Art Of Living By Thoreau Walden Essay — страница 2

one?s life engaging and searching nature without worrying of limitations. The search of perfection results in a perfect art so unimpeded by external events. The artist uses pure materials of nature that are not tainted by the materialistic focus of the world. By employing these pure elements, the true artist of life brings a new system to take the place of old aged societies and brings forth a ?world with full and fair proportions? (211). This new world constructed by innocence and purified nature does not age or dies but rather transcends beyond the torpor and mundane life. Thoreau continues to argue that living requires loving and meeting life. He calls the reader to change and cultivate one?s life by turning the old, as one would do with soil. The constant turning brings forth

change of one?s life and mind towards activity. Thoreau rejects mechanical aids that cloud the consciousness and blinds one of achieving the purified art of living. He attacks the external stimuli such as drugs Kim 4 and habits as well as the ?gross necessaries of life? that only temporarily satisfies the body and impurifies rather than purifies (7). Even in one?s poverty, Thoreau suggests that ?you are but confined to the most significant and vital experience? ? a life compelled to deal with nature and its elements. It is the love to ?weigh, to settle, to gravitate? (211) life that produces a life not the search for ?luxury which enervates and destroys nations? (9). Thoreau prefers a simplistic life resembling poverty and detachment from the dependency of luxury and the massive

aspirations for particular things. The severance from worldly commodities will bring forth a ?life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust? (9). The simple and wise life that Thoreau calls upon is complex yet he is convinced by ?faith and experience that to maintain one?s self on this earth is not hardship but a pastime? (46). The simple and wise life requires one to be alert, awake, and to be ?reawakened and continuously awake? (59). This reveals Thoreau?s love of American visionary moral aesthetics and the encouraging fact of the need for man to ?elevate h8is life by a conscious endeavor? (59). It is the independent fervor and active participation of one?s soul to ?affect the quality of the day? which results in the ?highest of the arts?(59). The pursuit for

intensity within simplistic ways of life apart from material stimulants brings forth a natural elevation through a conscious rational effort. The self is the natural medium requiring the meticulous efforts to increase and transcend one?s spirit to a pure art form similar to nature. Kim 5 Thoreau also argues the possibilities of such a life by which we can engage and ?morally we can do? (59). Thoreau adheres to the tradition of a thrift way of life according to the Puritan work ethic. He embraces certain elements of the religiosity in doing- the fervency of participating in one?s task. Thoreau participates in the day and of the day?s natural repetitiveness, different from the mundane life. It is by our own spirits that we are deified when we become purified and wedded to the day.

Thoreau compares himself to the day when he states that ?morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me? (58). By describing the nature around him, Thoreau grips the life by living the deliberate and ?fronting only the essential facts? (59). Such facts arise from nature and living is the experience one has while dealing with the earth and the atmosphere. The facts are natural truths waiting to be practiced and searched for. Thus each man is given a task to experience the quality rather than quantity of the day. ?Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour?(59). Thoreau conveys living as a simple task, although the process and experience of living is undermined. To live is to ?live deep and

suck out all the marrow of life? which is hardly a simple task (59). The essential elements embedded in life need to be searched and sucked out. Thoreau calls for living deep, and taking all that life has to bring even sucking all the ?marrow of life? that brings youthfulness. Kim 6 This action must be done individually and by one?s own efforts and exertions in order to experience the art of living. Thoreau?s emphasis on solitude and independence conveys the notion that one should become detached from the worldly unfruitful life for one to become lost to oneself in order to find his soul. The importance placed on the individual?s act of living reveals the dependency that one has to nature. Thoreau suggests a life matching and synergetic with nature while learning to absolve and