书名：Walden and Civil Disobedience 瓦尔登湖及论公民的不服从义务
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1340
作者：Henry David Thoreau亨利·戴维·梭罗
出版社名称： Signet Classics
出版时间：2012
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451532169
商品尺寸：18.3 x 10.4 x 2.8 cm
包装：简装
页数：320

Walden and Civil Disobedience《瓦尔登湖及论公民的不服从义务》包括两部分。Walden又译为《湖滨散记》，是美国作家梭罗隐居瓦尔登湖两年期间所写下的随笔作品。由于梭罗的思想深受艾默生影响，其作品也展现出超验主义以及自然主义的特点。作品文风朴实自然，语言简练，从中我们可以感受到作者细腻的情感和怡然自得、淡泊名利的生活态度。本英文原版是150周年纪念版，由美国诗人W. S. Merwin作序，美国作家、普林斯顿大学教授William Howarth写后记。体积轻巧，便于携带，方便随时随地阅读。
First published in 1854,Walden details Thoreau’s experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau’s other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period.
Walden’s original publisher releases an annotated edition to celebrate the book’s 150th anniversary. With an Introduction by W.S. Merwin and an Afterword by Will Howarth
Reviews:
Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written in an older prose, which uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres. He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau’s non-verbal insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand.  — Ken Kifer

Walden 《瓦尔登湖》，世界自然主义文学经典著作，梭罗在书中详尽地描述了他在瓦尔登湖湖畔一片再生林中度过两年又两月的生活以及期间他的许多思考。作者无微不至地描述两年多的湖畔独居生活：大至四季交替造成的景色变化，小到两只蚂蚁的争斗，无不栩栩如生地再现于梭罗的生花妙笔之下，并且描写也不流于表浅，而是有着博物学家的精确。
Civil Disobedience《论公民不服从的义务》，梭罗最重要的政治随笔，首次发表于1849年。在文章中，梭罗主张，人民不应允许政府统治他们的良心或使之萎缩，且人民有义务避免这样的默许，防止政府把他们变成不正义的行动者。对奴隶制和墨西哥-美国战争的厌恶，也是梭罗写作本文的原因。
Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork Walden is a collection of his reflections on life and society. In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a lifestyle—and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being.
These simple but profound musings—as well as “Civil Disobedience,” his protest against the government’s interference with civil liberty—have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature. More than a century and a half later, his message is more timely than ever.

Introduction
Walden: or, Life in the Woods
  1. Economy
  2. Where I Lived, and What I Lived for
  3.Reading
  4.Sounds
  5.Solitude
  6.Visitors
  7.The Bean-Field
  8.The Village
  9.The Ponds
 10.Baker Farm
 11.Higher Laws
 12.Brute Neighbors
 13.House-Warming
 14. Former Inhabitants, and Winter Visitors
 15.Winter Animals
 16. The Pond in Winter
 17.Spring
 18.Conclusion

Civil Disobedience
Poems
  Sic Vita
  Winter Memories
  To the Maiden in the East
  Smoke
  Mist
  Inspiration
Afterword
Bibliography

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, the same year he began his lifelong Journal. Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau became a key member of the Transcendentalist movement that included Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott. The Transcendentalists' faith in nature was tested by Thoreau between 1845 and 1847 when he lived for twenty-six months in a homemade hut at Walden Pond. While living at Walden, Thoreau worked on the two books published during his lifetime: Walden (1854) and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). Several of his other works, including The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, and Excursions, were published posthumously. Thoreau died in Concord, at the age of forty-four, in 1862.
W.S. Merwin has published many highly regarded books of poems, for which he has received a number of distinguished awards—the Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Award, Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii among them. He has translated widely from many languages, and his versions of classics such as The Poem of the Cid and The Song of Roland are standards.
William Howarth is Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University. His thirteen books on literature and history include The Book of Concord: Thoreau's Life as a Writer,Walking with Thoreau, and The John McPhee Reader. As "Dana Hand" he collaborates with Anne Matthews on fiction and film, and as co-publishers of Scarlet Oak Press.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.