Notes
Zev Trachtenberg, « The Exile and the Moss-Trooper : Rousseau and Thoreau on Walking in Nature. » Oklahoma University. <http://www.ou.edu/ouphil/faculty/trachtenberg/ExileMossTrooper.pdf>
« I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around me. ». Ma traduction.
« Name-dropping » en anglais, ce procédé rhétorique consiste à citer à la suite des grands noms littéraires, souvent dans le but d’impressionner son interlocuteur.
Ce genre littéraire n’est pas fictionnel à strictement parler : il mêle philosophie, observations naturelles et naturalistes, considérations autobiographiques et engagement politique. On fait généralement remonter son origine à D. H. Thoreau.
« WHEN I wrote the following pages (...) 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. » Ma traduction.
« There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse ». Ma traduction.
François Specq explique : « La wilderness se traduit par ‘désert’ ou ‘solitude’ dans un contexte biblique, ‘nature sauvage’ dans un contexte moderne. » François Specq, postface à Henry David Thoreau, Les Forêts du Maine. « Habiter la frontière. L’humanisme sauvage de Henry David Thoreau » (Paris : éditions rue d’Ulm, 2004). PhilAgora. <http://www.agora.qc.ca/mot.nsf/Dossiers/Henry_David_Thoreau>
« I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do. » Ma traduction.
« 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 ». Ma traduction.
C’est une épineuse problématique qu’évite le français mais que pose la langue anglaise lorsque nous devons choisir entre les notions de Wild, Wildness et de Wilderness pour désigner la nature sauvage. L’espace vierge est le plus souvent désigné par wilderness, car ce terme est moins porteur de la notion d’espace. À l’époque de Thoreau l’emploi les deux termes est encore relativement souple.
Cf. Marcel Raymond, Romantisme et Rêverie (Paris : José Corti, 1978).
« Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary (...) that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again. » Ma traduction.
Cf. David M. Robinson. « Transcendentalism and the Utopian Mentality. » Oregon State University, 1997. <http://www.orst.edu/Dept/philosophy/club/utopia/utopian-visions/robinson-lec.html>
« There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. » Ma traduction.
Cf. Jean Preposiet, Histoire de l’Anarchisme (Paris : Talladier, collection ‘approches’, 2001) pp. 41-4.
« 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. » Ma traduction.
La notion de « Sur-Âme » d’inspiration Hindouiste, dépasse la temporalité et l’espace et désigne ce qui nous lie : si les phénomènes du monde semblent matériellement éparses, ils sont en fait unis par ce principe transcendant.
« I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life (...) to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life ». Ma traduction.
« I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body. » Ralph Waldo Emerson, « The American Scholar » in Essays & Poems [1836-1875], Joel Porte, Harold Bloom et Paul Kane (éd.) (NY : Library of America College Editions, Literary Classics of the United States Inc., 1996) pp. 68-9.
« Snakes coiled round his legs; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity ». Ma traduction.
Cf. Gilles Farcet, Henry Thoreau : L’éveillé du nouveau monde (Paris : Le Sang de la Terre, 1998).
« I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least (...) sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. » Ma traduction.
« As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. » Ma traduction.
« But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours (...) but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. » Ma traduction.
« When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods : what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods ». Ma traduction.
Cf. Thoreau, Henry David. Collected Essays and Poems, Elisabeth Hall Witherell (éd.). (NY : The library of America, 2001), p. 226.
« But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. » Ma traduction.
« …you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. » Ma traduction.
Cf. Henry David Thoreau. « Walking » in Collected Essays and Poems, Elisabeth Hall Witherell (éd.) (NY : The library of America, 2001), p. 225.
Cf. Henry David Thoreau. « Walking » in Collected Essays and Poems, Elisabeth Hall Witherell (éd.) (NY : The library of America, 2001), p. 231.
« No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. (…) A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. » Ma traduction.
« I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. » Ma traduction.
« He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. » Ma traduction.
« The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. » Ma traduction.
Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson, « The American Scholar » in Essays & Poems [1836-1875], Joel Porte, Harold Bloom et Paul Kane (éd.) (NY : Library of America College Editions, Literary Classics of the United States Inc., 1996), pp. 55-9.
« Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. » Ma traduction.
Cf. Hans Jonas, Le Principe de responsabilité, une éthique pour la civilisation technologique (Paris : éditions du Cerf, collection ‘champs essai’, 1995).
Dans Walden, Thoreau se moque de ceux qui tiennent à manger de la viande pour leur santé et qui passent leur temps à travailler pour pouvoir gagner plus d’argent et ainsi pouvoir consommer plus de viande, pour ensuite pouvoir travailler encore d’avantage, ruinant ainsi leur santé.
« …the later Thoreau emerges as a much more significant naturalist than was previously thought, (...) It should be noted, however, that his shift in emphasis to the physical side of the correspondence between facts and spirit does not of itself compromise his Transcendental standing. To be sure, as he said in Walden, one should put ‘foundations’ under ‘castles in the air.’ His later career may be viewed as an attempt to follow his own advice. » Ma traduction.
« [this essay] has been generally considered the most important contribution to conservation, agriculture, and ecological science he made in his lifetime. » Ma traduction.
« the science of the relations of living organisms to the external world, their habitat, customs, energies, parasites, etc. » Ma traduction.
« the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature ». Ma traduction.
Le Petit Robert 2007, p. 813.
Cet habitat se compose de la biocénose (l’ensemble des êtres vivants) et du biotope (le milieu physique où ils vivent). Si l’on suit cette définition stricto sensu, l’étude des phénomènes globaux qui affectent la planète et qui sont appelés « catastrophes écologiques » par abus de langage mène à un grave contresens. Ainsi, des phénomènes tels que l’effet de serre, la déforestation, la pollution, la fragilité de la couche d’ozone ou la fonte des grands glaciers ne relèvent pas de l’écologie mais de la géodynamique externe ou de la climatologie.
Le Petit Robert 2007, p. 813.
Des acteurs politiques tels qu’Al Gore, les mouvements politiques « verts » et les organisations non gouvernementales telles que Green Peace, Friends of the Earth ou le World Wide Fund relèvent donc de l’écologisme.
Le Petit Robert 2007, p. 813.
De ce fait, elle chapote non seulement la biologie, mais aussi la géologie, la météorologie, la génétique, la chimie, les sciences physiques et dans une certaine mesure la géographie.
Cf. Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, NY : Anchor Books, 1997.
Top of page