Season 4 Podcast 67 Self-Reliance Concept 10 Solitude
I have selected Ten concepts from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance. Each concept expands the virtues and variations of Self-Reliance or warns of the vices of the ways we forfeit Self Reliance:
· Concept 1: Blind Obedience
· Concept 2: False Charity
· Concept 3: Truth
· Concept 4: Faith
· Concept 5: Non-Conformist
· Concept 6: To Thine Own Self Be True
· Concept 7: Self-Reliance
· Concept 8: Character
· Concept 9: God
· Concept 10: Solitude
In this podcast we shall explore Number Ten, SOLITUDE
If you have followed the podcasts you already know how I love synonyms. A synonym accomplishes two things. One it strengthens a word by creative repetition and two it expands the meaning by rich variation. Related words to solitude are solitary, alone, unattended, apart, separate, nonpareil, secluded, isolated, recluse, sequestered.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Solitude conjures up the image of one on a mountain top, perhaps perched on a rocky ledge overlooking the spreading valley miles below, lost in thought. Silver rivers and lost lakes interrupt the forested floor and stretch for miles. Distracted for a moment as an eagle or hawk whose wide wings rest on the uplifting wind appear almost at arm’s length, its crooked beak and sharp talons prophesying death as with telescopic eyes he surveys the beating hearts of small prey scampering about in false security. Unthreatened in the safety of solitude, he who was given dominion over the animals sinks back into the fathomless wealth of his boundless mind. Silence is his companion.
I like the synonym for solitude—nonpareil. I first came in contact with the word ‘nonpareil’ from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Caliban, a not quite evolved human, who tried to rape Miranda, Prospero’s daughter, to populate the magic island with more Calibans describes Miranda to the two fools Stephano and Trinculo who conspire to murder Prospero and steal his daughter and become masters of the Isle.
And that most deeply to consider is
The beauty of his daughter; he himself
Calls her a nonpareil: I never saw a woman,
But only Sycorax my dam and she;
But she as far surpasseth Sycorax
As great’st does least.
Nnonpareil means peerless, unparalleled, incomparable, unrivaled, paragon, or pinnacle. Nonpareil, solitude, and solitary fit nicely for they suggest independence and set apart.
Solitude is inherent in self-reliance. Emerson continues.
We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit.
“Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.”
