Abstract

Henry David Thoreau’s relationship to Greek literature, and Homer’s Iliad in particular, is more often remarked than analysed. This article argues that Thoreau’s engagement with Homer in his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, proves central to the themes of that work highlighted by critics as well as its less-studied formal hybrid of poetry and prose. I show that Thoreau constructs Homer as the poetic ideal in which the perennially renewed life of the natural world becomes accessible to human beings caught in the fatal and unidirectional movement of historical time. Thoreau’s ideas here may track Romantic conceptions of Homer and Greek literature more generally, but Thoreau turns contemporary uncertainty around the person of Homer into reflection on the relationship between personal experience and literary expression of ‘living nature’. This turns out to structure a larger dichotomy between poetry and prose, one in which Thoreau associates the latter with authentic experience and self-expression of an individual human life. In A Week’s engagement with Homer, then, we see Thoreau negotiating not only some core concerns of his writing but also his evolution from aspiring poet to author of the works in prose that ultimately define his career.

中文翻译：

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梭罗河和梅里马克河上梭罗的发光荷马

摘要

亨利·戴维·梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）与希腊文学的关系，尤其是荷马的《伊利亚特》（Iliad ），经常被提及而不是被分析。本文认为，梭罗与荷马在他的第一本书《协和和默里马克河上的一周》中的参与，证明了批评家所强调的作品主题及其诗意和散文形式上的研究不足，是其核心所在。我表明梭罗将荷马建构为一种诗意的理想，使陷入历史性的致命和单向运动的人们可以接近自然界中不断更新的生命。梭罗在这里的思想可能更笼统地追踪荷马和希腊文学的浪漫观念，但是梭罗将当代围绕荷马的不确定性转变为对个人经历与“活泼自然”的文学表达之间关系的反思。事实证明，这构成了诗歌与散文之间更大的二分法，其中梭罗将后者与真实的经验和对个人生活的自我表达联系起来。在一周内与荷马的交往中，我们看到梭罗不仅就他的创作进行了一些核心关注，而且还探讨了他从有抱负的诗人到散文著作的演变，最终定义了他的职业生涯。