Introduction: Walden Sesquicentennial Essays

Abstract

Believes these essays are implicit tributes to Walden’s variety. Claims many concerns central to Walden are treated with originality and precision in this collection: The split between action and contemplation, the opposition between nature as it is in detail and as it is made to serve the generalizing imagination, the clash between theology and science as these are applied to the natural world, the struggle between materialism and idealism, the use and rejection of literary predecessors, the conflict between wild nature and nature brought under the plow, the desire to transcend earth versus the desire to dig into it, the wish to escape one’s body versus the yearning to live fully through it, the need to communicate versus the desire to say something never uttered before, the gap between the world and its representation in language.