Thoreau and Gibran: Houses of Wild Joy
Henry Thoreau and Khalil Gibran have both influenced my life - what I might call my vital philosophy - since high school. When I was younger, I thought of them as my older brothers who spoke to me as I read their books. Now I think of them as friends. They both inform my reflections deeply in Loving Immigrants in America.
I also guess that Gibran must have read Thoreau, though I do not have the scholarly mettle to go searching for evidence. For me it is more a matter of philosophical and vital kinship.
Two nights ago I was reading the section on "Houses" from Gibran's The Prophet, and I immediately associated it with Thoreau's Walden.
In the opening line of "Where I lived, and what I lived for," Thoreau writes: "At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house."
He goes on to describe imaginative experiments in which he fancied that he'd bought a farm with a house in it to dwell: "Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly."
A house where he might live with zest and joy so as to enliven the surrounding landscape - that's what Thoreau sought to create later, when he built his cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond.
And here is how Gibran's prophet, Almustafa, begins to speak to an inquiring mason about houses: "Build of your imagination a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone."
This is an admonition to preserve our inner wildness, our instinctive natural freedom and spontaneity, even as we partake in civilization. We are both wild wanderers and dwellers of the city - the polis.
Gibran's advice is akin to Thoreau's call for us to strike a balance between wildness and civilization - to live a border life so as not to become resigned to over-civilization and vital tameness, later to despair from such resignation.
From my standpoint, it is good advice. I have the privilege of keeping two homes: a small railroad-style apartment in Brooklyn with a view to a garden, and a one-bedroom apartment with an actual garden in San José, Costa Rica. Both are luminous and minimalist.
The former is close to Prospect Park, with is artificial lake and its old-growth forest - the only primary forest left in this urban region of Long Island. The latter looks to the mountains southwest of San José. Beyond those mountains, in the Pacific lowlands, my parents have a simple, rustic house in a small parcel of land surrounded by farms and fallow fields.
All of these dwellings remind me of wildness and simplicity even as I inhabit them. They help me to preserve a bit of that inner wildness and simplicity. And I think that I would gladly invite my friends Thoreau and Gibran to visit me there. This thought brings me joy.
I also guess that Gibran must have read Thoreau, though I do not have the scholarly mettle to go searching for evidence. For me it is more a matter of philosophical and vital kinship.
Two nights ago I was reading the section on "Houses" from Gibran's The Prophet, and I immediately associated it with Thoreau's Walden.
In the opening line of "Where I lived, and what I lived for," Thoreau writes: "At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house."
He goes on to describe imaginative experiments in which he fancied that he'd bought a farm with a house in it to dwell: "Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly."
A house where he might live with zest and joy so as to enliven the surrounding landscape - that's what Thoreau sought to create later, when he built his cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond.
And here is how Gibran's prophet, Almustafa, begins to speak to an inquiring mason about houses: "Build of your imagination a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone."
This is an admonition to preserve our inner wildness, our instinctive natural freedom and spontaneity, even as we partake in civilization. We are both wild wanderers and dwellers of the city - the polis.
Gibran's advice is akin to Thoreau's call for us to strike a balance between wildness and civilization - to live a border life so as not to become resigned to over-civilization and vital tameness, later to despair from such resignation.
From my standpoint, it is good advice. I have the privilege of keeping two homes: a small railroad-style apartment in Brooklyn with a view to a garden, and a one-bedroom apartment with an actual garden in San José, Costa Rica. Both are luminous and minimalist.
The former is close to Prospect Park, with is artificial lake and its old-growth forest - the only primary forest left in this urban region of Long Island. The latter looks to the mountains southwest of San José. Beyond those mountains, in the Pacific lowlands, my parents have a simple, rustic house in a small parcel of land surrounded by farms and fallow fields.
All of these dwellings remind me of wildness and simplicity even as I inhabit them. They help me to preserve a bit of that inner wildness and simplicity. And I think that I would gladly invite my friends Thoreau and Gibran to visit me there. This thought brings me joy.
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| Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond (Photo: Suburbano) |
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