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What is Transcendentalism?

#51: July - Aug. 2008 (Non-Fiction)
WildCityWoman
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[quote="Penelope"]I hate to admit it, but I hadn't ever heard of Thoreau until Tom Hood posted about him. I have only recently looked at some of these people you mentioned. I knew about Kant of course, but I just thought he was an economist!!! Critique of Pure Reason - I used to leave on a coffee table to impress my friends. :oops:

I wonder if the reason I hadn't encountered Thoreau is because I'm British.

When looking at Transcendentalism, we were more likely to be pointed in the direction of Krishnamurti. Do you know about him? How does he differ from Thoreau?

[quote]When you look at this life of action
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Thomas Hood wrote:
Penelope wrote:I wonder if the reason I hadn't encountered Thoreau is because I'm British.
Maybe Thoreau is blamed for the loss of the empire?
No, but didn't somebody here say he was well known for having started a fire?
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Sorry - I made a duplicate post there.
Last edited by WildCityWoman on Sat Sep 06, 2008 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Quoting

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Thomas Hood wrote:
BabyBlues wrote:
To quote myself:
Tom,
You are quoting yourself...that is very Harold Bloom of you. :D
Alas, Babyblues, Harold was no friend of Thoreau. Let me quote myself again:
Thoreau is the most hated man in America, blamed for the hippies and other excesses of individualism. No literature about Thoreau is to be trusted without inspection, including the biased Wikipedia article.

In the volume of essays about Thoreau that Harold edited, he repeatedly pairs Thoreau with excrement. The details are too disgusting to discuss in a public forum like this, but don't take my word for it. See for yourself. Or check out discussion of Harold Bloom on Waldenlist.

Tom
Was the hippie movement all that bad? Once they got onto meditating with the Krishna's, they got off the drugs.

What I liked about the hippie movement, was it encouraged everybody else to wear what they wanted to wear . . . I mean, what they 'really' wanted to wear.

We've still go that going today and I love it.
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Thomas Hood
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Re: Quoting

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WildCityWoman wrote: Was the hippie movement all that bad? Once they got onto meditating with the Krishna's, they got off the drugs.
Carly, much of the hippie movement was destructive. They were "anti," remember. The lifestyle was impossible. As in any children's crusade, there were hundreds of thousands of casualities. You mention "Krishna." Perhaps you are unaware of the horrors of the Krishna Consciousness movement:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/krish ... hna21.html

The hippie and non-hippie conflict is as old as humanity.

Hippie:

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
-- Marlowe

Square:

[The nymph's reply to the shepherd]


If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
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Re: Quoting

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Thomas Hood wrote:]Thoreau is the most hated man in America.
Do you really believe this to be so, Tom? I meant to ask you about this long ago. Being hated by Harold Bloom might only indicate that hatred of him occurs on the fringe. I would say that to the extent people think about him at all, he is held in something like reverence. I once attended the Annual Gathering in Concord, where of course the reverence quotient was high. Indifferent to him? Yes, mostly. Hating him? I don't think so.

Will
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DWill:
Indifferent to him? Yes, mostly. Hating him? I don't think so.
I rather think anyone who sticks their head up over the parapet and disturbs the status quo, seems to be intensely hated in 'some' quarter or other.

The people whose names we think of as great social reformers seem to be either loved or hated, not much indifference. Even the ones like Gandhi and Jesus who only taught love and tolerance were hated. At least they both died violent deaths. I hadn't heard of Thoreau, so I'm not in a position to comment, but it seems to be once they gain a following, then they are seen as powerful and dangerous. Or even just as a nuisance.

Looking back at historical figures, it seems to be the ones who have the knack of making people think about how they behave, and why, are the ones who are often treated with fear and loathing.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Thomas Hood
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Re: Quoting

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DWill wrote:
Thomas Hood wrote:]Thoreau is the most hated man in America.
Do you really believe this to be so, Tom?
Yes, the most hated man in America. Consider Lawrence's negative view of Thoreau:
. . .I think it will be useful for you to get my "take" on HDT and Walden. I see an ordinary 30 year old New England shiftless loafer living off of his (mother and sisters or Aunt and cousins? Which is it Thomas?) Can you just imagine the dinner table talk for 7 years? "Did you find work today Henry David? Well did you even look? You know you're not going to put you feet under my table forever without contributing something. I work my fingers to the bone trying to keep body and soul together and make ends meet ....Yatata yatata yatata." Hell it's no wonder he went to Walden to get some peace and quiet. He loved the peace (give us the citation Thomas hereinafter "qcv." It's no mystery to me why he liked solitude.
and Lawrence (wish he were here) is an admirer. I suppose you have already read it, but here is Robert Louis Stevenson's bizarre essay on Thoreau:

http://thoreau.eserver.org/stevens1.html

Stevenson's reactions are, I believe, typical. Thoreau has always rubbed people the wrong way, even persons of ability and culture like Stevenson. Henry Salt got Stevenson to apologize for this essay, but it is usually printed without the apology. The hippie movement caused a great deal of suffering, and Thoreau is an easy target for revenge.

Tom
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Re: Quoting

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Thomas Hood wrote:
DWill wrote:
Thomas Hood wrote:]Thoreau is the most hated man in America.
Do you really believe this to be so, Tom?
Yes, the most hated man in America.

Tom
Tom,
I can't imagine how you could make such a flip statement without backing it up with more evidence than Lawerence's negative comments and RL Stevenson's essay. Surely they, a mere two, do not constitute a representative sample of the USA; Stevenson not even being an American.
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Thomas Hood wrote: Stevenson's reactions are, I believe, typical.... The hippie movement caused a great deal of suffering, and Thoreau is an easy target for revenge.
We're never going to get anywhere with this argument because of the difficulty of quantifying this "hatred." What one British critic says, at any rate, doesn't lend much support to "most hated man in America." The phrase also seems to assume a present tense for this hatred. But where do we see that? The number of people who would class themselves as environmentalists is quite large. Among nearly all of these, Thoreau would be a hero. As far as blaming Thoreau for the hippie movement, no knowledgeable cultural critic could make this connection. It is really stretching things to say that Thoreau's ideas produced the hippie movement, and I have to doubt that he has really gotten much blame.
Now, I might agree that in the ethos of the 60s we see a Thoreauvian legacy, but this is not identical to the cultural phenomenon of hippiedom.
No doubt, though, you are right about him "rubbing people the wrong way". He sometimes does this with me, but I admire him greatly.

DWill
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