HD THOREAU. Quotes and comments about Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter, in “Lessons in Constructive Solitude" observes that 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 – readhing, 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 (Thoreau)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. “ He quotes Thoreau, “We must first succeed
alone, that we may enjoy our success together….
”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.”
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