On The Solitude Of Artists, Between Pose And Political Act

-Analysis-

HAMBURG — The most famous loner in the history of literature was actually a very sociable man. When American author Henry David Thoreau moved to a self-built cabin in the woods of Massachusetts in the summer of 1845 to find the essence of life and celebrate loneliness, he was not moving too far away from his home in Concord.

He was only three miles away from civilization; his mother or one of his sisters would come by with a food basket on weekends, and during the week friends (and onlookers who wanted to see what a Harvard graduate was doing alone in the woods) would come by and visit him.

Despite this — or precisely because of this — the two years, two months and two days that Thoreau spent in the 15 square meter cabin resulted in the creation of the classic book about simple living and being alone: Walden; or, Life in the Woods. To this day, it is probably the most popular book for people who want to escape the hum of everyday life and plunge into the silence of solitude. But Thoreau was not a misanthrope. Quite the opposite.

It’s just that we humans, he writes in the chapter “Solitude,” meet each other far too often. It’s simply impossible to gain any new value for one another in the short time we spend apart.

A barrel of one’s own

Writers and artists have always dreamt of loneliness. The Greek philosopher Diogenes only needed a barrel. German writer Thomas Mann thought the isolation he experienced in a beach chair by the sea was the ideal setup for writing. And he wrote the story of the loneliest hero in literary history, the novel The Chosen One, about the life of the repentant sinner Gregorius, who spent 17 years alone chained to a rock — and survived but turned into some kind of dried-up hedgehog, “a felty, bristly, moss-covered natural thing.”

For centuries, this celebration of proud or penitent solitude had been a male luxury.

But before you sigh with relief and say: “I knew it. Too much solitude is unhealthy“: Gregorius — dried-up hedgehog or not — was found by envoys of the church, brought to Rome and appointed pope. A lonely, isolated life has never been rewarded more brilliantly.

Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare’s sister

In her groundbreaking 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote that for centuries, this celebration of proud or penitent solitude had been a male luxury. In the essay, she is not asking for life in a forest but for the minimum requirement of civilized self-sufficiency: a room of one’s own. It’s only obvious, she writes, that there are so few notable works by women in the history of literature: Women have always been deprived of the most basic precondition for creativity.

According to Woolf, an artist needs its own space. A small world of one’s own. A protected room into which the constant needs of children and men, the distractions and demands of all kinds cannot penetrate. What fantastic works could William Shakespeare’s sister Judith have written, Woolf wonders, if only had she been allowed some time alone?

Woolf has clear, simple demands: 500 pounds a year and a room of one’s own. For her, in 1929, these are the basic conditions for creative work — and for a good life.

A share of eternity

We all know that the praise of solitude can be expressed and felt with particular yearning and emotion when one is standing on sociable ground.

The wonderful poet Polish-born Mascha Kaléko, who was often absorbed in practical life matters such as making ends meet and looking after her husband and son, especially during her years of exile in the United States, once expressed it very practically: “How wonderful it is to be alone. Especially when you have someone to whom you can say: ‘How wonderful it is to be alone.'”

And in verse, the German-language poet said it as beautifully as one can say it: All you need is an island / Alone in the wide sea / All you need is one person / But one you really need.

This honest sense of romance is missing in many dreamlike lines of loneliness in literature or music. Floating, we are self-sufficient. Like British music icon David Bowie in his song “Space Oddity,” which was released a few days before the first human landing on the moon, but which evoked an ending so tragic that the BBC refused to play the song until the astronauts were safely back on Earth.

Being alone is best when celebrated in a crowd.

The astronaut’s loneliness seemed too convincing and too suggestive to those responsible. No one wanted to be responsible if the astronauts chose a lonely life in space instead of coming back to us down here: I’m stepping through the door / And I’m floating in a most peculiar way.

But after the moon travelers returned safely, the song became a hit. On solid ground, it’s wonderful to dance to the loneliness tune of space. Paradoxically, the tune is now sung by fans of the German national football team after a goal, in moments of collective national happiness. Being alone is best when celebrated in a crowd.

Of course, singing together has nothing to do with real loneliness, with the deep longing for silence that we all experience from time to time. As French author Albert Camus once wrote in his diary: “I cannot live with people for long. I need a little solitude. A share of eternity.”

Loneliness and disobedience

When we wish to be alone, we want to be connected to something that sustains us, beyond our fellow human beings. Thoreau, the sociable forest dweller, explained his desire for a lonely hut as a desire to “get closer to real life, to see if I could learn what it had to teach, so that when it came to dying I would not regret what I had not lived.”

In the forest, Thoreau also developed a political concept that is still used and practiced today as a method of political opposition: civil disobedience. As a means of protesting against the slave trade in Massachusetts, for example, he relied on a tax boycott — so as not to finance injustice.

Real greatness can arise from loneliness.

Life in the cabin prepared him for the night he subsequently had to spend in prison. Luckily for him, it was only one night: Otherwise, he would have discovered that being alone can become torture.

But the political consequence of his loneliness, the theory of civil disobedience, is inspiring and powerful. Freedom fighters Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela have all quoted Thoreau and his work, which proves that real greatness can arise from loneliness — preferably with a food basket on Sunday.

The Walden formula for successful living goes like this: “If a man confidently walks in the direction of his dreams, striving to live the life he imagined, he will achieve things he would not even have dared to dream of.”