David H. Thoreau: Walden or Life in the Woods

The American philosopher and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is considered the founder of the nature essay in modern world literature. Between 1845 and 1847 he voluntarily moved into a lonely forest cabin he built on the shores of Walden Lake in Massachusetts - and seven years later he published a testimony of his stay in the form of his remarkable book Walden or Life in the Woods. However, these are not fragmentary diary entries of observations of nature or records of personal feelings and impressions; it is an exceptional spiritual autobiography with a thoughtful composition "A man is richer the less he has to worry about. I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to face the essence of life. I didn't want to live what is not life, because living is something so precious, and I didn't want to live in surrender - if only there was nothing else. I wished to live with all my senses and completely suck out the sea of life, to live so fundamentally and spartanly that I would detach myself from everything that is not life. " Thoreau describes a life connected to nature, two years spent in the middle of the Massachusetts woods in a log cabin built with his own hands. His perspective is inspiring and urgently topical.