Leave the hustles and bustles of life in a mega city like Tehran behind and on the wings of dreams fly to Solitude with Henry David Thoreau. I have started to translate chapter "Solitude" in Thoreau's masterpiece Walden. Sue has been with me in this wonderful journey since the beginning.
Here in solitude Thoreau seeks more unity with nature. In the beginning of this chapter, he says, "I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself." In another sentence, later in the chapter, a very strange thing happens when he says, "For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men?"
What I would like to discuss is why Thoreau does not simply say "people" or more naturally "other men" here in this sentence? He is a man after all. My own hypothesis is that he is so dissolved in his solitude in nature that he is surprised at man's recognition of him in any form. Perhaps that is why he is ending the sentence with a question mark and uses the word "men" instead of at least "other men".
Here is the sentence again: "For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men?" Yes, indeed! A part of nature should be dissolved and lost in nature.
Ali
Henry was criticized in his lifetime and even today for his deep belief that man is a part of nature, not above it. John Greenleaf Whittaker, the poet, accused him of making man like a chipmunk, to walk on all fours. Whittaker said that he walked on two feet.
ReplyDeleteEnvironmentalists today collide with those who believe nature is there for our use and pleasure, to do with as we, the supreme creation, desire. I side with Marshall McLuan who said, "On spaceship earth, there are no passengers. Everyone is crew." We are 'of nature' and must protect her.
Sue in Denver