“ Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. ”
Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). copy citation
| Author | Henry David Thoreau |
|---|---|
| Source | A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers |
| Topic | art taming |
| Date | 1849 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm |
Context
“There is papyrus by the river-side, and rushes for light, and the goose only flies overhead, ages before the studious are born or letters invented, and that literature which the former suggest, and even from the first have rudely served, it may be man does not yet use them to express. Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man’s art would also be wild or natural in a good sense. Man tames Nature only that he may at last make her more free even than he found her, though he may never yet have succeeded.”
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