Audiobook · read by volunteers
Walking
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Read by Chris Masterson · 2 chapters · 1 h 29
About the book
A walk is more than exercise. For Henry David Thoreau, it is a way of approaching the wild, of leaving behind the settled and the civilised for a while and finding out what remains. In this essay, which began as a lecture, he reflects on the art of walking, on the direction in which a walker feels drawn, on the meaning of wilderness and on the place of human beings in nature. His style is sharp, personal and full of striking turns of phrase. The text is now one of the best-known statements of the case for the wild, and its influence on later writing about nature has been great. Two recordings, about an hour and a half, for slow listening on a walk of your own.
Introduction
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is best known for Walden, his account of living by a pond near Concord, Massachusetts. Walking is a late essay. It began as a lecture, first given in 1851 under the title The Wild, and Thoreau revised it before his death. It was published in the Atlantic Monthly in June 1862, shortly after he died.
On the surface, the essay seems to be a simple celebration of nature and of the activity of walking. Yet it works at a deeper level. Thoreau treats walking as something close to a spiritual discipline and, in a famous passage, plays on the word saunter. He asks what it means to be a citizen of a society and a part of the natural world at once, and he comes down on the side of the wild.
His writing is full of paradox and humour, and it moves fluidly between observation and argument. Readers sometimes find it demanding because it is dense with ideas, but it repays slow attention.
The recording is in two parts, read by a LibriVox volunteer, and lasts about an hour and a half. It is a good companion for a walk. It also provides a useful introduction to Thoreau’s thought and to a tradition of American nature writing that has lasted until today. The essay is short, but it is rich in ideas, and many listeners find that a second hearing brings out new things. Those who already love nature writing will feel at home, and those who are new to Thoreau will find in it one of the clearest statements of his outlook in a relatively brief compass.
Public domain
Henry David Thoreau died in 1862: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text