Chapter 5. Solitude

Thomas Hood · Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 4:19 pm Post subject: Chapter 5. Solitude

Summary

"To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks . . ." -- Thanatopsis
http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/thanatopsis.html

evening at the pond: vitality in Nature

returning home: signs of visitors

one's space

natural tranquility

awaking to ambient vitality

the human experiment

escaping social submergence

Father Time and Mother Nature

the pill of immortality: identifying with cosmic process

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/cha pter05.html
Walden Study Text

DWill · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:13 pm Post subject:

We often see in Walden what a critic labeled the pathetic fallacy, that nature is capable of showing sympathy with human beings. Thoreau writes, " Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me." (4). Now, do I believe that Thoreau really believed that a tree could have an emotional reaction to him? I don't. I think he is simply describing his feelings and omitting the "seemed to" or "as if". That we may feel this way about nature is a truth of sorts, regardless of scientific validity.

DWill

Dissident Heart · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:34 pm Post subject:

The real fallacy involves a poverty of imagination and rigidity of method that restricts truth to only what is scientifically valid. Actually, it is a pathetic abuse of scientific knowledge that is validated by silencing emotions or castrating the imagination...leaving the wondrous intimacy made possible in every pine needle just a pile of muck...that great and voluptuous interconnected web of never-ending relationships that produce a tree: coaxing, calling, alluring, eliciting, demanding, whispering to one who is willing to hear...a woody intimacy and intimate wood...sending a rippling effect into every interaction with each strand of life...a communion and love affair with each speck of existence, no matter how small, large, banal, wretched, muddy, living or dead.

DWill · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:51 pm Post subject:

If you're positing a scientific fallacy, is it to say that science can define the value of things for us? Or does it ever really explain anything at all to the depths that we have need of reaching? You seem to say that the mystery reamains no matter that science has said it is all rationally evident.
DWill

DWill · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:49 pm Post subject:

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:43 am Post subject:

DWill: If you're positing a scientific fallacy, is it to say that science can define the value of things for us? Or does it ever really explain anything at all to the depths that we have need of reaching? You seem to say that the mystery reamains no matter that science has said it is all rationally evident.

The fallacy, and perhaps it is the fallacy of fallicies, involves purposefully avoiding knowledge in order to protect a prejudice: in this case, it requires one willfully remain ignorant of the glorious chorus and exhuberant dance of nature's web. The prejudice revolves around a cancerous delusion: man is the measure of all things...which metastasizes into man is the master of all things. Like the most ignorant of tyrants or foolish of kings, this deluded monarch feels it beneath himself to listen to nature's trees, or ponds, or fields of clover...mere peasants, subjects only to be spoken to, not heard from...never equals, sharing in power and participating as brothers and sisters, fellow citizens mutually assisting nature's anarchic fecundity.

DWill · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:22 am Post subject:

WildCityWoman · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 12:54 am Post subject:

I don't understand the need to nitpick the way Thoreau has presented these thoughts.

What he is saying is that we are each part of the universe - if we can appreciate this and live within ourselves, we will never be lonely.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how they have been affected personally by Thoreau's words?

Last night, I got up to stand at the window and watch the trees sway in the late summer breeze and breathe in the air.

These past few days I find myself thinking of Thoreau and everything he has to say in Walden . . . we go off up to the coffee shop for a while, sit outside, have a smoke, drink coffee, cappacino, have a couple of cinammon buns and watch cars as they move down Keele Street.

Thoreau's philosophy is sharp in my mind as I think of these cars, the money they cost and what it takes to upkeep them.

It's because of our own frugal ways that we were able to buy our present car . . . for years we didn't own one - we rode our bicycles everywhere.

My husband, being the superintendent of the building in which we live, we can't be away for that long. The car enables us to 'get away' more, even if it's just out for coffee.

I'd like to hear how your lives are affected.

Whether the author contradicted himself in passages, whether he's guilty of having different thoughts and preferences at different times, doesn't interest me in the slightest.

I'm happy with the thoughts and philosphy he has put forth in this book.

WildCityWoman · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 1:01 am Post subject:

There are many people homeless these days, but there are (though very few) some tough old guys that prefer to live outdoors.

I know of one who seems to make a home of one of the gazebo's in High Park. He and another man (his partner, perhaps) have been doing this for years.

I've always been impressed by the way they keep their bedrolls so neatly tucked under the picnic tables, how neither of them bother anyone. They don't stem for change, bum cigarettes and/or make a nuisance of themselves by accosting people as they pass.

When there is a family or a group wanting to use the gazebo for a picnic, the men simply wander off and return later. Nobody has to ask them to go so others can use the space.

I've seen the one fella' . . . heard people call him 'John' . . . out shopping, like everybody else. Whether the men live on 'pensions' or not, is something I don't know. And what they do in the winter, I don't know either - maybe they sleep at a hostel, or pay for rooms somewhere . . . maybe they continue to sleep outdoors, or have a shelter somewhere.

While I've been reading Thoreau, I've thought of those men, and wondered what Thoreau would think of them.

DWill · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject:

WildCityWoman · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:22 pm Post subject:

Good idea, Will . . . I'll look now - if you haven't opened a thread on it, I will do so.

Carly

Thomas Hood · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:27 pm Post subject:

WildCityWoman · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:20 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Tom . . . been there - done that.


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