"Walden" is a quiet book, a very quiet book, not a lively book. It is a lonely book, a lonely book. It is just a book about one person. If your heart is not at peace, I am afraid it will be difficult for you to enter this book. What I want to tell you is that after your mind calms down, you will think about something. When you think about some issues, you can think about yourself and higher principles together with Mr. Henry David Thoreau.

This Mr. Thoreau is a companion of loneliness. He is often just one person. He thought there was no better companion than solitude. His life was very simple and quiet.

Thoreau was born in Concord on July 12, 1817; he studied and graduated from Harvard University (1833-1837); he returned to his hometown and taught for two years (1838-1840). Then he He lived in the home of the great writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841-1843), worked as a disciple and assistant, and began to try writing. By 1845, he was single and took a bachelor's degree. He took an ax and ran into the uninhabited mountains and forests beside Walden Pond. He lived alone until 1847 before returning to Cannes. In 1848, he lived at Emerson's house again; in 1849, he completed a book called "Walden Pond". A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. At about the same time, he published a very famous and influential essay called "On Civil Disobedience." It can be translated as "On the Right of Civil Disobedience". We will talk about it later. Then, in 1854, our literary masterpiece "Walden Pond" was published, but it had some initial effects. It was not big at that time. As time went by, its influence grew. In 1859, he supported the movement against American slavery; when the leader of this movement, John Brown, was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. At that time, he delivered a speech defending and appealing to Brown, and went to the church to ring the bells and hold a memorial service.

After that, he suffered from lung disease and failed to treat it. He died in Cannes in 1862. He was only 44 years old. He left 39 volumes of "Diary", which were compiled and published one after another. Many editions and selected volumes have been published.

This is how his life was. Simple and fragrant, but also so lonely and fragrant. It can be said that his life is not simple, nor lonely. His readers will find that his spiritual life is very rich and exquisite, which is rare in the world. He didn't have many friends, but he had many friends.

He was deeply proud of his birthplace, Cannes, which was the birthplace of American independence. The epicenter of the war, he said, it never ceased to amaze him that he was "born in one of the most venerable places in the world" and "at just the right time" to coincide with the emergence of the most important intellectual circles in the United States. Active era. On the American continent, the six states of "New England" where the earliest European immigrants lived were the birthplace of American culture, and it was in Cannes, MA that the brilliance of American spiritual life was ignited. The small Cannes is picturesque. All of a sudden, four great writers appeared there: Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau in 1834. , Emerson settled in Cannes, and went to Harvard University to give a lecture titled "American Scholars". Emerson gave speeches, wrote articles, published books, and promoted typical prophets and outstanding people. This "Excellent Man" is his masterpiece. His call as a pioneer had a profound impact on Thoreau.

Under the impetus of Emerson, Thoreau began. I sent poems and manuscripts to "Sundial" magazine. But a demanding editor rejected his manuscript multiple times. Thoreau also gave a lecture entitled "Society" at the Collège de Cannes, which slightly attracted the attention of the public. By 1841, Emerson invited Thoreau to live in his home. At that time, Emerson promoted his idealist transcendental theory and gathered a group of his colleagues, as if he had set up a transcendentalist club. But Thoreau did not consider himself a transcendentalist. In a diary, he wrote: "People often whisper in my ears, using their wonderful theories and all kinds of rhetoric to solve the problems of the universe, but it does not help me. I still go back to the boundless and islandless place. He went up to the vast sea of ????the island, constantly exploring and looking for a bottom that he could anchor and hold on to."

Thoreau's family background was originally relatively difficult, but I still sent him to college and finished college.

Then his family thought he should go out and make a career in the world. But he would rather go back to his hometown and teach in a private middle school in Cannes. Soon after, his brother John, who was only one year older than him, came running. The two taught together. The elder brother taught English and mathematics, and the younger brother taught classics, science and natural history. The students loved them both. Henry also took students on trips to the river, held outdoor classes, and had picnics, so that students could receive a life education that uses nature as a classroom and all living things as teaching materials.

A friend once called Thoreau a "poet and naturalist," and he was not exaggerating. His knowledge of life is rich and profound. When he was alone, all nature became his companion.

According to Emerson's brother's recollection, Thoreau's students told him: When Thoreau lectured, the students listened quietly, so quietly that even a pin dropped in the classroom could be heard clearly.

In July 1839, a seventeen-year-old girl, Ellen Silver, came to Cannes and visited the Thoreau family. The day she arrived, Henry wrote a poem. There was another sentence in the diary five days later: "There is no cure for love, only love that is even more powerful." This was probably written for Allen's sake. Unexpectedly, John also falls in love with her, which complicates matters. The three of them often walked together and rowed on the river. They climbed mountains to view the scenery, went into the forest to explore, and even carved the initials of their last names on the trees. The conversation was almost endless, but the happy time was short-lived.

In the spring of this year, the two brothers built a boat. At the end of August they made a voyage by boat up the Concord and Merrimack rivers. On the journey, everything was fine, except that there were some subtle cracks between the two, which were not revealed to each other. In fact, they had become love rivals. Later, John proposed to her but she rejected him. Later, Henry also wrote her a warm letter, and she responded to him with a cold letter. Soon after, Allen married a minister. The episode left a scar on Henry's mind. But then something absolutely unexpected happened. On New Year's Day, 1842, John accidentally cut his left middle finger while sharpening his razor blade on a piece of leather. He bandaged it with a strip of cloth, but he didn't expect that it would suppurate two or three days later, causing severe pain all over his body. He rushed to see a doctor, but it was too late. He suffered from trismus, a type of septicemia. He soon entered a dying state. Ten days later, John passed away suddenly. The sudden incident gave Henry the heaviest blow. Although he tried to remain calm, he returned home without saying a word. A week later, he also fell ill, also suffering from what appeared to be lockjaw. Fortunately, what he suffered from was not this kind of disease, but a psychosomatic state caused by psychological pain. He remained ill for three months. It was not until mid-April that he appeared in the garden again and gradually recovered.

Henry wrote many poems in memory of John that year. In the poem "Brother, Where Are You", he asked: "Where should I go / to find your figure? / Along the nearby river, / can I still hear your voice?" Reply It was his brother and friend, John, who had become one with nature. They had made preparations, and he had adopted the face of nature as his own, and expressed his own thoughts with the expression of nature... Nature had taken away his brother, and John had become a part of nature: From here, Henry regained his confidence and joy. He wrote in his diary: "The heaviness of the pain in front of you also shows the sweetness of the past experience. When you are sad, how easy it is to think of happiness! In winter, bees cannot make honey, so they consume the honey that has been made." This paragraph During this time, he was recuperating from his illness and injuries; he was living in seclusion, preparing for the future, gathering momentum, and storing water until the gates were opened and released to irrigate the earth.

In another diary, he said: "I must admit that if you ask me what I have done for society and what good news I have sent to mankind, I am really shabby. No doubt. My shabby life is not without reason, and my lack of achievement is not without reason. I just want to dedicate the wealth of my life to people and truly give them the most precious gift. I want to cultivate it in the shell. Come, pearls, and brew the honey of life for them. I want the sun to shine on the public welfare. I have no wealth to hide. My special function is to serve the public. My private property. Anyone can be innocent and therefore rich. I hold and nurture the pearl until its perfection."

After recovering, Thoreau lived again. Arriving at Emerson's house. Later, he arrived in New York and lived in the home of Emerson's brother on Staten Island in the city. He hopes to begin building a literary career. Precisely because of his unique style, he was not liked by people or the secular society. It was not easy to make a living by writing. Soon after, he returned to his hometown. For a time he helped his father make pencils, but he soon gave up this profitable pursuit.

So in the fall of 1844, Emerson bought a piece of land on Walden Pond. When the year passed, Thoreau obtained permission from the owner of the land to "reside by the lake."

Finally he took a brave step, in his own words: