He deplores man's attempts to bound the landscape with fences and stakes, placed by the "Prince of Darkness" as surveyor. He refers to the new perspective that even a familiar walk can provide. Thoreau's neighborhood offers the possibility of good walks, which he has not yet exhausted. He suggests the degeneracy of the village by exploring the etymology of the word "village," connecting it to the Latin words for "road" and for "vile." Walking leads naturally to the fields and woods, and away from the village - scene of much busy coming and going, accessed by established roads, which Thoreau avoids.
It is a crusade "to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels." Although he admits that his own walks bring him back to home and hearth at the end of the day, the walking to which he aspires demands that the walker leave his life behind in the "spirit of undying adventure, never to return." The "Walker, Errant" is in a category by himself, "a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People." But many of Thoreau's townsmen are too tied to society and daily life to walk in the proper spirit. True walking is not directionless wandering about the countryside, nor is it physical exercise. Either derivation applies to walking as he knows it, but he prefers the former. Thoreau explores the etymology of the word "saunter," which he believes may come from the French " Sainte-Terre" (Holy Land) or from the French " sans terre" (without land). The entire essay is an expansion upon the ideas expressed in this opening sentence. I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. Thoreau declares in the first sentence of "Walking": "Walking" has also been printed separately, both in its entirety and in excerpted form. Duncan (New York, 1972) and The Natural History Essays, edited by Robert Sattelmeyer (Salt Lake City, 1980). Salt (London, 1895) the Modern Library Edition of Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Brooks Atkinson (first published in New York in 1937) The Portable Thoreau, edited by Carl Bode (New York, 1957) Thoreau: The Major Essays, edited by Jeffrey L. Dircks (London, 1891) Selections from Thoreau, edited by Henry S. It has been printed in a number of selected editions, among them: Essays and Other Writings of Henry Thoreau, edited by Will H. It appeared in the version of Excursions reorganized for and printed as the ninth volume of the Riverside Edition, and in the fifth volume ( Excursions and Poems) of the 1906 Walden and Manuscript Editions.
(The manuscript that Thoreau prepared for the publisher has been held by the Concord Free Public Library since 1873.) "Walking" was included in the collection Excursions, first issued in Boston by Ticknor and Fields in 1863 and reprinted a number of times from the Ticknor and Fields plates until the publication of the Riverside Edition of Thoreau's writings in 1894. "Walking" was first published just after the author's death, in the June 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Thoreau combined the lectures, separated them in 1854, and worked them together again for publication in 1862, as he was dying. Thoreau's essay "Walking" grew out of journal entries developed in 1851 into two lectures, "Walking" and "The Wild," which were delivered in 18, and again in 18. Thoreau's "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers".Selected Chronology of Thoreau's Writings.
Emerson's "The Divinity School Address".Selective Chronology of Emerson's Writings.Forms of Expressing Transcendental Philosophy.
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