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Henry David Thoreau and His Transcendental Journey. What is Transcendentalism?.
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What is Transcendentalism? • Transcendentalism: A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Margaret Fuller ,Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the physical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. • Transcendentalism had different concepts according to those involved in this movement. • It is not a religion, it is a form of spirituality and philosophy.
Henry David Thoreau and Civil Disobedience • Born to a pencil maker in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817. • Essayist, poet and Transcendentalist. • Graduated from Harvard in 1837. • He refused to pay his poll tax and went to jail. • The difference between him and Emerson is that Emerson was the philosopher of Transcendentalism while Thoreau tried to live Transcendentalism. • Best known for his book Walden.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life….” • Built a cabin in Walden Pond in 1845 and lived in it comfortably and economically for two years and two months. • Stripped his life to the to its essentials from living on the vegetables he grew and discovering every aspect of nature and providing a shelter for himself gave him freedom to work productively and help him gather the material for Walden. • He had a bed, table and three chairs; for solitude, company and society.
Most amazing and famous quotes taken from Walden… • “I went to the woods to live it intentionally and suck the marrow of life.” • “Drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms.” • “I left the woods for I had more than one life to live.” • “ Say what you have to say not what you ought to say” • “Love your life poor as it is.” • “There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
Civil disobedience 1848 • Thoreau wrote the essay while spending the night in jail after refusing to pay a tax that would help fund slavery in the South. • Civil Disobedience has been a highly influential work that has inspired peaceful activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. • His essay on the experience, “Civil Disobedience,” explores the question of what a person should do when he or she feels that his government is acting immorally.
Famous points on Civil Disobedience.. • “That government is best which governs least” • “…I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” • “I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” • “I came into this world not to make this a good place to live in ,but to live in it ,be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something, and because he cant do everything, it is not necessary that he should wrong.”
Civil Disobedience • “…if one thousand, if on hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only, —ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America.
Thoreau vs. Emerson • While Thoreau was in jail Emerson came to visit him and the following conversation took place: • Emerson: “Henry David what are you do in there, you should be living your life, not rotting in jail.” • Thoreau:“Ralph Waldo, why are standing out there doing nothing.”
The Death of Thoreau • Thoreau died at the age of forty-four On May 6th, 1862 after struggling with Tuberculosis. • Before his death his aunt asked him if he had “made his peace with God.” Thoreau replied, “I have never quarreled with him.”
As Thoreau said….. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity…
Subject: American literature in the nineteenth century. • Instructor: Prof. Rula Quawas. • Done by: Fatima Zaiton. Konstantina Dana’h.
