El Diario 1837-1861, Vol. II

by Henry David Thoreau

El diario de Thoreau fue el trabajo de su vida: la práctica diaria que acompañaba sus paseos cotidianos, el origen en el que perfiló sus libros y ensayos, y tal vez la mejor investigación jamás realizada sobre los cambios estacionales, la ecología y las interrelaciones entre la naturaleza y los estados de ánimo. Nos ilumina sobre la fascinación permanente de Thoreau con el tiempo, los árboles, las tortugas, la luna, los pájaros, las bayas y, por supuesto, la naturaleza humana.

El Diario es un tesoro de la prosa inglesa, pero las aproximadamente 7.000 páginas que lo componen, hacen que sea poco accesible en su versión íntegra. Esta edición en dos volúmenes es la más completa hasta ahora, y capta el alcance, la periodicidad, los ritmos y la variedad del trabajo de Thoreau en su conjunto. Observador filosófico y rapsódico, analiza sus propios estados de ánimo, retrata a amigos y vecinos, condena la esclavitud y la destrucción del mundo viviente, y se regocija en la belleza. Su incansable curiosidad se extiende sobre casi todos los fenómenos de la naturaleza y la vida en la Nueva Inglaterra del siglo xix, y sus apuntes son una rica fuente de historia social, ambiental, natural y cultural, que mira tanto al paisaje exterior como al interior: «Es vano escribir sobre las estaciones, a menos que tengas las estaciones dentro de ti».

400 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...

Reviews

[Anabel Samani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer a Thoreau es siempre un bálsamo y un acicate.