On Henry David Thoreau’s Ultimate Instrument of Perception, the “Kalendar”

On Henry David Thoreau’s Ultimate Instrument of Perception, the “Kalendar”

In the spring of 1860, at the height of his intellectual powers and the peak of his political engagement, Henry David Thoreau created something new. Part blueprint for a grand new work, part scientific chart, part picture of temporal experience, this something—which, following a suggestive Journal entry from October 1859 has come to be called his Kalendar—was more a tool than a text. Comprised of six multipage charts of general phenomena, the Ka…