Let us TRANSCEND—WE must rise above the work we have currently done
2.) Why is HDT’s residence more ‘favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university?’ This idea comes from a man who lives at Walden but attended another intuition for a period of time in Cambridge, Mass.
3.) According to HDT, why will the adventurous student always study classics, even if the stories and language is old?
4.) Why does HDT offer the idea “[reading] is the work of art nearest to life itself?” Why does he believe this and is their natural merit and wisdom in this assertion?
5.) How does reading help us ‘scaling heaven at last?’ Thus, what is the true value of books and what is the natural value of reading the written word?
6.) On page 100 of my book, I read: “The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers.” Who are the ‘good readers’ and why do they not read the ‘best books?’ More to the point, what are the best books?
7.) Why does Thoreau suggest that “books exist for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones?” What are the miracles that books are able to explain and what is a book that revealed a miracle to you?
8.) What is the ‘uncommon school?’ How do books, and how does reading, play a vital role in the excellence of that school?
9.) What do books, what does reading, allow us to do?
What is one book, because of reading it, that has changed your life? That has forced you to understand more fully one of the ‘essential facts of life?’
I will end with a few words from HDT: “In dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident” BUT more importantly, and the last word from me tonight, “To read well, that is to read true books in a true spirit, is a _______________excercise.”
So I will just ask, are you worthy of that blank—are you worthy of that title…and I would suggest that you hand yourselves over to this worthy offering.
See you tomorrow.
11 comments:
Why is HDT’s residence more ‘favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university?’ This idea comes from a man who lives at Walden but attended another intuition for a period of time in Cambridge, Mass.
This reminds me a lot about what Sal and Jack said about why they left university to go on the road.
I think both authors were trying to escape the formality and unnecessary complications that can accompany formal schooling. Thoreau hardly touched his copy of the Iliad all summer, but it was worth it because he could go at his own pace without jumping through hoops set up by an instructor. He didn’t need anyone telling him how great the Greek classics are, he sings their praises on his own.
He is able to do more serious reading out in the woods because he can read for himself, instead of reading in order to pass a quiz.
(Honestly the more I read in this class, the more I get the impression that colleges exist solely to crush the souls out of people.)
The uncommon school lives within all of the people that are alive. The few that look at the words and live inside them, understand them and stay alive for them. The people that go to school not because it is forced upon them, but because they want to learn. The understanding of life is our uncommon school. Understanding being alone, in the darkness and living within the words is a rarity in today’s society. We don’t do things for ourselves, but merely because we are told that we have to do these things. We have to go to school, we have to read and we have to learn, but no one learns by reading something that they don’t want to read or being somewhere that they don’t want to be. The uncommon school is a school where people see, hear and feel the words inside, where they understand the letters strung together. It is learning, teaching and letting yourself be taught within a place of solitude, a place of loneliness. We are alive when we feel alone, when the words are your only companion and nature your only protection. Maybe the uncommon school is just the understanding of life itself, why we read and what those words mean to us. In the uncommon school reading is the only companion to those who feel alive. It is a place of solitude and an arm of stability. Where the words on the pages scream meaning and seep into your memory where they will forever stay. The uncommon school is one that we have yet to find and yet to explore as a society. It is an idea that is looked down upon and only found valuable by few. It is ultimately a place where everyone will learn, everyone will absorb information and a place where words will drip off the pages and find life.
On page 100 of my book, I read: “The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers.” Who are the ‘good readers’ and why do they not read the ‘best books?’
The “good readers” are college-educated people and they do not read the best books because to them being educated is more of a resource for earning money than it is about the actual learning itself. In an attempt to be “liberally educated” (69), those receiving college education are preoccupied by the end result of “[picking] up a silver dollar” (69). This focus on money forces them to ignore the fact that “golden words” (70) have greater value than money itself. A wood-chopper of a modest lifestyle does “about as much as the college bred generally… aspire to do” (69) by keeping up his French and English. The best books, the classics, are “accessible to all” (69). Therefore higher education provides those enrolled with nothing of true value unless they are willing to take the initiative, and due to the distraction of artificial wealth they lack the initiative and do not read the best books.
According to HDT, why will the adventurous student always study classics, even if the stories and language is old?
The classics are always more of a challenge to comprehend, and they are far more rewarding as a result. Written in a "language dead to degenerate times" (82), it pushes the reader to "[conjecture] a larger sense than common use permits" (82). The ordinary student is complacent enough to stick to his reading of simpler texts. He does not have to challenge himself. A student who truly wants to learn and to transcend is best off reading these classics, to put them into a modern sense, and to discover the power behind these ancient tongues. They read to understand them, and then to emulate their teachings, to glimpse the majesty of the true heroes of lore. They are the true stories, "the noblest recorded thoughts of man" (82).
In Reading, Thoreau introduces the idea of man recognizing his intelligence from the heap of mechanical education placed on him since birth. In the 19th century, he says, “We…are making the most rapid strides of any nation.” (124) With the revolution of the railroad, greater loads of goods are carried from greater distances, across less time; people, too, travel extensively, as he points out when considering a person’s commute from Boston to Concord. He argues that, while we can get from one end of the country to the other faster than ever before, we do not practice the application of common sense and original thinking, even inside our own community. “Why should our life be in any respect provincial?” he says. “New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.” (125-126) Thoreau places the value of the written word as a way to reach the highest level of enlightenment; as though reading and writing were the gateways to becoming holy, the truest connection to living coming from unfettered communication. “A written word is the choicest of relics,” he says. “It is the work of art nearest to life itself[…]. It may be… actually breathed from all human lips;—not to be represented on canvas or in marble only, but to be carved out of the breath of life itself.” (118) Thoreau demonstrates his respect for the power of the written and spoken word, as it can be used as a material to raise Concord, Massachusetts from the provincial dregs in which it is immersed. Honest, thoughtful, spiritual, and provoking reading is the way he believes Concord, used as a model for all New England towns, can manifest actions of just the same manner, learning and living outside their previous psychological boundaries. Thoreau believes that a steady diet of good reading is what really feeds the soul and the intellect, not news of the outside world or any filtered “literature” that is really only designed to sell and cause anxiety. He stresses upon the importance of unique and free-thinking readers, who operate from and strive to create a unique and free-thinking culture. “The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. (122) […] Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?” (125) To Thoreau, reading is the final enlightenment to becoming holy, or becoming human; to him, they are the same. Communication of the deepest and oldest feelings in the human race, as one person takes the effort to truly listen to and understand the other, he argues, is truly beside godliness. “Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless out civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. […] That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics… shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.” (119-120)
Whitney Pasternack
Thoreau believes that reading the classics teaches us about what is means to be human. The classics, the greatest products of antiquity’s philosophers, are written in a language more universal that Greek or Latin: they are written in the common language of literature. When we speak, we do not commonly utilize language to its fullest power. The spoken language is for all “those who can hear it,” but the written word reaches a deeper level, and instead, “speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind.” While the ordinary use of words only serves to convey generally unimportant information, a true work of literature can help us to better comprehend human nature. They offer us the lives of dead men, “the breath of life itself”. When we fail consider “the noblest recorded thoughts of man”, we also fail to think deeply on our own existence in a wide context and fail to consider perhaps the most important and ancient study of all: the study of ourselves. To think deeply is to be human, to be truly alive. Without this, we devolve away from enlightenment, and become only “machines:” mindless slaves to the endless list of tasks placed before us but no more sophisticate in our efforts than cattle. The mundane phases we pass through each day of our lives fail to teach us what a few hundred pages of intellectual reading can: an understanding of ourselves.
According to HDT, why will the adventurous student always study classics, even if the stories and language is old?
The adventurous students will always study the classics, because the classics contain the wisdom and knowledge of the past, which all intellectuals should hold. The classics preserve “the noblest …thoughts of man” (72), and “they who can may read them” (73). The ancient stories depict the critical ideas of history; however you must learn to read them in their original form. Otherwise, the literature is degraded and “cheap…with all its translations” (72). The adventurous, ambitious student that reads the “true books” (72) will gain the ability “to understand” (73) the “noblest written words” (73). They will not only come to understand the holiness of the word, but will gain true knowledge in its purest, richest form. The knowledge of the past, and “the history of the human race” (74) can all be absorbed from reading, which the adventurous students know only too well.
Why is HDT’s residence more ‘favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university?’ This idea comes from a man who lives at Walden but attended another intuition for a period of time in Cambridge, Mass.
Henry David Thoreau's believes that the essentials can be derived from living life rather than living like a machine. Thoreau thoughts and readings are beyond ordinary, since he "was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library."(91) He was more favorable because those books were influential more than ever. In his residence, Thoreau's essentials of life focus is on nature. The inspiration is not for the readers, the hearers or the writers, but merely "to all in any age who can understand him."(94) He lives life in isolation at Walden because his focus is trying to understand. Thoreau lives life differently than a machine from a university. The use of 'machine' represents "essentially students and observers."(91) These students and observes are all united by representing a machine. "Their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike."(91) Henry David Thoreau is more favorable to ideas that come from understanding rather than a machine.
On the first page of “Reading,” Thoreau writes: “That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.” What is the time that HDT is referring to and why does it not belong to the past, present, or future?
In “Reading”, Thoreau refers to an unknown time as “time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.” (106) In this passage, we’re taught by Thoreau that time to reflect, or time spent reflecting on reading does not have a time to be kept to. In believing that “residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but serious reading” (106), Thoreau shows that reading was vital to his time in Walden pond. The time in which he spends in reflection “sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future.” (107) Walden’s time spent reading in the past, present and future cannot be marked by the content or context of his readings, but by “the advantage in books.” (107) Thoreau is teaching us here that no matter the time, or the content of the reading, “to read true books in true spirit, is a noble excersise” (108) and that it should be done eminently.
On page 100 of my book, I read: “The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers.” Who are the ‘good readers’ and why do they not read the ‘best books?’ More to the point, what are the best books?
The true good readers are those whose style has a parallel to the type of lifestyle Thoreau lives. They read books “as deliberately and as reservedly as they were written” (82). There is little point in reading them otherwise. If not read closely and with personal investment in the text, some of the most valuable wisdom the author puts into the book will be lost. The so called good readers Thoreau is referring to here are people who read books because they are supposed to. What they fail to do is to read “in a true spirit”, that is to say, they fail to read in a way that benefits them (82). If they don’t seek out that mindset first, they don’t even have a hope of reading what Thoreau calls the best books.
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