Walden

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Cover picture of the original edition from 1854

Walden, or Life in the Woods (. English title Walden; or, Life in the Woods ) - also known as Walden or cottage life in the forest appeared - a book by the American writer Henry David Thoreau in 1854 about his temporary life as a dropout , the became a "classic of all alternatives ".

content

The place where Thoreau's log cabin stood in 1908

In Walden , Thoreau describes his life in a log cabin that he built in the woods of Concord ( Massachusetts ) on Lake Walden Pond on the property of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1845, in order to support the industrialized mass society of the young USA for more than two years To turn back. According to his own statement, however, it was not about a naive escape from the world , but about trying to achieve an alternative and balanced lifestyle:

“I moved into the forest because I wanted to live with deliberation, to get closer to actual, real life, to see if I couldn't learn what it had to teach so that I wouldn't when it was to die would have to see that I had not lived. I didn't want to live what wasn't life; life is so precious. Nor did I want to practice renunciation unless it was absolutely necessary. I wanted to live deeply, suck out all the marrow of life, live so hard and spartan that everything that wasn't life was put to flight. "

The book, published in 1854, cannot be viewed as a novel in the true sense of the word; rather, it is a summary and elaboration of his diary entries , which he integrates and summarizes in the symbolic cycle of a year. His style is characterized by a high degree of flexibility and language skills, which have often made it difficult to translate into other languages.

The eighteen chapters of the book are devoted to different aspects of human existence, for example it contains reflections on the economy , on loneliness , reflections on the animals of the forest or on reading classic literary works.

To the book edition

The drawing of the log cabin, which served as a template for the title page of the first edition from 1854, came from Thoreau's sister Sophia.

In March 1862, two months before his death, Thoreau asked his publishers Ticknor & Fields to stop using the sub-title Life in the Woods in an upcoming new edition. They complied with this request, but it was reinstated in later editions.

reception

Walden's impact is in the tradition of American transcendentalism : Thoreau was Ralph Waldo Emerson's secretary for a time before he tried to confirm his basic idea of ​​the necessity of an occasional life in harmony with nature in his experiment. He was also close friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne .

Walden is now one of the most influential books in American literary history . In pre- Marxist times it was to be found in many working-class households, in the 20th century it inspired the conservation movement as well as the 1968 generation. It also found widespread recognition outside the United States; Mahatma Gandhi , for example, specifically referred to Walden with his ideal of nonviolent resistance and his ascetic lifestyle . With his utopia , Burrhus Frederic Skinners (Walden Two) also refers to Thoreau in the title, while Rubén Ardilas (Walden Tres) and Rolf Todescos (Walden III) practically only refer to Skinner.

A quote from the last chapter of the book gained particular fame:

“Why this desperate pursuit of success, especially in such daring ventures? If a man does not keep pace with his comrades, it may be because he hears another drummer. Let him march to the music he hears, in whatever beat and however far it is. It doesn't matter that a person ripens as quickly as an apple tree or an oak. Should he turn his spring into summer? "

From the end of the 1870s, the reception of "hears a different drummer" began to develop in the United States and became more intense in the mid-1950s. From the 1960s onwards, the phrase march to [the beat of] a different drummer / drum spread, which also occurs in the variation bang [ing] on a different drum . In British English, this developed into march to [the beat of] a different tune.

In the film The Dead Poets Club , the above quoted motto from Walden is recited by all members as the opening motto for each “meeting” of the club.

In her novel Ein Leben mehr, Jocelyne Saucier took up a few motifs from Walden , in particular life in a lonely hut in the forest, as a dropout (here pensioners), and a clearly critical view of the state, represented in her by social workers who get involved, through the police, who are cracking down on cannabis plantations in the forest, and through psychiatric homes, who command their residents and merely keep them instead of cure them. In addition, the novel has a number of other motifs.

In 2000, the Czech composer Martin Smolka used texts from Thoreau's work in his composition Walden, the Distiller of Celestial Dews .

Quotes from Walden

  • "I had three limestones on my desk, but to my horror I found that they needed daily dusting while my intellectual belongings were still undusted, and in disgust I threw them out the window."
  • “At least one thing I learned from my experiments: If someone confidently steps forward in the direction of his dreams and strives to live the life he imagined, he will have successes that he would not dream of in ordinary hours let. He will leave many things behind, will cross an invisible limit. New, general and freer laws will be formed around him and in him, or the old ones will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more free sense. "

Translations into German

expenditure

English editions
German editions

(See also the section on translations into German above ).

  • Walden or life in the woods. From the American by Wilhelm Nobbe. Eugen Diederichs, Jena 1922 (first 1905) ( e-book at Projekt Gutenberg-DE ).
  • Walden or life in the woods. From the American by Emma Emmerich. 22nd edition. Diogenes, Zurich 2007 (first 1897; revised), ISBN 978-3-257-20019-5 .
  • Walden or hut life in the woods. Translated from the American and with an afterword by Fritz Güttinger. Manesse, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-7175-1440-7 .

Web links

Wikisource: Walden  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Birle, Peter Ginter: USA: A foray through landscape, culture and everyday life. 2nd Edition. Vista Point, 2001, p. 62.
  2. ^ Note from Walter Harding in Walden. An Annotated Edition. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1995.
  3. ↑ Gisa Funk: Henry David Thoreau's "Walden". Plea for part-time exit. In: Deutschlandfunk . May 10, 2015.
  4. ↑ Martin Smolka (ex. Lydia Jeschke): Walden, the Distiller of Celestial Dews , in: Donaueschinger Musiktage - Werke des Jahres 2000.