{"id":8200,"date":"2024-07-19T16:58:42","date_gmt":"2024-07-19T20:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/great-writers-artists-and-scientists-on-the-creative-and-spiritual-rewards-of-fertile-aloneness-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-07-19T16:58:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T20:58:42","slug":"great-writers-artists-and-scientists-on-the-creative-and-spiritual-rewards-of-fertile-aloneness-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/great-writers-artists-and-scientists-on-the-creative-and-spiritual-rewards-of-fertile-aloneness-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Fertile Aloneness \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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There is a silence at the center of each person \u2014 an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything \u2014 a poem, a painting, a theorem \u2014 is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In solitude, we may begin to hear in the silence the song of our own lives. \u201cGive me solitude,\u201d Whitman howled<\/a>, \u201cgive me again O Nature your primal sanities!\u201d <\/p>\n

Gathered here are some of my favorite voices in praise of solitude, of its ample creative and spiritual rewards, its primal sanities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Solitude<\/em> by Maria Popova. Available as a print<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
RAINER MARIA RILKE<\/h5>\n

Rainer Maria Rilke<\/a> (December 4, 1875\u2013December 29, 1926) was in his late thirties when he began answering the eager letters of the nineteen-year-old Franz Xaver Kappus \u2014 an aspiring poet and cadet at the same military academy that had nearly broken Rilke\u2019s own adolescent soul<\/a>. Shortly after Rilke\u2019s death of leukemia, Kappus published the correspondence. Letters to a Young Poet<\/em> came to stand as one of the finest books of the past century. In a wonderful new translation<\/a> by ecological philosopher, Buddhist scholar, and environmental activist Joanna Macy, and poet and clinical psychologist Anita Barrows, Rilke writes:<\/p>\n

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What (you might ask yourself) would a solitude be that didn\u2019t have some greatness to it? For there is only one solitude, and it is large and not easy to bear. It comes almost all the time when you\u2019d gladly exchange it for any togetherness, however banal and cheap; exchange it for the appearance of however strong a conformity with the ordinary, with the least worthy. But perhaps that is precisely the time when solitude ripens; its ripening can be painful as the growth of a boy and sad like the beginning of spring\u2026 What is needed is only this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going within and meeting no one else for hours \u2014 that is what one must learn to attain. To be solitary as one was as a child. As the grown-ups were moving about, preoccupied with things that seemed big and important because the grown-ups appeared so busy and because you couldn\u2019t understand what they were doing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Giuliano Cucco from Before I Grew Up<\/em><\/a> by John Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
MAY SARTON<\/h5>\n

A lifetime after she composed her stunning ode to solitude<\/a> as a young poet, after she contemplated solitude as the seedbed of self-discovery<\/a> upon entering her sixties, May Sarton<\/a> (May 3, 1912\u2013July 16, 1995) moved to Maine to spend the last chapter of her life living alone in a house with a garden on the edge of the sea. Friends came to visit, as did strangers who admired her poetry and had found her address in the phone book \u2014 those were the days \u2014 but she cherished her solitude above even the most welcome company. <\/p>\n

In a passage from her boundlessly rewarding journal The House by the Sea<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 which gave us her meditations on the relationship between gardening and writing<\/a>, how to cultivate your talent<\/a>, and the art of living alone<\/a> \u2014 Sarton considers the tilting balance of her life. Reflecting on her approach to visitors, she writes:<\/p>\n

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I try to see them one at a time. I mean every encounter here to be more than superficial, to be a real exchange of lives, and this is more easily accomplished one to one than in a group. But the continuity is solitude. Without long periods here alone, especially in winter when visits are rare, I would have nothing to give, and would be less open to the gifts offered me. Solitude has replaced the single intense relationship, the passionate love that even at Nelson [Sarton\u2019s prior home] focused all the rest. Solitude, like a long love, deepens with time, and, I trust, will not fail me if my own powers of creation diminish. For growing into solitude is one way of growing to the end.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Spring Moon at Ninomiya Beach<\/em>, 1931 \u2014 one of Hasui Kawase\u2019s stunning vintage Japanese woodblocks<\/a>. (Available as a print<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
HENRY DAVID THOREAU<\/h5>\n

\u201cI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,\u201d Henry David Thoreau<\/a> wrote in his account of the months he spent at Walden Pond, \u201cto front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.\u201d Although Thoreau\u2019s solitude was not in actuality as total as he recounted it, it was deep and transformative. In a long meditation on solitude and the meaning of life<\/a>, he writes in Walden<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a> | public domain<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n

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It is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go [out among others] than when we stay in our chambers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For Thoreau, who suffered bouts of debilitating depression and black grief<\/a>, solitude was not a way of caving in on himself, as one does in loneliness, but a way of unselfing, of stepping beyond his small human turmoils and into the wider universe that holds:<\/p>\n

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The most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies<\/em><\/a> by Ruth Krauss<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
SANTIAGO RAM\u00d3N Y CAJAL<\/h5>\n

In the last years of the nineteenth century, shortly after he originated an entire new field we now call neuroscience and a decade before he won the Nobel Prize for establishing the neuron as the basic unit of the nervous system, Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal<\/a> (May 1, 1852\u2013October 17, 1934) composed a short, passionate book titled Advice for a Young Investigator<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), predating Rilke\u2019s Letters to a Young Poet<\/em> by three decades. In it, he outlined the six psychological flaws that keep the talented from reaching greatness<\/a> and pointed to solitude as the supreme incubator of true originality. He writes:<\/p>\n

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Our major commitment \u2026 is to discover ourselves before discovering scientific truth, to mold ourselves before molding nature. To fashion a strong brain, an original mind that is ours alone \u2014 this is the preliminary work that is absolutely essential.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought! How satisfying and rewarding are the long winter evenings spent in the private laboratory<\/em>, at the very time when educational centers are closed to their workers! Such evenings free us from poorly thought out improvisations, strengthen our patience, and refine our powers of observation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Giuliano Cucco from Before I Grew Up<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
WENDELL BERRY<\/h5>\n

In his splendid poem \u201cThe Peace of Wild Things,\u201d<\/a> poet and farmer Wendell Berry<\/a> located the remedy for despair in learning to \u201crest in the grace of the world,\u201d which is most readily found amid wild solitude. He deepens the sentiment in one of the essays from his altogether wonderful and wonderfully titled essay collection What Are People For?<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>). Reflecting on the antidote to the two great enemies of creativity<\/a>, Berry writes:<\/p>\n

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We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness\u2026<\/p>\n

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation.<\/p>\n

One\u2019s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one\u2019s most intimate sources.<\/p>\n

In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Violeta L\u00f3piz for At the Drop of a Cat<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
ROSE MACAULAY<\/h5>\n

Often, it is only when something is taken away that we fully appreciate its value; in being famished for it, we remember how deeply it nourishes us. In a delightful reckoning with the pleasure of being left alone after entertaining visitors<\/a>, found in her 1935 collection Personal Pleasures: Essays on Enjoying Life<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), Rose Macaulay<\/a> (August 1, 1881\u2013October 30, 1958) writes:<\/p>\n

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An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls, strowing the floors like trodden herbs. A peace for gods; a divine emptiness.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

The easy chair spreads wide arms of welcome; the sofa stretches, guest-free; the books gleam, brown and golden, buff and blue and maroon, from their shelves; they may strew the floor, the chairs, the couch, once more, lying ready to the hand\u2026 The echo of the foolish words lingers on the air, is brushed away, dies forgotten, the air closes behind it. A heavy volume is heaved from its shelf on to the sofa. Silence drops like falling blossoms over the recovered kingdom\u2026 It is a gift, a miracle, a golden jewel, a fragment of some gracious heavenly order, dropped to earth like some incredible strayed star. One\u2019s life to oneself again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Art by Dasha Tolstikova from A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
STEPHEN BATCHELOR<\/h5>\n

Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor<\/a> echoes Berry\u2019s sentiment in his thorough reckoning with solitude as contemplative practice<\/a>, and writes:<\/p>\n

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By withdrawing from the world into solitude, you separate yourself from others. By isolating yourself, you can see more clearly what distinguishes you from other people. Standing out in this way serves to affirm your existence (ex<\/em>-[out] + sistere<\/em> [stand]). Liberated from social pressures and constraints, solitude can help you understand better what kind of person you are and what your life is for. In this way you become independent of others. You find your own path, your own voice.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Here lies the paradox of solitude. Look long and hard enough at yourself in isolation and suddenly you will see the rest of humanity staring back. Sustained aloneness brings you to a tipping point where the pendulum of life returns you to others.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Ofra Amit for The Universe in Verse<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
MICHAEL LEUNIG<\/h5>\n

A century after Virginia Woolf made her epochal case for the importance of having a room of one\u2019s own in which to create \u2014 that womb of \u201cfertile solitude
<\/a> from which works of art are born \u2014 Australian cartoonist, poet, and philosopher Michael Leunig<\/a> offers a singsong echo of Woolf\u2019s timeless insistence:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS<\/h5>\n

Terry Tempest Williams<\/a> has devoted her life to giving voice to the dialogue between human nature and the rest of nature, whether we call it wilderness or landscape or environment. In Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 which also gave us Williams on change and denial<\/a> \u2014 she writes:<\/p>\n

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Solitude\u2026 is what sustains me and protects me from my mind. It renders me fully present. I am desert. I am mountains. I am Great Salt Lake. There are other languages being spoken by wind, water, and wings. There are other lives to consider: avocets, stilts, and stones. Peace is the perspective found in patterns. When I see ring-billed gulls picking on the flesh of decaying carp, I am less afraid of death. We are no more and no less than the life that surrounds us. My fears surface in my isolation. My serenity surfaces in my solitude.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Moonlight, Winter<\/em> by Rockwell Kent. (Available as a print<\/a> and as stationery cards<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
HERMANN HESSE<\/h5>\n

In the wake of WWI, a quarter century before he won the Nobel Prize, Hermann Hesse<\/a> (July 2, 1877\u2013August 9, 1962) composed an impassioned letter to the disaffected young<\/a>. In it, an epoch before Ursula K. Le Guin so brilliantly unsexed man<\/em> as the universal pronoun<\/a>, he writes:<\/p>\n

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Solitude is the path over which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself. Solitude is the path that men most fear. A path fraught with terrors, where snakes and toads lie in wait\u2026 Without solitude there is no suffering, without solitude there is no heroism. But the solitude I have in mind is not the solitude of the blithe poets or of the theater, where the fountain bubbles so sweetly at the mouth of the hermit\u2019s cave.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Learning to be nourished by solitude rather than defeated by it, Hesse argues, is a prerequisite for taking charge of our destiny: <\/p>\n

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Most men, the herd, have never tasted solitude. They leave father and mother, but only to crawl to a wife and quietly succumb to new warmth and new ties. They are never alone, they never commune with themselves\u2026 It is easier and sweeter to walk with a people, with a multitude \u2014 even through misery. It is easier and more comforting to devote oneself to the \u201ctasks\u201d of the day, the tasks meted out by the collectivity.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Solitude is not chosen, any more than destiny is chosen. Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Barry Lopez on the cure for our existential loneliness<\/a> \u2014 that archnemesis of solitude \u2014 then revisit poet Elizabeth Bishop on why everyone ought to experience at least one long period of solitude in life<\/a> and artist Rockwell Kent on the relationship between wilderness, solitude, and creativity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a silence at the center of each person \u2014 an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}