Promethean fire
“Some of us [are] born to be solitaries”, writes Fenton Johnson in his wonderful book At the Center of All Beauty. Like the snow leopards of Siberia, or the desert tortoises of the Black Mountains, these estranged fellows revel in isolation. You will see them every once in a while. Perhaps you are one yourself. The lonesome soul at the library or museum or cafe. The individual who prefers the silence of thought to the babbling of crowds.
Indeed, many creatives and thinkers, Johnson reminds, from Henry James Thoreau to Emily Dickinson, were great loners. They “share the defiant spirit of Prometheus, he who stole fire from the gods and declared he would rather be chained to a rock and tortured than submit to their will.” These individuals beat to the drums of their interior world, often out of step and out of touch with the clamorings of a noisy society.
Difficult paths
Johnson notes that solitaries have a natural proclivity to avoid a straightforward life. They swim against the currents of the times. He points, for example, to Vincent van Gogh. To many, van Gogh is the symbol of artistic genius. Yet to his neighbors in nineteenth century Arles, France, he was simply the fou roux, the red-headed madman.
Even his sister-in-law had this to say about him: “It seems as if [Vincent] deliberately chooses the most difficult path.” “To follow the paths trodden by others, to submit to the will of other people, that was not in his character, he wanted to work out his own salvation.”
While capitalism compels the individual to find meaning in wealth and things, solitaries like van Gogh, will search for truth, beauty, and the interesting. Where the “narcissist wants to be admired through their work, the solitary is content in its making”, writes Johnson. They lose themselves to their subjects and passions.
As van Gogh himself asks and later answers in his letter to his brother:
“Oh God, where is my wife, oh God, where is my child—is being alone really living?… This much I know about myself, notwithstanding my nervousness, that in both our characters there is a foundation of serenity… [A] serenity being based on the fact that we truly and sincerely love our trade and our work, and that art occupies a large part of our thoughts and makes life interesting.”
Vincent van Gogh. (1882). Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, as cited in Fenton Johnson. (2020). At the Center of All Beauty.
Nuance and turnings
As emblematic of the solitaries, perhaps, is Siddhartha Gotama—the South Asian ascetic who abandoned his abode and riches to pursue enlightenment and a life free of ignorance, craving, and suffering.
But our road to truth and self-discovery need not be similar. Johnson points, for example, to the essayist Walt Whitman, who “roamed the continent… [as he] searched for beauty… and the destiny of empires”; and then to the novelist Eudora Alice Welty, who reminds us that “a sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
Each road and individual, however different, are excellent “role models for the cultivation of an interior life,” Johnson adds. All of them are “votaries, living at the center of beauty”—“sensitive to [the] nuance and turnings” of the world. What they share is an appreciation for solitude and silence—the wellspring from which they derive their ability to listen, imagine, and introspect.
As the mathematician Blaise Pascal writes in Pensées, “all [of] humanity’s problems stem from an inability to sit in a quiet room alone.” Johnson agrees, stating boldly that the orthodox prescription for economics, politics, and religion will not save humanity from itself. “Instead of conquering nations or mountains or outer space, we [have] to conquer our need to conquer”, he writes.
Indeed, as Thoreau himself encourages of us:
“Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes… Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought… It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals… than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone… Let them wander… I have more of God, they more of the road.”
Henry James Thoreau. (1854). Walden, as cited in Fenton Johnson. (2020). At the Center of All Beauty.
Students among teachers
To everyday folk, the solitary who lives in seclusion and disconnection, may appear eccentric, workshy, or slothful even. Do they not have an obligation to a society in need of help? But every seemingly nugatory soul has latent and immortal potential.
As Johnson asks, “what would be lost if every Welty short story and Dickinson poem, every Cezanne painting or Nina Simone recording were lost?… Why sing? Why paint or dance? Why write?” And as Johnson himself answers, solitude can be a way to give and create for others. One forgoes a life of praise or wealth for something deeper and truer.
Of course, few of us will paint like van Gogh, compose like Dickinson, or sing like Simone. But that need not be a problem. There is immense pleasure to be had in life, Johnson writes, to simply be “among them as students among teachers.”
In this way, we should learn not only from timeless thinkers or creatives, he adds, but from “the grieving spouse, the terminally ill, the homeless,” and those whose solitary stories go untold. “Surely those who have the most profound experience of solitude may have the most to teach”, says Johnson.
Dwell in possibility
Indeed, the possibilities multiply when we open our mind’s eye to our inner self, and make the time for quiet and introspection. It may help us to see the many paths that exist. We are otherwise no different to that of animals, machines and corporations. We become simple entities that follow a prescribed algorithm, almost always without second thought or opportunity to rewrite themselves. Humans that run themselves without pause will live forever as a mindless automaton.
Johnson is reminded of the poem that Emily Dickinson wrote during her seclusion inside the high walls and gardens of the Homestead in Amherst. I include it here in full spirit of the solitary:
I dwell in Possibility –
I dwell in Possibility — (466) in Emily Dickinson. (1999). The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin.
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
Sources and further readings
- Thoreau, Henry James. (1854). Walden.
- Johnson, Fenton. (2020). At the Center of All Beauty.
- Dickinson, Emily. (1999). The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin.