Familiar Letters
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 4 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 657 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Familiar Letters. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/familiar-letters
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. Familiar Letters. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/familiar-letters.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Familiar Letters. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/familiar-letters.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Thoreau's correspondence, edited by Sanborn in 1894: the Thoreau who writes to particular people, and who is often warmer than the Thoreau of the books.
Context and history
There are the letters to Emerson, who was his patron and his difficulty; those he wrote to Harrison Blake, a schoolmaster of Worcester who asked him for moral advice and whom Thoreau answered for thirteen years with what amount to small essays; and the family letters. The best-known is the one he wrote to Emerson when Emerson's small son died, which sounds cold until one grasps what it says. Two things are worth remembering: that this is a nineteenth-century edition, made by the standards of its day, and that Sanborn was an editor with a free hand — he cut, combined and sometimes improved — which later scholarship has had to undo.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
mentesque torpescunt. Canerem cum Horatio, si vox non faucibus haeserit,--Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Nawshawtuct, nec jam sustineant onus Silvae laborantes, geluque Flumina constiterint acuto? Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco Large reponens, etc. Sed olim, Musa mutata, et laetiore plectro, Neque jam stabulis gaudet pecus, aut arator igne, Nec prata canis albicant pruinis; Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente luna. Quam turdus ferrugineus ver reduxerit, tu, spero, linques curas scholasticas, et, negotio religato, desipere in loco audebis; aut mecum inter sylvas, aut super scopulos Pulchri-Portus, aut in cymba super lacum Waldensem, mulcens fluctus manu, aut speciem miratus sub undas. Bulwerius est mihi nomen incognitum,--unus ex ignobile vulgo, nec refutandus nec laudandus. Certe alicui nonnullam honorem habeo qui insanabili cacoethe scribendi teneatur. Specie flagrantis Lexingtonis non somnia deturbat? At non Vulcanum Neptunumque culpemus, cum superstitioso grege. Natura curat animalculis aeque ac hominibus; cum serena, tum procellosa, amica est. Si amas historiam et fortia facta heroum, non depone Rollin, precor; ne Clio offendas nunc, nec illa det veniam olim. Quos libros Latinos legis? legis, inquam, non studes. Beatus qui potest suos libellos tractare, et saepe perlegere, sine metu domini urgentis! ab otio injurioso procul est: suos amicos et vocare et dimittere quandocunque velit, potest. Bonus liber opus nobilissimum hominis. Hinc ratio non modo cur legeres, sed cur tu quoque scriberes; nec lectores carent; ego sum. Si non librum meditaris, libellum certe. Nihil posteris proderit te spirasse, et vitam nunc leniter nunc aspere egisse; sed cogitasse praecipue et scripsisse. Vereor ne tibi pertaesum hujus epistolae sit; necnon alma lux caret, Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae. Quamobrem vale,--imo valete, et requiescatis placide, Sorores.…