Lakeside Notes

Author: (American) Solon Zeng Guanghui
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-07-01
Features: Can read beautiful Chinese, can compare Chinese and English, can appreciate first-class English, specifically designed for readers of different ages and levels, creating a timeless collectible masterpiece. At some point in one's life, there is always that normal anxiety, passion, and rebelliousness of youth. After living by the beautiful and tranquil Walden Pond for two years, the American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau compiled his observations, reflections, and analyses into a prose masterpiece later recognized as unique, Walden, which remains the best manual ever written for young people by an American. Walden is an outlier in American literary works, and perhaps the most outlier among our outstanding outliers. It delivers a serious warning about losing precious things, argues for traveling lightly and embarking on new adventures, repeatedly emphasizes the power of positive worship, contains religious consciousness but no religious imagery, and insists on excluding negative news. Even its pantheistic tone is so pure that it is not corrosive—just like the flute music that echoed over the lake on a summer night long ago. Walden was written over a century ago, and its author, Thoreau, has long left Walden Pond, leaving its beauty and the clear moonlight behind forever. Under the pressure of modern civilization, people are increasingly distant from the pure and tranquil nature, and some ancient, yearning primitive lifestyles have faded away entirely, replaced by noise, restlessness, superficiality, and unease. After all, humans are children of nature, and the desire to admire and yearn for nature is inextinguishable. Therefore, Thoreau's work, Walden, is read and cherished by the entire world.