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Book
ReviewNever
Felt LonesomeThe value of solitude: the ethics and spirituality of aloneness
in autobiography. John D. Barbour, 2004. Virginia: University of Virginia
Press; ISBN 0813922887, 240 pp., £36.49
SAGE Publications, Inc.2007DOI: 10.1177/09675507070140040705
ChrisRitchie
Solent University
We
often choose to be alone yet feel lonely against our will and it is this degree
of volition that determines our reaction to solitude. Barbour relates solitude
to autobiography as a necessary condition for the examination of conscience
and consciousness. It is a spiritual rather than emotional or social distance.
The book `deals primarily with the spiritual experiences of Christians who
interpret solitude using the classic symbols and beliefs of their faith tradition'
(p. 4). For religious hermits, `Asceticism replaced martyrdom
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as the
ultimate form of Christian commitment' (p. 14). The early hermit monks withdrew
from distraction in order to get close to God. This brought about its own
particular problems of boredom and despair. It seems that a basic component
for sanity is the knowledge that we are alive in the con- sciousness of others:
if not, like isolated prisoners, we begin to lose our grip. Barbour maps the
relationship between theologians and solitude and the changing attitudes about
withdrawal versus monasticism: eremitic solitude was uneconomical, whereas
the monks kept the monasteries productive. The hermit was seen as essentially
useless and solitude as having limitations. Shorter periods rather than the
continual isolation of the desert fathers contributed to theological autobiography:
Augustine's withdrawal, motivated by inner conflict over emotional and sexual
states, was temporary; Petrarch saw solitude as a contemplative and literary
activity (although Barbour castigates this mendicant for omitting `the dark
side' of solitude). Solitude and idleness have often been linked and seen
as negative rather than recuperative. Montaigne, as well as Burton, was hostile
to idle- ness. For Montaigne it was a vice rather than creative or relaxing.
For Burton also: `Be not solitary, be not idle' (p. 60). Architecture and
the idea of the individual – the development of the study, then `a
room of one's own' – characterized modernist solitude. The study, so
much more comfortable than a cave, has become a withdrawing space and a meeting
place for solitude, contemplation and writing. Montaigne's tower-bound solitude
to grieve over his friend's death is a moving testament to literature as a
memorial and the study as a place to mourn privately (p. 59). For Montaigne,
solitude is a process of evaluation that lends perspective. The social requires
commit- ments, obligations and external stresses that can be avoided or temporarily
alleviated by the solitude offered by withdrawal. In Rousseau's Reveries of
the Solitary Walker (1778), Barbour shows that the writer in solitude is never
actually alone because he is consciously speaking to an audience (despite
Rousseau's protestations that he was writing for himself): `He needs to imagine
the opposition of others to feel his selfhood to the fullest' (p. 92). Persecutors
(real or imagined) or audi- ences all direct the voice in solitude to entertaining,
lambasting or justify- ing (and who are we talking to when we talk to ourselves?).
By bringing his paranoia with him, Rousseau was far from alone. Thoreau's
rural retreat from modernity into self-reliance still has moral implications
in a simultaneously globalized and fragmented world. However, Barbour is able
to see Thoreau as turning his back on the possi- bility of social change.
Solitude is not merely physical proximity but a state of mind. Thoreau's withdrawal
was a philosophical choice rather than an alienated resentment. In Ecce Homo,
at the end of his sanity, Nietzsche romanticized his solitude as a precondition
of genius rather than admitting his feelings of loneliness and despair, again
aware of a possible
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audience
and his self-aggrandizement in front of them. The adventurer Richard Byrd's
abandoned his attempted 6-month solo Antarctic vigil. Byrd was very aware
of an audience as he transmitted messages back to the American press. Any
endurance is better endured with the knowledge of an audience enduring it
admiringly at a safe distance (and paying you for it!). In Paul Auster's The
Invention of Solitude (1982), Barbour locates solitude as a place where meaningful
work can be achieved: writing writes the self out of solitude, a possible
communion. Barbour's book underplays the relationship of boredom and solitude.
He mentions boredom in passing on p. 4 but not until p. 69 does he briefly
examine it. Many people fear solitude because of the fear of boredom and the
inability to enjoy their own company, be self-reflexive or to do with- out
the distractive materialist culture. Many of the desert fathers suffered from
acedia, the desperate boredom that rises from a lack of dynamism in daily
life, because of the unvarying pattern of solitude. The ascetic life of perpetual
devotion requires some remission. Asceticism's denial of human and material
urges that lead to boredom and in extremis, insanity. However, in a culture
dominated by celebrity gossip, soaps, stress, work and debt, solitude, or
periods of it at least, seem more essential to preserve sanity than ever.
This concisely written book is recommended for anyone interested in the use
or value of being alone, and especially useful for brief periods of illness
or excessive travel.