A History of Solitude. David Vincent

A History of Solitude - David  Vincent


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      The same was true of withdrawal for spiritual contemplation. The desert fathers and their medieval successors were in the bones of European religious sensibility. They constituted a common heritage of Catholic and Protestant alike, icons to be admired, celebrated and conceivably imitated. The ferocity of Zimmermann’s attack on ‘religious insanity’ reflected his awareness of its continuing attraction. Despite the further damage caused to the surviving networks of monasteries by the French Revolution, both in France and in the countries to which the Revolution was exported, their way of life retained a fading glamour. What continued to appeal was the extremity of the experience. If the problem was the corrupting comfort of urban culture, the answer lay in a complete denial of ease and indulgence. If the obstacle to restorative contemplation was the press of other people, the solution was a total escape, whether temporary or, in specific circumstances, permanent. In this sense, the monastic ideal was at once a particular, if increasingly uncommon, institutional possibility, and a more general inspiration of varieties of spiritual retreat. Within the Christian tradition, there were those driving a religious revival who, unlike Zimmermann, believed that a direct, personal encounter with God was a feasible path to revelations unattainable in an increasingly secular and commercial society.

      In one respect, at least, said I, after quitting the public road, in order to pursue a path, faintly tracked through the luxuriant herbage of the fields, and which left me at liberty to indulge the solitary reveries of a mind, to which the volume of nature is ever open at some page of instruction and delight; – In one respect, at least, I may boast of a resemblance to the simplicity of the ancient sages: I pursue my meditations on foot, and can find occasion for philosophic reflection, wherever yon fretted vault (the philosopher’s best canopy) extends its glorious covering.84

      Walking had become and would remain a critical element of the construction and practice of solitude. It will be the central issue in Chapter 2 on the nineteenth century and will be revisited in Chapter 5 on the twentieth.

      The long debate over solitude was given new urgency by the Enlightenment commitment to sociability. Personal exchange drove innovation but left insufficient space for intellectual exploration and self-discovery. Social interaction promoted creativity but might also distract and trivialize if there was no opportunity for retreat and reflection. A new balance had to be struck between engagement and seclusion in the pursuit of progress. At the same time, historical forms of withdrawal retained a dangerous attraction amidst the noise and materialism of an urbanizing society. The walled cloister or unpeopled nature had long been a cleansing alternative to the corrupting pressures of the contemporary world. Both threatened


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