No, I hadn't. But thank you, and that hound, bay horse, turtledove passage in Walden always seemed to me one of the friendliest things Thoreau ever set down (it has 'aura,' 'the very breath of all friendliness').
Cavell is closer than Burroughs.
I like that other passage from Monday, too, in addition to the drummer in the night and 'the sentence which no intelligence can understand' (particularly his own): 'The researcher is more memorable than the researched etc.'
There were probably things much dearer to him than the bay horse or the dove or the dog but not to us both. It's to his credit that reading him we become that 'world of laborers' he longed to address and also now and then to meet.
I think the grouping has a bit more of a High Middle Ages/Tudor England association than Davenport credits. Luxury animals that nonetheless connect, as hunters, messengers, bearers. For me his two other peak passages are the invisible house in Walden and the invisible court in Walking, both of which posit an elusive, potential aristocracy he longs to join. The quintessence he seeks isn’t *not* involved in loving nature for its own sake - it’s just that he needs to change himself so that he’s able to love it right, love it steadily, so step one is finding nature’s doorkeys. I think that’s what most reminded me of him, in your dream.
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Cavell is closer than Burroughs.
I like that other passage from Monday, too, in addition to the drummer in the night and 'the sentence which no intelligence can understand' (particularly his own): 'The researcher is more memorable than the researched etc.'
There were probably things much dearer to him than the bay horse or the dove or the dog but not to us both. It's to his credit that reading him we become that 'world of laborers' he longed to address and also now and then to meet.
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