Holland Cotter, Lessons in Constructive Solitude" H D Thoreau in self isolation at WALDEN
Another important piece in NYT Friday, April 10, was the feature by Holland
Cotter, “Lessons in Constructive Solitude”
Cotter's thesis is " Thoreau used his self-quarantine
at Walden, to pursue an intensive course in self education. In the present pandemic moment, there’s
plenty to learn from standing still.” //
"...An intensive course in self
education: “Books must be read as
deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” The list he compiled was long, ambitious and
culturally far – reaching, stretching from Classical Greece to Vedic India”…I
would add, China. Many studies have been done on Thoreau in China…I traced his
Chinese references while living there.
“In
a letter to a friend he wrote: “The Yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes
in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful
things. To some extent, and at rare
intervals, even I am a yogi.” He made
his life at Walden one of those intervals.”
Cotter goes on to say, “(Interestingly, during
the present lockdown, several of my friends have returned to a practice of meditation
that their prepandemic lives left little time for). …immersion with animals, Nature…for “Thoreau,
Nature was a communicating consciousness, and he wanted to make himself
available to it, antennas raised. Full
receptivity required removal from ego-driven clamor, which was how, in his most
stressed moments, he viewed human discourse.”Cotter observes, “He knew what his
view was up against; among other things, America’s antsy addiction to
distraction and its led by the nose corporation fed faith in utopian
technology.
Cotter further quotes Thoreau, “We must first succeed alone,
that we may enjoy our success to gether….”Civil Disobedience”…”I left the woods
for as good a reason as I went there.
Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to life, and could
not spare any more time for that one.”
My Experience: It brought back lots of memories of my fellowship at Walden, Concord, one summer, where I met Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, as well...and slept one night in Thoreau's cabin...on Walden, a pond, though bigger than the manmade pond by Monet at Giverney.
Cotter omits that Thoreau had a Harvard education before he pursued his own self education, and that he had a "corporate' opportunity to take on a major role at his father's pencil factory. He does mention the weekends in Concord with family, but oftentimes with his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and his wife in their very commodious home. Yes, Thoreau is a lesson, and one of the reasons my friends seem to think I am flourishing in this period of self isolation. I have practiced solitary pursuits: reading, gardening, yoga, meditation, for some time. There is much to be learned from one's own company...and never enough time for all one would do. How does anyone get anything done when one can go anywhere and do anything...I do miss live concerts, opera, galleries, the companionship of people in the museums and art field, and others, of course, who are loved dearly, but it seems I see them rarely anyway, sometimes not for months or even a year or so. So it goes..
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