental other-worldliness and (paradoxically) love of the natural world at the same time.-Thoreau was so enraptured with Time that I'm surprised that more comparisons with Proust have not been made. I suppose it's the difference between the men and their modes of expression. But for Thoreau, as for Proust, we live in a mysterious whirlwind transporting us from one "self" to another with the speed of a Concorde. We live, of course, in Time.-My favorite entry is "November Thoughts" in which Thoreau reflects upon travel: "It was as if I was promised the greatest novelty the world has ever seen or shall see, though the utmost possible novelty would be the difference between me and myself a year ago...And yet there is no more tempting novelty than this new November. No going to Europe or another world to be named with it....Think of the consumate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here."-We, in this ever so fleeting life, are transiting from self to self in the dimension of time at a speed that dwarfs anything available in the other dimensions and which, moreover, is more wondrous and even terrifying when we consider its implications. - Perhaps this is why we turn a blind eye to it and go gadding about all over.- Thoreau was especially attuned to this form of travel, as Emerson said at his elegy he had a "sixth sense" for such things. This selection is a MUST for all Thoreauvians. It is laced with such insights of which I have only been able to cover this one.