Se perdre de vue dans ce que l'on voit : le Journal de HD Thoreau et l'écriture de la nature

Belin" This essay seeks to define the ontological and existential import of Henry David Thoreau's "Journal" . Thoreau's ever-renewed engagement with the world throughout his lifelong journal-writing involved an exploration of the processes through which the infinite nature of reality is constructed. Growing out of a realization that the world is too dense to be perceived, Thoreau's primary work is to provoke a "spacing" so that the real—initially muted by its compactness—may be captured by the eye and by language. While this approach seems to invite a mode of writing that favors self-effacement and even silence, out of reverence for man's nearly sacred encounters with things, it ultimately opens up possibilities for the enhancement of what is properly human. Thoreau's purpose is not to erase all traces of the observer in an attempt to promote an illusory "objectivity," but on the contrary to restore life to mankind and to reinstate man as the proper horizon of the work of perception."Version disponible sur Internet : [ http://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2005-4-p-8.htm ]