Lake Shore Notes (Chinese-English Parallel)

Author: (American) Thoreau
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: At some point in a person'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 renowned and unique collection of essays, Walden, which has been recognized by later generations as the best manual ever written for young people by an American. Walden is an outlier in American literary works, and it is likely the most outlier among our outstanding outliers. It conveys a serious warning about the loss of precious things, argues for traveling light 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 once echoed over the lake on a summer night.
More than a century has passed since the writing of Walden, and its author, Thoreau, has long been far from Walden Pond, leaving its beauty and the clear moonlight behind forever for us. Under the pressure of modern civilization, people are increasingly distant from the pure and tranquil nature, and some primitive, yearning lifestyles have faded into oblivion, replaced by noise, restlessness, superficiality, and unease. Yet, after all, humans are children of nature, and the desire to revere and yearn for nature remains unextinguished. Therefore, Thoreau's work, Walden, has been read and cherished by the entire world.