헨리 데이빗 소로우의 『월든』 읽기: 소로우는 초월주의적 이상주의자인가?

Abstract

Henry David Thoreau’s life in the Walden woods is an experiment to live a self-sufficient and independent life, ridding his life of nonessentials. Walden, which records the author’s two years and two months living around Walden pond, is called a cluster of American Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is based on a theory that a correspondence exists between human spirit and natural objects. Although the theory contributed to forming Thoreau’s transcendentalism and he kept the position for reaching a higher spiritual truth, his own experiences in nature including constant and throughout observations of nature also constituted his transcendental philosophy. Otherness of nature that fascinates him leads to observation of nature. Along with the correspondence with which he discovers the reciprocal harmony between nature and his soul, otherness enlarges Thoreau’s self-awareness. Through the dialectical tension between correspondence and otherness, he realizes that nature is a non-dualistic realm with possibilities of diverse and multiple meanings and values. The natural world offers Thoreau an opportunity for non-dual experiences to transcend distances or gaps between subjects and objects. Nature and his mind become open fields that continue to provide humans with creative resources or what Thoreau calls “the tonic of wildness.” Walden is a project to reorient human cultures. Rather than merely transcending the natural and human worlds, Thoreau roots and involves himself in the both worlds for this project. He is not a transcendental idealist, but must be called a realistic transcendentalist.