Pensei, penseira

Manuscrito del diario de Henry David Thoreau, 1837

Henry David Thoreau walked the earth gently from July 12, 1817 - 1862. He lies in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord Mass., alongside Hawthorne and Emerson… Before he died Thoreau exclaimed: “Now comes good sailing!”

N.C. Wyeth

Thoreau at Walden Pond (1932)

Oil on canvas, 58 1/8 × 70 in.

Brandywine Museum of Art

I have been re-reading HD Thoreau's Walden (1854) - starting at the very beginning with the chapter "Economy". (I've been reading this book, on-and-off, for fifty years!)

First, I was struck afresh by the muscular brilliance of the writing - this is prose of the highest level! 

But secondly, it struck me how modern is the expressed perspective of Thoreau. He writes from the position of mainstream modern alienation, one which looks-out upon the world and deliberates how to get the best deal from our interactions. 

Spiral staircase. House & garden. January 1938.

“Invisible forces operating in a solar system.” Nature’s invisible forces. 1917.

Ammonites muticus. Art-studies from nature. 1872. Cephalopod fossil.

DNA. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. 1959.

Solarium maximum. Sundial shells. Spirals in nature and art. 1903.

"Curious egg case of Fulgur perversus, a large marine gastropod." In lower Florida wilds. 1920.