Goodreads Bookshelf
Solitude
posted Tuesday, 27 February 2007
"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. [...] Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. [...] The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him." --Henry Thoreau, Walden, "Solitude"
The value Thoreau sees, I suspect, is in our thoughts and ideas. Thoreau asserts in the midst of this same paragraph from which I snipped these bits that our systems of etiquette and courtesy developed to allow us to see one another so often. What would we have to say to many of the people we see every day if we didn't have all the banalities to broach? In the midst of class discussion, in which Thoreau's disgust of gossip came up, I was reminded of an old saying, which I couldn't remember exactly, which a student brought up (he couldn't remember it exactly either). I've since looked it up and can now attribute it to Eleanor Roosevelt:
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."This, I think, gets to the heart of Thoreau's thought: ideas and ideals, principles and insights are the most important things, period. So many things in our lives distract us from these things, which constitute--or would, if we would let them--our highest (and Thoreau would say truest) selves.
While we're on the topic, though, I'm reminded of a Keats poem, his first published poem, in fact, "To Solitude."
O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,-
Nature’s observatory - whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
His sonnet, of course, cheats a bit. As her personifies Solitude, he says that he would rather spend time with Solitude in the countryside than in the city, but he avers that if he's going to be in Solitude, he should rather be there with a kindred spirit, alone with that certain person. It's not quite the same thing as solitude, but it has its own sweetness.
By the way, back in grad school I set that Keats poem to music for women's chorus.
Your comments, as always, are most welcome. (4)