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A Black Forest Walden is a work of philosophical reflection, nature description, and sly humor. In brief chapters, or aphorisms, the American philosopher David Farrell Krell recounts his experiences in a cabin located in the mountains of southern Germany's Black Forest, where he has lived for several decades. Insofar as Krell compares his experiences with those of Henry David Thoreau, who serves as both inspiration and irritation, the book could be described as a critical commentary on Thoreau's Walden. Yet it equally reads as a rigorous yet playful and profoundly literary manifestation of where and how the mind wanders. Hence, the "Marlonbrando" of the subtitle is not the late actor but a feral cat who frequents the cabin and comes to be an important interlocutor, as if playing the role of analyst to the author. The subjects Krell treats are wide-ranging: the changing seasons, environmental issues, romantic love, parent-child relations, European versus American "values," higher education, artistic creativity, solitude, and the contrast between lifestyles in a quiet Black Forest village and in a noisy contemporary United States. Forty-one black-and-white photographs taken by the author accompany and enliven the text.
Auteur
David Farrell Krell is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and Brauer Distinguished Visiting Professor at Brown University. His many books include The Cudgel and the Caress: Reflections on Cruelty and Tenderness, also published by SUNY Press.
Contenu
Preface
Silent snowfall
The colors of snow; or, where beauty is
In the still of the night
The snowplow
Ice wings
The Storm Beech
The Moon and Venus
The cabin; or, plucking the raisins
The past has not passed
Neighbors
But where's the pond?
River of fog
My "office"
Conversations with Marlon Brando?
Ice wings, Part Two
Douglas the Fir
Aurora
Freaks of nature; or, lighting fires and mourning the woods
H.D. in bed
Maudlin and bathetic
Add your dreams, and not just the sexy ones!
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right
Neighbors, Part Two: Herr S.W.
The darkness of the woods
Monarchs in December
The limits of description
The limits of knowledge
Black and white
Fool's spring
A reflection on consumer society; or, a Romantic has his uses
The deserving poor
A succession of beautiful days
Neighbors, Part Three: Wolfgang
La pensée du jour
The smartphone in high mountains
The new adventures of Pinocchio
News of the world
On the difference between European and American "values"
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Two
On the degeneration of poetry to chemistry
Platonism and Puritanism keep us on our spiritual toes
Neighbors, Part Four: Frau S.M.
Let's (not!) do lunch
The perfect universe
Autarchy; or, fatties beware!
Woodchuck Heaven
Mudslide Man
Knowing beans
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Three
Moving mountains
Obscene spring
On jealousy and brutalization
The bowlegged larch
Speculative gardening
Former inhabitants
The two corners of Melville's smile
Thaw and Thor
Former inhabitants, Part Two
Taking the arm of an elm tree
Thoreau's serviceable body
On loneliness; or, snap out of it!
The work of mourning
A cautionary note
Hurry up, please, it's time
Return to sender
Former inhabitants, Part Three
A snippet on schnapps
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Four
Doubling up
My little chickadee!
Home Entertainment Center
Neighbors, Part Five: Rüdiger
The forlorn pair of shoes
The forlorn BMW
Kids
Henry's mom and dad
More work of mourning
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Five
Old people
About that blackbird
Former inhabitants, Part Four: The lover suspended in the rafters
On doing good
Organized religion
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Six
Living in the present
Out of doors
Bronchitis? Pneumonia?
Day, season, and year
The bloody truth about trees
The head monkey at Paris
On the gift-giving vice
Losing the whole world
Knowing when to break up
Accentuate the negative
Prejudice
How to become just friends
Faithless fidelity
Advice to the lovelorn
Books
Former inhabitants . . . of color . . . at Walden Pond
Crooked genius, crooked rules
Art is not yet weaned
Life is not yet weaned
Problematic praxis
The Copernican Revolution?
New beech leaves
God bless the American Igel; or, true patriotism
One more angel story, the last one, I promise
Creationism
Capital punishment
May fog
Thoreau's model farm
The water works
There is nothing inorganic
The ashes of once living things
The katzenjammer of birds
The wolf spider
A morning hike
Music of the rain
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Seven
Save your hay
A day's journey
Dream and catastrophe; or, the politics of archaeology
And then the sky fell
Still more work
Life stammers on
Pinions
The logic of error; or, a modest disquisition on the synthesis of being, time, and truth
Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Eight and Last
Cabin smells
Desperately sad
Self-confidence
Polonius
Sea of fog
Sunworshiper fog
Weather can be extraordinarily precise
The man in the moon
Breaking News: Marlonbrando confesses all!
Extra-vagance
September mood
Periwinkle and ivy
To see and say it all
Marlonbrando sees the light
The power of the past tense
From the mountains of Saint Ulrich to the prairies of Chicagoland?
Life is at bottom indestructibly powerful and pleasurable
Notes
List of Illustrations