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.” 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Giacometti, Yanaihara Isaku.

Image
Yanaihara Isaku was 38 years old at the beginning of his stay in Paris. A recommendation of Jean Wahl had allowed him to get a scholarship from CNRS. In his homeland, he taught philosophy at the University of Osaka; he wrote and meditated about Rouault, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus which he translated  The Myth of Sisyphus  . After the parenthesis of a trip to Greece and Italy, he had agreed to pose for the artist he met at an exhibition for autumn 1955. This decision  transformed his life. Immediate consequence, she brought him to extend his stay in France: Alberto had always need new work days to specify what the disconcerted and frightened from his friend's face.  "Your face ... I see everything tiny and terribly huge ... I must paint the two together. "  Yanaihara had planned to leave for a trip to Egypt before joining Japan. His departure was constantly postponed: Giacometti desperate to complete the portraits he had...
Read more

The Manila Galleon - Concepion with Bill Mathers and Henry Parker

Image
The Society for Asian Art held a presentation today by Bill Mathers and Dr. Henry Parker, an oceanographer, about their published book on "Concepcion" the Manila Galleon which was wrecked on the reefs of Saipan in 1638 and found again in 1987 by a group of marine archaeologists.  300 persons had been on board and all but 50 lost their lives; it took two years for the news of the loss of the galleon to reach Spain. The talk focussed on how they came to take on this project, a childhood dream for Mathers, and on their process, of underwater excavations and the finding of sunken Asian treausures and lost galleons.  The effort cost them 1.5 million  and they sold the thousands of objects for 5 million, to the government of the M isalands. The article about this ship is found in the September 1990 National Geographic .  A full archaeological report was made of the find, and the British Museum contracted the results.  Stunning gold objects and beautifully set gems...
Read more

Pauline Kael house with Jess Collins murals, Berkeley

Image
my favorite mural Very exciting!  This house may become a poetry center, like the wonderful house, UPENN has, for its poetry readings.  But right now, it is still in a process of negotiation, as Sotheby's realtor, creatively organizes a committee to "save the house" and murals.  Christopher Wagstaff, author of a recent exhibition catalogue, the exhibition which is touring and currently in Pasadena, having been at the Grey Art Gallery in NYC, and at the Crocker in summer 2013) - unfortunately I was in China.  The exhibition centers on the relationship and work of Robert Duncan, Poet, whose work I greatly admire(and did as a UW student) and in NYC where I heard him read once before his death.  Pauline Kael is a legend and of course, I read her theater reviews, and heard her speak at the Y92 in NYC, in the 70s.  I never knew she started for a decade in Berkeley writing her reviews.  Her correspondence with poet Robert Duncan (1940-1946) has...
Read more