Walden in the Bavarian Forest:
Adalbert Stifter, Henry David Thoreau, and the Transcendental Idea of Nature
12:00 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

In 1842 the Austrian author Adalbert Stifter published a novella called Der Hochwald (The High Forest). Three years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, Henry David Thoreau began his experiment in living at Walden Pond. Walden remains a curious mix of personal chronicle, natural history, philosophical rumination, and cultural critique. Stifter weaves a similar host of diverse strands into his text. He reminisces on sojourns through his native Bavarian Forest, depicts its vegetation with near scientific precision, philosophizes about the divinity of nature, and critiques the destructive anthropocentric bents of modern civilization. Numerous other parallels exist between these two works, which, to reiterate, were both conceived during the same decade of the 19th century. Their key commonality, however, concerns a body of water - Walden Pond and Lake Plöcken - around which their respective structure, narrative, and greater thematic of ecological holism revolve. Both authors shed important light on the current issue of nature preservation; those who attend this program will benefit from a comparative cross-cultural lecture on the American icon Thoreau and a lesser-known foreign writer like Stifter.

Sean Ireton, an associate professor of German at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has a Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of Washington. His research interests generally encompass the intersections between philosophy and literature. His recently published book, An Ontological Study of Death: From Hegel to Heidegger (2007), examines interpretations of death by Hegel, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Heidegger. Dr. Ireton’s next book project traces the evolution of both German and American attitudes toward nature in the realms of philosophy, literature, and politics.