Walking & On Civil Disobedience | Henry David Thoreau

 

Author

 

“My life has been the poem I would have writ,/But I could not both live and utter it.”

 

1817-1862

Dies at only age 44

Lived and died in Concord, MA, a tiny but intellectually stimulating town

Born in poverty, but works his way through Harvard by doing chores and teaching

Trued teaching after graduation in 1837, but it wasn’t for him

Meets Emerson in Concord and begins a literary life

In 1845, he begins his two-year stay at Walden Woods, which forms the basis of Walden (1854)

Always felt that work was never an end to itself

Lived with Emerson doing chores

Gave lectures across eastern U.S.

Makes friends with giants of the age – Horace Greeley and Walt Whitman

Even fellow Transcendentalists regard Thoreau as an extremist on public and economic issues

Personal trial – brother, John, reveals love for girl of Henry’s dreams

Brother dies at 27, sister Helen dies at 36, and Thoreau dies at 44 after suffering from tuberculosis for 7 yrs

Refuses to pay “church taxes” in 1838 and “poll tax” in 1846 to pay for Mexican War (jailed overnight)/idea from free blacks

 

 

Ideas

 

Transcendentalists – teaches man to “cultivate and expand his own uniqueness” (Our Literary Heritage)

Focus on inner life because outer life repelled them (cities, industrialization, etc.)

Idea is that truth expands reason (reaction to Enlightenment)

First to call for national parks; a pioneer ecologist

Wilderness is the source of civilization: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Early abolitionist who defends John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry

à A full house listened as Thoreau declared a willingness to support violence as a last resort to end a social wrong: "I do not wish to kill or be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. …It was [Brown's] peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him."[ Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (any edition), paragraph 57.]

supports fugitive slaves

à . "Henry Thoreau more often than any other man in Concord" looked after the Underground Railroad's night passengers, Ann Bigelow recalled. In the same year (1851), Thoreau's family gave refuge to Henry Williams, who had fled Virginia for Boston and now escaped the city police by reaching Concord on foot. The Thoreaus raised money for his journey, and Henry Thoreau escorted Williams to the railroad station, steered him clear of a plainclothesman, and put him safely aboard the evening train to Canada. (Journal, Oct. 1, 1851.)

 

 

Walking

(from http://eserver.org/thoreau/walking.html)

"Walking" began as a lecture called "The Wild," delivered by Henry at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. He gave this lecture many times, developing it into the essay finally published in the Atlantic Monthly after his death, in 1862.

Margaret M. Brulatour writes, "Wildness: it is the philosophy ... that enabled Thoreau to outgrow, as Howarth says, 'the airy insubstantiality of [Transcendentalist] aesthetics. He put a solid ground of reality under Emerson's ideals, showed how his metaphysics actually work in the physical world'. Thoreau truly believed Emerson's theory: 'Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.' He devoted his lifetime to close scrutiny of the the natural facts in order to perceive their spiritual message. He saw the American wilderness as the country's 'historic trust, the ultimate challenge to acquisitive drives.'"

Civil Disobedience

(from http://www.eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html)

While Walden can be applied to almost anyone's life, "Civil Disobedience" is like a venerated architectural landmark: it is preserved and admired, and sometimes visited, but for most of us there are not many occasions when it can actually be used. Still, although it is seldom mentioned without references to Gandhi and King, "Civil Disobedience" has more history than many suspect. In the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. The lesson learned from all this experience is that Thoreau's ideas really do work, just as he imagined they would.

"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest." - Martin Luther King, Jr, from his Autobiography, Chapter 2