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Walden consists of eighteen chapters. Thoreau used multiple methods to organizing his chapters. The narrative of Walden, which seems haphazard and unplanned at first，is actually quite consciously put together to reflect the cycle of the seasons. The compression of Thoreau’s two actual years into one narrative year shows how relatively unimportant the documentary aspect of his writing is. He cares less for the real calendar time taken by his projects onto it. One full year, from springtime to springtime, echoes the Christian idea of rebirth, moving from one beginning to a new one. Thus each season inevitably carries with it not just its usual calendar attributes, but a spiritual resonance as well. The story began in the spring of 1845, as Thoreau began construction on his cabin. He moved in, fittingly and probably quite intentionally, on the American Independence Day, July 4th—making his symbolic declaration of independence from society, and drawing closer to the true sources of his being.
Henry David Thoreau has a paradoxical personality and this makes his works be studied from two different perspectives throughout the world. Some researchers regard Walden as a transcendental pastoral. They support Walden belongs to typical American version of romantic pastoral which describes a mysterious, untrammeled and primal paradise beginning at the limit of a real village; and Walden is cool and open-mind. It doesn’t celebrate the pastoralism or deny the real industrialism, but lists the advantages and disadvantages of the two, showing Thoreau’s nostalgia for pastoral as well as his admiration for and fear for the industrial.
Some others discuss the thought of salvation Walden reflects. They draw the conclusion: Thoreau tries to re-construct the human values system and transfers human being’s concentration from the material-oriented outside world to the spirit-oriented inside world. And Walden enlightens the humans who have lost in the crossroad of life.
Although the writer of Walden is an American lived over a century ago, this book never is outmoded. Walden has gained more and more reputation especially serves as an instruction for us to maintain our sympathy towards nature when we are armed with technological competence currently. Thoreau has improved his experiment that man can live harmoniously with nature instead of breaking up it in this book. This is the reason why more and more organizations hammering at environmental protection considers Thoreau as their pioneer. The influence by Thoreau is ubiquitous globally instead of only in the US. Referring to Chinese literature, Zi Hai, one of the most Thoreau-influenced poets, frequently used the earth and the pertinent items as images in his poetry.
Nowadays Walden has been published for many editions and translated into many languages, winning a large popularity. And there are various researches over the understanding of this book to let the readers have a good opportunity to know Thoreau’s life philosophy through the detailed analysis of his life experiment as recorded in Walden. From the author’s understanding, Walden considers that man can strive to achieve his spiritual perfection through inner source. And nature is the embodiment of the universal spirit. Besides, intuition plays an important role in man's spiritual perfection. Thoreau made an in-depth interpretation of the artistic life by way of his aesthetic life practice. As for this, the author of this paper is exploring Thoreau’s transcendental practice reflected in Walden.
The multi-themes of different researches help us fully and deeply understand Walden and build a basis for the further researching. However, according to the author’s understanding, Walden is Thoreau’s new ideas to test the thoughts of transcendentalism since practice is the only criterion for testing truth. The practices of spirits and reality are the characteristics of the transcendentalism in the work Walden，which actively advocates the harmonious life between man and nature．The readers can be inspired from exploring it; especially it gives readers a chance to reconsider their responsibility not only for the survival of the earth but also for the survival of the spirit. So it deserves an analysis of Walden from the perspective of transcendental practice.