Thoreau and Solitude

Edward Engelberg in discussing several forms of “solitude” refers to one of these as the “personal space for pleasure and creative self-indulgence.” This form is in sharp contrast to the prevailing view of solitude as a condition of loneliness and isolation. Both views are discussed extensively by Existentialists. The former view promises a greater possibility for authentic meaning in life.

Henry David Thoreau was a proponent of solitude as a source of joy and emotional self-attunement. Thoreau in his work “Walden” has a chapter on solitude.  He describes his being alone in solitude, “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.” For two years Thoreau lived on the shore of Walden Pond in a hut he had built with solitude as his companion.

 

On the shore of Walden Pond, listening attentively, Thoreau heard, “Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre . . .

Of the universal lyre, there are those who say the harp and lyre possess the sacred and the secular, or possibly the sacred in the secular and for Thoreau nature provided the necessary musical instrument---the universal lyre. We each might want to listen attentively to get in touch with the music that surrounds us. We will hear sounds we have not heard before and feel feelings we have not felt before.  Find a time for solitude and make a “personal space for pleasure and creative self-indulgence.”