Journal 01, 1837-1846
- 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) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 606 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Journal 01, 1837-1846. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-01-1837-1846
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. Journal 01, 1837-1846. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-01-1837-1846.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Journal 01, 1837-1846. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/journal-01-1837-1846.
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
The first volume of Thoreau's journal: from the age of twenty to the Walden years.
Context and history
Thoreau's journal is his real work, and very few people know it. He kept it for twenty-four years, from the age of twenty until nearly his death, and it runs to some two million words: more than ten times everything he published in his lifetime. It is not an intimate diary nor a notebook of jottings: it is a daily record of what he saw — what day each plant flowered, when the pond froze, which bird returned and when — mixed with philosophical thinking and with pages of prose among the best he wrote. His books come out of it; this is the material of which 'Walden' is a distillation. The botanical and ice records he kept for decades are being used today to measure climate change, which he could not have foreseen. NOTE: the catalogue holds two volumes of the journal, not the whole of it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
was spread out like gauze over the tops of the trees, forming extended lawns, where elves and fairies held high tournament; "before each van Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears, Till thickest legions close."[16] The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his "long levelled rules" fall sector-wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord. FACTS How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated. Mere accumulators of facts—collectors of materials for the master-workmen—are like those plants growing in dark forests, which "put forth only leaves instead of blossoms." DRUIDS _Dec. 17._ In all ages and nations we observe a leaning towards a right state of things. This may especially be seen in the history of the priest, whose life approaches most nearly to that of the ideal man. The Druids paid no taxes, and "were allowed exemption from warfare and all other things." The clergy are even now a privileged class. In the last stage of civilization Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy will be one; and this truth is glimpsed in the first. The druidical order was divided into Druids, Bards, and Ouates. "The Bards were the poets and musicians, of whom some were satirists, and some encomiasts. The Ouates sacrificed, divined, and contemplated the nature of things. The Druids cultivated physiology and moral philosophy; or, as Diodorus says, were their philosophers and theologians." GOETHE _Dec. 18.…