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transcendentalism in a week on the concord and merrimack rivers

John Thoreau subsequently died of lockjaw in 1842, a death which greatly affected his brother. Thoreau further develops the mountain imagery of A Week in "Tuesday," in which he describes his ascent, on another trip, of Mount Greylock ("Saddle-back Mountain") in western Massachusetts. and any corresponding bookmarks? It suggests intensity of emotion, both private and deeply meaningful. The belief that man’s dignity was rooted in his associations with nature was a core value of the U. S. Founding Fathers and in 19th-century Transcendentalism. Human history has been destructive to wildness in both nature and man. He praises Homer and Shakespeare, dismisses the treatment of writing as a commodity, and likens writing to the river's flowing. Thoreau urges man to spiritualize and naturalize so as to be open to the beauty of the world and to aspire to immortal existence, to conceive of a "better heaven." He first approached Ticknor & Company (predecessor of Ticknor and Fields) but, unable to obtain satisfactory terms, sent the manuscript to James Munroe and Company early in 1849. These seeming digressions, connected to the narrative by thematic threads, are, in fact, integral to the meaning of the book. The travelers pitch camp at Merrimack, New Hampshire. . Previous Thoreau died in Concord, at the age of forty-four, in 1862. A revised edition was published after Thoreau's death. "Saturday" concludes with a discussion of night sounds, described as evidence of nature's health. He writes of the poet Ossian, of perspective and perception, of seeing things anew, and of permanence over the lapse of time. The travelers camp in Hooksett. He returns to the river, and to nature's composition of an autumnal poem. But the lyricism of this section is in keeping with Thoreau's idealism in presenting his other themes in A Week. I see men with infinite pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I, with at least equal pains, would realize to my imagination, — its capacities. Thoreau is reminded by a "brawny New Hampshire man" of an earlier encounter, on another trip, with a "rather rude and uncivil man" named Rice. Music is "the sound of the universal laws promulgated." Moreover, there is optimism in the transition from summer to fall at the end of the book, and in the implicit anticipation of spring. Removing #book# The two brothers kill, cook, and eat a pigeon, a small drama that causes some guilt, but that also prompts Thoreau to comment on the fulfillment of fate and on the detection of "the secret innocence of these incessant tragedies which Heaven allows." Thoreau's thoughts on the subject are highly idealistic and, the reader suspects, impossible to achieve and sustain outside of art. The former possesses genius and inspiration, the latter intellect and taste. Writing should be truthful, should describe things as they are. the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back He discusses music as "the sound of the universal laws promulgated." John Thoreau, Henry's brother and the muse invoked at the beginning of the book, is never mentioned by name, nor is the depth of the emotional bond between the two referred to specifically and personally. Art and nature may exist in a kind of symbiosis. He places the Concord within a universal context as a symbol of the flow of time and life toward the eternal. Thoreau begins "Monday" with reference to both the dawn of time and, in describing a ferryman on the river in the morning fog, to death. The structure of A Week and the imagery of the river both powerfully suggest the passage of time. He complains that the man of science does not approach the "central facts." Thoreau also admires certain writers who possess vision and who treat broad and basic subjects. The place where the brothers camp at night is described in classically sylvan terms. The purpose of the journey inward is to arrive at the universals revealed by particular expressions found in nature, history, and human character. information, accurate as far as it goes, though it be but to the confines of the truth. Thoreau considers the permanence of universal laws; the awakening within us, in serene moments, of all the eras of history; the world as "canvass to our imaginations"; the life of the mind, which craves expression; the fragility of human enterprise and aspiration; and the difficulty of achieving inner life in the normal course of human existence. Journal as a record of thoreau 's first book, both long and transcendentalism in a week on the concord and merrimack rivers a journal as a symbol the... 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