Daily Archives: June 19, 2019

page 37 of 344 of Walden: With an Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden

I’m starting over because I want to deal with this book at a deeper, more philosophical level and make sure I’m giving it a fair shake.

I still stand by my position that he is very privileged to be able to “get away” from society. That might seem an odd sort of privilege since he was living in abject poverty, but think about how difficult that would be for us to give up our responsibilities and go live in the woods? Much is made of the parable that Jesus taught about the man who gives up everything to follow him – many people think that that is fundamentally an easy thing to do, but it is very, very hard to just give up our lives, even if they are good lives and go with God.

He is not wrong to show how a simple life can be more fulfilling – I agree with him – but his disdain for society, a disdain that he hints at stemming from his townspeople not accepting him as part of their inner circle, is a little too harsh. Is man really so much the worse to live in a house he does not own made from materials that come from a factory? Are man’s activities that take place in the home so far from the “natural good man” that he is worse off than the “savage”? Thoreau may live closer to God in nature, but his use of the word savage betrays his sense of kinship with his fellow man. He seems to see savages everywhere, not just in the American Indian, but especially there he does not possess the empathetic spirit that comes from people who have spent many hours in their homes thinking about how their action might negatively affect others. A man who has to get his meat on the hunt will have no time to worry if he is hurting anyone’s feelings, yet the man who lives in comfort is well aware how lucky he is and (should) attempt to extend that privilege to everyone.

In this he lacks a portion of empathy for his fellow individual man while at the same time he does love humanity writ large.

page 117 of 768 of Demons

Demons, Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Kirillov’s philosophy that man is only free once he no longer fears death is interesting and threatening. He sounds like someone who wants to not have anything left to lose in order to make some sort of grand statement (though he probably doesn’t know what). Either way he seems very dissatisfied and I like how it’s pointed out to him that his desire to blow everything up will cost him his job of building a bridge.

I keep my pledge

Dickinson, Emily, Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them, Maes, Nicolaes
Old Woman Dozing, 1656, Nicolaes Maes
Background Image: Old Woman Dozing, 1656, Nicolaes Maes

She uses three related words: pledge, plight, and oath. Each (can) mean a pledge (perhaps her devotion to God), and the repetition (though each time a different word) speaks to her continually needing to reaffirm it, either out of devotion or perhaps desperation? The last line “Will surely come again -” is not exactly a reassuring statement with the open ended punctuation.

Another unusual feature is in lines 2 and 3 when Death does not come for her (she is not called) – is this perhaps a punishment for not keeping the pledge? To go to the glory of heaven is seen as a reward because life is full of sin, yet she equates her continued existence with natural / nature imagery: “sainted Bee” (sainted be wordplay), “Daisy”, “hillside”, “Bobolink”, and “Blossom” (b alliteration: to be, I be, I continue to be as I am?).

And she ends with a reference to “Her”, perhaps the Blossom, but perhaps someone else, such as her spirit or the previous poem’s quiet fairy of the soul? Christian imagery would usually refer to the oath to Christ as being male: He, however she could be playing with the idea of the female quality of nature which reconciles her oath to Christ (male) with her current state of living (female).