“It is easy to live according to our own in isolation, but the magnificent man is he who in the middle of the crowd retains the independence of solitude with perfect sweetness.”
The young Whitman wrote of his pivotal critique walk with his greatest literary hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882): “I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way.” From this critique walk, the young poet wrested his wisdom on how to keep criticism from sinking your soul, for Emerson.
Whitman was in many ways the embodiment of the spirit Emerson so fiercely praised against the tide of his time: a spirit animated by the central doctrine “trust thyself,” anchored in resolute resistance to the tyranny of opinion, and rooted in the belief that had gotten Emerson banned from Harvard’s campus for thirty years when he was Whitman’s age — the belief that one should not be influenced by others. However, rather than being offended by Whitman’
Tanya P. Johnson’s artwork from the Wisdom Engines series. The subject of how to trust yourself resounds across Emerson’s vast body of work, and he addresses it in his essay “Character,” which may be found in his essential Essays and Lectures.
This rule, equally difficult in practical and intellectual life, may serve the entire distinction between greatness and meanness. It is harder because there will always be those who believe they know what is your duty better than you do. However, the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps his mind on what he must do, not what the people think.
Even the thinking mind, the writing mind, and the creating mind is a symposium of outside voices when trapped within itself, so he considers what solitude actually means in “Nature,” which is possibly his best essay because it is the most all-encompassing and spiritually lucid. He challenges the common perception of solitude as a kind of self-isolation from other-selves behind the walls of seclusion.
Emerson writes: “True isolation is sought in the wild places, where… one’s inner voices become audible, a century and a half before Wendell Berry remarked”
I am not solitary while I read and write, though nobody is with me; but if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. A man needs to retire from his chamber as much as from society in order to enter solitude.
Standing on the bare ground, with my head bathed in the blithe air, and my head lifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There, I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity
I am not solitary while I read and write, though nobody is with me; but if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. A man needs to retire from his chamber as much as from society in order to enter into solitude.
Standing on the bare ground, with my head bathed in the blithe air, and my head lifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There, I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity
Thoreau, a young disciple of Emerson, on solitude and the cure for depression, Rockwell Kent, a visual artist, on wilderness, solitude, and creativity, and Kahlil Gibran, on silence, solitude, and the courage to know yourself, round out the list. Then, go back to Hermann Hesse on the wisdom of the inner voice and Octavia Butler on the meaning of “God.”
