Walden 瓦爾登湖(英文版)

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Walden is a book by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and (to some degree) manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The experience later inspired Walden, in which Thoreau compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. 《瓦爾登湖》詳細記錄了梭羅在長達兩年零兩個月時間裏的日常生活狀態以及所思所想。他在小木屋旁開荒種地，春種秋收，自給自足。他是一個自然之子，他崇尚自然，與自然交朋友，與湖水、森林和飛鳥對話，在林中觀察動物和植物，在船上吹笛，在湖邊釣魚，晚上，在小木屋中記下自己的觀察和思考。他追求精神生活，關注靈魂的成長，他驕傲地宣稱：“每個人都是自己王國的國王，與這個王國相比，沙皇帝國也不過是一個卑微小國，猶如冰天雪地中的小雪團。”梭羅以他的實際行動告訴我們：人們所追求的大部分昂貴品，大部分的所謂生活的舒適，非但沒有必要，而且對人類進步大有妨礙。

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