The Portable Thoreau (Portable Library)
by Henry David Thoreau
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry David ThoreauEditor: Carl Bode
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1964-01-01
ISBN: 0140150315
Number of pages: 698
Publisher: Penguin Books
Book Reviews of The Portable Thoreau (Portable Library)
Book Review: 'My life has been the poem I would have writ'
Summary: 5 Stars
This anthology contains Thoreau's major writings. First and above all 'Walden'. And then far far back the travelogue reflective work ' A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers', the famous essay on ' Civil Disobedience' which would be important for Gandhi and Martin Luther King, a scattering of his poems , 'The Maine Woods', ' A Winter Walk' ' A Yankee in Connecticut' and ' The Last Days of John Brown'
As Carl Bode makes clear in his excellent introduction surveying the work and life of Thoreau , Thoreau was always one who heard the sound of a different drummer. His aim was to be a poet , a poet who was true to the facts of life and to its deepest transcendal reflection. Bode tells the story of Thoreau seeking a way to make a living, and able to find only a vocation. And that vocation found in the two years and two months at Walden Pond gave the world a literary masterpiece and Thoreau his time of realization. Bode makes it clear that all that came before and all would come after in Thoreau's life would be anti- climax. Bode also tells the story of Thoreau's complicated relation with Emerson, and of Thoreau's learning the heart of his own doctrine from Emerson' 'Nature'. The emphasis on Nature, and on the transcendent world of the Spirit , and on a kind of life apart from the ordinary commercial business of mankind would become essential parts of Thoreau's message. And this Thoreau always closer to the facts of life than Emerson. Thoreau's two disappointed attempts at love are also seen as critical steps in re- enforcing his natural tendency to walk and dream alone. Thoreau towards the end of his life subdued a bit his radical individuality in his effort to serve the anti- slavery cause. But he is the quintessential American individualist, the man who goes his own way to see something no one else has seen before. Bode concludes his introduction with Thoreau's short poem , a summary judgment on his life' My life has been the poem I would have writ/ But I could not both live and utter it./
It is clear despite this negative judgment that in another sense the life he did come to confront and live most deeply was the one he shaped with his words. And the testament he left behind has been for many an enhancement not only of their sense of literature and poetry but of their feeling of the possibilities of life.
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