歩くこと
- 言語:
- 英語
- 状態:
- 完全な作品
- 著者性:
- 著者自身による
- テキストの状態:
- 良好なテキスト
- 分量:
- 約 12,200 語 · 58 節
この作品を引用
- APAヘンリー・デイヴィッド・ソロー. (n.d.). 歩くこと. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/ja/works/thoreau/walking
- MLAヘンリー・デイヴィッド・ソロー. "歩くこと." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/ja/works/thoreau/walking.
- Chicagoヘンリー・デイヴィッド・ソロー. 歩くこと. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/ja/works/thoreau/walking.
何についての本か
ソローが十年にわたって語り、亡くなる最後の一週間まで手を入れつづけた講演。野性のうちにこそ世界の保全がある、と説く一篇である。
背景と歴史
刊行は一八六二年、彼の死のほどなく後だ。冒頭は作り話めいた語源談から始まる——「saunterer（そぞろ歩く者）」は「sainte terre（聖地）」へ行く者に由来するかのように、と。調子は軽やかに見えるが、議論は軽くない。文明は、まだ飼い慣らしていないものを必要とする。森をことごとく伐り倒す文化は、自分を養うものを失う、というのだ。「in wildness is the preservation of the world」の一句は環境運動でもっともよく引かれるものの一つだが、しばしば「wilderness」と誤って引かれる。彼が言っているのは「wildness」、すなわち野生であるという性質であって、場所のことではない。ソローへのもっとも短い入口であり、おそらくもっとも良い入口でもある。
これは編集上の背景であり、引用できる典拠ではありません。作品本文の一節とは異なり、これらの記述はコーパスで検証できません。
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that. I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises.…