“With its circle of warmth, the fireplace had once been the center of family life. It’s dancing light, smoky smells, and a warm crackling created an ambience that made a house more a home. And the traditions around the hearth stretched back through the ages, connecting each house to deep cultural roots. How might the solar house incorporate some of the richness of the hearth? What were the qualities of the hearth that made it so wonderful and beloved?” (1/2)
@iraantlers 4/4 This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast; for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are gathered the robin and the lark.”
1/ As I was doing some research for an essay I’m working on I realized something pretty amazing about Thoreau: when he left Walden in September 1847 it was, among other reasons, to live with Emerson’s wife and children to help care for them and the house while Emerson traveled around Europe.
4/4 What’s really interesting to me is not only the way this challenges the misguided but popular mythology about Thoreau’s time at Walden (self-reliant sylvan misanthrope) but the way it strengthens the truer mythology of his life (which I recently wrote about here https://medium.com/bookish-nook/the-genius-of-the-wood-0a97929dfcb9 )
1/3 “When the ancients had not found an animal wild and strange enough to suit them, they created one by the mingled [traits] of the most savage already known,—as hyenas, lionesses, pards, panthers, etc ., etc.,—one with another. Their beasts were thus of wildness and savageness all compact, and more ferine and terrible than any of an unmixed breed could be.
1/2 “We are as often injured as benefited by our systems, for, to speak the truth, no human system is a true one, and a name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but so soon as we have learned to distinguish them, the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.
2/2 I think, therefore, that the best and most harmless names are those which are an imitation of the voice or note of an animal, or the most poetic ones. But the name adheres only to the accepted and conventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to the real one. There is always something so ridiculous in the name of a great man,—as if he were named John Smith. The name is convenient in communicating with others, but it is not to be remembered when I communicate with it myself.”
“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.”
“The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve and therefore nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant the summer may go by & you not see it. How much of the year is spring & fall—how little can be called summer! The grass is no sooner grown than it begins to wither—“
We, sighing, said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river;—
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
But Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;—
The Genius of the wood is lost."
1/2 “We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law.
Nothing was too trivial for the [Hindu] lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.”
“I too revive as does the grass after rain. We are never so flourishing, our day is never so fair, but that the sun may come out a little brighter through mists and we yearn to live a better life. What have we to boast of? We are made the very sewers, the cloacæ, of nature.”
“It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things…”
Made a quick journal entry about Thoreau, cows, and Beltane. I haven't written in a while and my head still feels a little cloudy so I apologize for any errors or lack of clarity... I am mainly just trying to get back into the habit of writing again so this isn't meant to be something polished.
“They go publishing the ‘chronological cycles’ and ‘movable festivals of the Church’ and the like, but how insignificant are these compared with the annual phenomena of your life, which fall within your experience! The signs of the zodiac are not nearly of that significance to me that the sight of a dead sucker in the spring is. That is the occasion for an immovable festival in my church. Another kind of lent.”
“How rarely a man’s love for nature becomes a ruling principle with him, like a youth’s affection for a maiden, but more enduring! All nature is my bride.”
To sit there,
Rustling the hay,
Just beyond the reach of the rain
While the storm roars without,
It suggested an inexpressible dry stillness,
The quiet of the haymow in a rainy day;
Such stacks of quiet and undisturbed thought,
When there is not even a cricket to stir in the hay,
But all without is wet and tumultuous,
And all within is dry and quiet.
"How long do the gales retain the heat of the sun? I find them retreated high up the sides of hills, especially on open fields or cleared places. Does, perchance, any of this pregnant air survive the dews of night? Can any of it be found remembering the sun of yesterday even in the morning hours. Does, perchance, some puff, some blast, survive the night on elevated clearings surrounded by the forest?
Might not a bellows assist us to breathe? That our breathing should create a wind in a calm day! We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your senses."
"To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! ...It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it."
"The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves."
These regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be—they were at first, of course—simply and plainly phenomena or phases of my life. The seasons and all their changes are in me.
I see not a dead eel or floating snake, or a gull, but it rounds my life and is like a line or accent in its poem. Almost I believe the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks again, were I not here. After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are. I would have nothing subtracted. I can imagine nothing added. My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her!
"They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads."
"this morning the ground is again covered with snow—& the storm still continues...
But this snow has not driven back the birds—I hear the song-sparrow's simple strain—most genuine herald of the spring & see flocks of chubby northern birds with the habit of snow birds passing north."
Good summary of the Thoreau, Emerson, and Emerson love triangle, and his interesting (not to mention contradictory) views on love and gender in general.