By Chuck Richardson
October 10, 2005
bastardpolitics.com
There are many valid readings of Henry David Thoreau, most centering on Walden. But the two most common these days seem typified by Leo Marx, an MIT professor and book editor, and Lawrence Buell, an ecocentric Harvard English professor. (1)
Marx personifies the established view of Walden being a work of American pastoral, contrasting community and individual life. Buell, however, believes Walden records a "transformative journey" from an anthropocentric vision of reality to an ecocentric one; or, if you prefer, from a human-centered dream to a systemic Earth-focused world encapsulating our observations as observed beings stewing away in the generalized will of things (otherwise known as cosmic soup).
Buell sees human prejudice in Marx's reading, which excludes the validities of other forms of being for being insignificant-a very narrow view of the immensity indeed. Marx disparages Buell's construal for its exclusion of Thoreau's assumed dislike of humankind, authenticated by his interpretation of "the farmer Flint" in "The Ponds" essay.
I suggest a reading that integrates these, bonding their strengths while harmonizing their prejudices, which might provide deeper advances in our private considerations of our self and selves as Earth and Earthling within our
immense varieties. (
READ MORE)