Life in the woods - Trentino
Life in the woods - Trentino
In 1845, a young Henry Thoreau says goodbye to society, whose moral deficiency he deplores, and goes to live in a hut on the shores of Lake Walden, Massachusetts. He walks through the woods, makes friends with the squirrels in front of his little house at sunset, learns to recognize the different modulations of the birds’ sounds. But above all, he writes the thoughts that this communion with nature instills in him day after day.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live as to put to rout all that was not life. If it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it.’⠀
‘Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. The echo is not merely a repetition, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.’
‘Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. The echo is not merely a repetition, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.’⠀
‘But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was burned, I grieved with a grief that lasted long and was inconsolable; I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove. That is, would believe that it is sacred to some god.’⠀
‘But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was burned, I grieved with a grief that lasted long and was inconsolable; I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove. That is, would believe that it is sacred to some god.’⠀
‘I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him.’⠀⠀
‘I have spent many an hour floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly.’⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘I have spent many an hour floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly.’⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful.’
‘Se conoscessimo tutte le leggi della Natura ci basterebbe un solo fatto per desumerne tutti i risultati particolari. Ora conosciamo solo poche leggi e il risultato è viziato non tanto da qualche confusione o irregolarità della Natura ma dalla nostra ignoranza degli elementi essenziali del calcolo. Le nostre nozioni di legge sono ristrette agli esempi che scopriamo; ma l’armonia che risulta da un numero molto più grande di leggi similmente contrarie, e in effetti concorrenti e che non abbiamo scoperto, è meravigliosa’.⠀
‘I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.’⠀
August 29th. Italy-Austria border.
While I feel the breath of geological eras running through my back with a shiver, fate – which has more imagination than me – has put this book in my hands. The journal that would come out of this journey won’t forget about that: the miraculous correlation of landscapes and thoughts, although in two so distant chronotopes, is too pregnant.⠀⠀⠀
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Walden – Or life in the woods.