Les forêts du Maine
- Langue:
- anglais
- État:
- Œuvre complète
- Paternité:
- Écrite par l'auteur
- État du texte:
- Texte propre
- Étendue:
- ~110 000 mots · 502 passages
Citer cette œuvre
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Les forêts du Maine. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. "Les forêts du Maine." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Les forêts du Maine. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/fr/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods.
De quoi il s'agit
Le récit de trois voyages dans les forêts du nord du Maine, entre 1846 et 1857, et le livre où Thoreau rencontre une nature qui ne ressemble en rien à celle de Walden.
Contexte et histoire
Walden était un étang à trois kilomètres du village ; ceci est de la vraie forêt, et le changement se sent. Le passage le plus connu est l'ascension du mont Katahdin, où Thoreau se heurte à un paysage qui le rejette, et écrit quelques pages déconcertées sur la matière pure, inhumaine, qui n'attend personne : « Contact ! Contact ! Qui sommes-nous ? où sommes-nous ? ». Le reste, ce sont des traversées en canoë avec des guides pénobscots — Joe Polis surtout, qui y paraît comme une personne et non comme un type — et des observations précises sur les arbres, les rivières et le commerce du bois qui les dévorait déjà. Il parut après sa mort, en 1864. C'est le Thoreau le moins apprivoisé, et celui qu'on lit le plus aujourd'hui en écologie.
Contexte éditorial, non une source citable : contrairement aux passages de l'œuvre, ces données ne peuvent pas être vérifiées dans le corpus.
On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine, by way of the railroad and steamboat, intending to accompany a relative of mine, engaged in the lumber trade in Bangor, as far as a dam on the West Branch of the Penobscot, in which property he was interested. From this place, which is about one hundred miles by the river above Bangor, thirty miles from the Houlton military road, and five miles beyond the last log hut, I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there. It is unusual to find a camp so far in the woods at that season, when lumbering operations have ceased, and I was glad to avail myself of the circumstance of a gang of men being employed there at that time in repairing the injuries caused by the great freshet in the spring. The mountain may be approached more easily and directly on horseback and on foot from the northeast side, by the Aroostook road, and the Wassataquoik River; but in that case you see much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life. I was fortunate also in the season of the year, for in the summer myriads of black flies, mosquitoes, and midges, or, as the Indians call them, “no-see-ems,” make traveling in the woods almost impossible; but now their reign was nearly over. Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories.…