27 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS “I Find Predominantly In Me An Instinct To A Higher And More Spiritual Life Than The Common, And Also Another Inclining To A Primitive And Savage Life, And I Reverence Both Of Them Alike”: Autograph Manuscript From Walden In Thoreau’s Hand A wonderful item: an original autograph manuscript leaf from Henry David Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden, including passages from the chapter “Higher Laws” where Thoreau discusses his moral ambivalence about fishing, and another from the “Baker’s Farm” chapter that also features fishing. This autograph manuscript leaf contains passages from at least two chapters of Walden. The first paragraph can be found in the “Baker’s Farm” chapter, when Thoreau takes shelter from the weather with an Irish farmer, John Field. This is followed by the text from the beginning of the next chapter, “Higher Laws,” contrasting physical and spiritual existence, and part of a later section that continues that same theme but with a focus on fishing: “As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole along, when the world had waxed dark, I glimpsed a woodchuck dark across my path, and felt a strange flush of savage delight and was strongly tempted to seize and devour it raw. The wildest most desolate scenes had become strangely fam[iliar] to me. Thus it is I find predominantly in me an instinct to a higher and more spiritual life than the common and also another inclining to a primitive and savage life, and I reverence them both alike. I find continually that I cannot fish without falling a little in my own respect … I think I am not mistaken. It is a faint intimation—yet so are the first streaks of morning…” Math equations in pencil. presumably in another hand, upside down at the bottom of the verso. Leaf with loss to some edges, just touching text at one point. A very rare leaf from an original Walden manuscript with exceptional content. 28THOREAU, Henry David. Autograph manuscript leaf. Concord, Massachusetts, 1854. One leaf, measuring eight by ten inches, window mounted; housed in a custom portfolio. $39,000
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