BookTalk.org

Saffron wrote:Tom wrote:

is that Thoreau read no Kant.

Tom,
I am curious as how you know this. Is it a widely known fact? Citations? I'm not not being nit-picky or picking a fight -- I really want to know.

Thanks,
Saffron

Thomas Hood wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:I was not saying that Walden was at the frontier. . . .

Robert, I'd like to convey how used the Walden area was before Thoreau moved there. The woods there was second growth, all the original trees having been cut. The area was the traditional slum district of Concord and had been inhabited by blacks and alchoholics. The blacks were, I'm told, run out of the area when the white Irish railroad workers built their shanties there along the railroad tracks just at the west end of the pond. Railroad construction had ended and the Irish were moving out when Thoreau moved to Walden. Thoreau's father had already bought two shanties for boards just as Thoreau did with the last remaining Irish shanty. Recycle, reuse, and renewal are optimistic themes in Walden. No matter what you start with, things can be reformed and made better.

My objection to the term transcendental imagination (It's Kant's term, isn't it?) is that Thoreau read no Kant. Further, it suggests "a flight of transcendental fancy," that is, transcendental moonshine, the term used to dismiss the high point of the New England Renaissance. In reality, Thoreau's allusive imagery is based on concrete features of experience and wonderfully gives expression to psychological depth. This more complex used of language, American Transcendentalism, was apparently considered an American literary trade secret and evidence of American literary superiority, and was deliberately never made public. Unfortunately, it produces a prose that can be as impenetrable as a very dark woods.

Robert Tulip wrote:From my reading of Walden, it seems fair to argue that HDT has a similar outlook on the transcendence of mind, that it presents a vision which links the present moment through imagination into eternity. These kantian ideas were part of the general currency of civilised thought in the early nineteenth century, and I get the impression Thoreau soaked them up as part of his education and personal philosophy.

"Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacety's."

In good time, Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right. -- Chapter 73.

Thomas Hood wrote:"Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Thoreau was part of the Romantic Movement -- the philosophy going back to Montaigne and Thomas Browne, both of whom he read, that focused on the uniqueness and importance of the individual. In the wilderness of mass man -- mass movements, mass culture, and political and economic collectivism -- how could an individual exist? How could individual genius find freedom in an unfree world? Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe reached the same conclusion at about the same time: The self could be both protected and affirmed by concealed disclosure. For the use of concealed disclosure in Hawthorne and Melville, see

http://www.geocities.com/seekingthephoenix/h/aeneid.htm
Hawthorne and Melville by Thomas St. John

Thoreau was the optimist in the lot, and for him I'll give three examples of concealed disclosure.

An individual is created, or at least modified, by life experiences which give an emotional charge to future experience. Subtle objective features of things that suggest the original charging experience evoke a subjective, charged emotional atmosphere and unite subjective and objective.

1.

Consider this sentence from the second paragraph of Walden: "Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students." Thoreau was a charity case at Harvard, an outsider and a loner. The Thoreaus were so poor that a women's charity offered to make shirts for him. Harvard's dress code required a black coat. Unlike every other student at Harvard (so far as I know) because of Thoreau's poverty -- the family could not afford to buy him a black coat -- Thoreau was given an exemption and wore a green coat.

2.

1.9 "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats."

1.89 "The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free."

The muskrat was Thoreau's totem animal, the creature with whom he most closely identified. As the muskrat (Thoreau perferred the Indian name 'mushquash') built his house of sticks of his own gathering, so Thoreau built his house at Walden. In reading 1.89 the reader needs to know this bit of charging, biographical information: At the age of 4 Thoreau accidently chopped off his right big toe.

3.

1.33 ". . .often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore. . . ."

The reader needs to know the charging event to which this apparently objective observation alludes: In July, 1850, Emerson sent Thoreau to Fire Island (parallels Long Island) to recover the remains (shark-bitten body parts, manuscripts, . . . ) of their friend Margaret Fuller.

Tom

Thomas Hood wrote:"Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Thoreau was part of the Romantic Movement -- the philosophy going back to Montaigne and Thomas Browne, both of whom he read, that focused on the uniqueness and importance of the individual. In the wilderness of mass man -- mass movements, mass culture, and political and economic collectivism -- how could an individual exist? How could individual genius find freedom in an unfree world? Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe reached the same conclusion at about the same time: The self could be both protected and affirmed by concealed disclosure. For the use of concealed disclosure in Hawthorne and Melville, see

http://www.geocities.com/seekingthephoenix/h/aeneid.htm
Hawthorne and Melville by Thomas St. John

Thoreau was the optimist in the lot, and for him I'll give three examples of concealed disclosure.

An individual is created, or at least modified, by life experiences which give an emotional charge to future experience. Subtle objective features of things that suggest the original charging experience evoke a subjective, charged emotional atmosphere and unite subjective and objective.

1.

Consider this sentence from the second paragraph of Walden: "Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students." Thoreau was a charity case at Harvard, an outsider and a loner. The Thoreaus were so poor that a women's charity offered to make shirts for him. Harvard's dress code required a black coat. Unlike every other student at Harvard (so far as I know) because of Thoreau's poverty -- the family could not afford to buy him a black coat -- Thoreau was given an exemption and wore a green coat.

2.

1.9 "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats."

1.89 "The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free."

The muskrat was Thoreau's totem animal, the creature with whom he most closely identified. As the muskrat (Thoreau perferred the Indian name 'mushquash') built his house of sticks of his own gathering, so Thoreau built his house at Walden. In reading 1.89 the reader needs to know this bit of charging, biographical information: At the age of 4 Thoreau accidently chopped off his right big toe.

3.

1.33 ". . .often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore. . . ."

The reader needs to know the charging event to which this apparently objective observation alludes: In July, 1850, Emerson sent Thoreau to Fire Island (parallels Long Island) to recover the remains (shark-bitten body parts, manuscripts, . . . ) of their friend Margaret Fuller.

Tom