Every man is alone. Ultimately, each person exists in isolation. He faces himself in silence, wending his way in individual pathways, seeking companionship, reaching out to others. Forever, man moves forward stretching to the skies, searching the realization of his own capacities. In loneliness, man seeks the fulfillment of his inner nature. He maps new meanings, and perceives new patterns for old ways and habits. Alone, the life of man passes before him. His philosophy, the meanings he attaches to his work and his relations, each significant aspect of his being comes into view as new values are formed, as man resolves to bring human significance, to bring life to each new day, to each piece of work, to each creation.
In loneliness, every experience is alive and vivid and full of meaning. When one has been greatly isolated and restricted in movement, one deeply feels the value of openness, of freedom and expansiveness. Life takes on an exquisite meaning, an exhilarating richness. When one has lived in total darkness, one piercingly appreciates the sunlight, the fireside, the beacon, the beginning dawn. When one is cut off from human companionship, one discovers a deep reverence for friendship, for the one who stands by in the hour of need and shame. In the days of pain and defeat, loneliness takes on a human depth. When one is sequestered from life, when one is purely alone and dying, when one is lost in a world of dreary emptiness then color becomes exquisite, rich, desirable, fulfilling. When one has been sharply isolated and lonely, every moment is pure, every sound is delightful, every aspect of the universe takes on a value and meaning, an exquisite beauty. The isolated tree stretches out to meet its new neighbor; the lonely star twinkles and turns to face its emerging companions in the night; the lost child runs to loved ones with open arms.
Each of us has been alone and lonely, starved for companionship. Each of us has endured days or weeks of isolation. Then suddenly, miraculously, we greet each face with a radiance and warmth, with a spirit of kinship, with a deeper and more genuine fellowship, in a totally different way than when we are constantly in the presence of others.
Every lonely man experiences deep joy and gladness, rapture and awe in the presence of a human voice, the variations of musical tone, of volume and pitch, the miracle of silent eyes, the quiet touch of a human hand, the ecstasy of simply standing face to face, or walking shoulder to shoulder with one’s fellow man. Each man comes to recognize the richness of the blue sky, the white clouds, the brilliant colors of the rainbow, the glorious opening of a new flower, each item is born anew and takes on an entirely unique value. The lonely mountain climber, the isolated explorer, the pilot lost in the desert, the sailor adrift at sea—each has known the agony and despair of loneliness. Each has discovered within horrible starvation, disease, and unbearable freezing the growing terror of an untimely death. Each of us has searched within for a new meaning in life, a value in being alive, in breathing freely, in walking openly, in conversing with companions. In the face of final death, in isolation and loneliness, the discovery is made that life is rich in its resources and its ways, that truth is universal, that wisdom and love and reverence are rooted in every living meeting, that each individual stretches forward to touch a universal humanity.
In time of abiding loneliness and suffering the value and meaning of life are re-examined. Men lost in the mountains, in the desert, at sea, men faced with slow, painful death, men craving food and water, begin to consider the past. They search for deeper meanings in life. They review their relations. They hear again the words of love and hate they have spoken, the individuals they have violated with criticisms, recriminations, and competitive victories. They relive the scenes of meanness, pettiness, and dishonesty. They feel again the attachments they have known, the tender and cooperative endeavors. Everything of import comes to mind. The isolated man searches for answers to life. He seeks a better life. He wishes to be reconciled to himself and others. He realizes the necessity of turning to lofty ideals, of finding the good and the beautiful in life, the simple and the true. In these hours he is honest and direct in facing his conflicts and problems, and in questioning his values. He searches for a genuine basis for living, a way of loving every human being, a way to life in which each man is respected and valued, in which each man is encouraged to find himself and his own quantum in life. The lost and lonely man seeks deliverance. He seeks to be forgiven his trespasses. He yearns for one more chance to absolve himself and his misdeeds, to rectify his sins against his fellow man, to turn the misery he has created into joy and happiness. In the face of slow death, each man in his own way turns to God.
This self-searching, this recognition of evil and striving for good, this search for truth and wisdom and beauty and love, was the experience of each man in the crew transporting Captain Rickenbacker on an official mission to islands in the Pacific during World War II. The plane crashed and the men were lost twenty-one days at sea. In the beginning many were atheists or agnostics, but at the end of this terrible ordeal each man, in his own way, discovered God. Each man found God in the vast, empty loneliness of the ocean. From the worn Bible of Sgt. Bartek, each man found salvation and strength in prayer.{39} From two strange miracles which the men felt saved their lives, a new faith emerged and a community of feeling developed which created a liveliness of human fellowship and worship, and a sense of gentle peace. Two of the prayers which bound the group together, and provided hope and communion in the hours of great fear and utter loneliness follow. I present these prayers because they enabled frightened men to find truth and wisdom and beauty and love and strength in hours of terrifying loneliness.
O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head; as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathesome disease; and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me; as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off. They also that seek after my life lay snares for me; and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long. But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. Thus I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs. For in thee, O Lord, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God. For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my feet slippeth, they magnify themselves against me. For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me. For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin. But mine enemies are lively, and they are strong: and they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied. They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good is. Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that ye should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheeps’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thornes, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house: and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
In the pioneering days of aviation, men were frequently lost at sea, in the mountains, in the desert. Many died alone—of hunger, thirst, freezing temperatures, at the hands of hostile tribes—when they survived the crashing. The lonely pilot came to know the precious nature of life, the absolute necessity of making each moment a living one, making every encounter a significant meeting, bringing each potential creation to fulfillment. He soon realized a sense of isolation and solitude, the deep loss when his companion did not return. A malady grew within him as he waited for his friend to return. And in his heart each moment of waiting was eternity, each vision of horror endless. Until finally he knew his comrade would not come back, that he had joined, in ultimate slumber, the rocks of the mountains, the sands of the desert, the waters of the sea, the stars and wind of the night.
The hours of silence and loneliness cultivate a deepened sense of values in life. The brevity of life becomes a startling reality. Time is short and man must find his place in the universe. Man must leave the traces of his life in nature and in the depths of human hearts and minds. Man must reach others vitally and fundamentally and share in a communion which gives each being a sense of honor and a sense of knowing and belonging.
Life is brief. Alone, man recognizes in his heart the wonder and awe of human life. The whole world grows old. What remains must be left to be. Flowers bloom, radiantly, brilliantly, even in the frost. The grain ripens in the field even in the night. Trees bring forth their leaves and fruit even in the cold. Life is passing. Man must savor each living experience and shine forth as a unique human being, as unique as a bright flare on a distant horizon in a silent night.
Saint-Exupéry describes the ultimate loneliness of separation and death as follows:
Bit by bit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.{40}
Lost in the desert, in danger, naked between sand and sky, withdrawn from life by enduring silence, Saint-Exupéry realized the full meaning of loneliness. He knew if he were not sighted he would die of thirst or starvation, or be found and murdered by the Moors. Yet in the days of aloneness in the desert he discovered himself and a life filled with dreams. Only when he felt the last moments approaching did he see that he must remain truly alive, vital, awake to the very end, moving forwards, with arms outstretched for those who would be waiting and searching for him. He came out of the desert with his heart and mind alive. He found himself, in what appeared to be the beginning of the end, in the presence of a truth which he had failed to recognize. He reached rock-bottom loneliness and despair. Yet, instead of sinking into a state of self-estrangement, he experienced a strange, exulting, gentle peace. Later, he saw that in such an hour man finds himself and becomes his own friend. He does not feel sorrow or cry out in grief but he possesses a kind of wealth—the awareness of the unity of existence, of man’s relatedness to all of life. He finds he is the desert and the desert is him.
Saint-Exupéry came to understand himself and the nature of man in days and nights in the sand, although the awareness of these realities often did not strike home until a later time. He knew that in loneliness an essential inner need is satisfied and that no external power can ever prevail against self-fulfillment.
Never shall I forget that, lying buried to the chin in sand, strangled slowly to death by thirst, my heart was infinitely warm beneath the desert stars.
What can men do to make known to themselves this sense of deliverance? Everything about mankind is paradox. He who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous man grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed men, but none can tell us in advance what sort it will breed....Of what can we be certain except this—that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man’s truth to be found?
Truth is not that which can be demonstrated by the aid of logic. If orange-trees are hardy and rich in fruit in this bit of soil and not that, then this bit of soil is what is truth for orange trees. If a particular religion, or culture, or scale of values, if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfillment to a man, releases the prince asleep within him unknown to himself, then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth.{41}
These insights sometimes came suddenly in lonely hours, in isolation. Sometimes they emerged gradually, naturally, in the midst of living. Saint-Exupéry let himself be, and in being and waiting he realized the treasure of the human voice, the beauty of the smile, the wonder and glowing fulfillment of human companionship. He knew that man waxes and blooms in the presence of his comrades, that the joys of human relations are as vast as the ocean, that only in the warmth of human life can man find true happiness. And in the lonely hours he knew the meaning of freedom. He knew his life had relevance, his work had purpose.
What all of us want is to be set free. The man who sinks his pickaxe into the ground wants that stroke to mean something. The convict’s stroke is not the same as the prospector’s, for the obvious reason that the prospector’s stroke has meaning and the convict’s stroke has none. It would be a mistake to think that the prison exists at the point where the convict’s stroke is dealt. Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind.{42}
In loneliness, in the dark hours, Saint-Exupéry did not die. He came to feel an aliveness he had never known before. He came to feel an awareness of life, of man and nature, a vividness and clarity of purpose as resounding as chimes of the church extoling a universal birth, ringing the call to humanity, mirroring the joy of a resurrection. He came to see that all men wish to come alive, that many are imprisoned by self-estrangement, by extraneous values and standards, by a mechanical and machine-like existence. Man strives to break bread with his fellow man, to share the heart-breaks and joys of life, to awaken in the presence of the human touch. All of us express at bottom the same exalted impulse to meet our comrades on a meaningful, living basis. In the hours that truly count, man lives with other human beings in richness which cannot be bought. Saint-Exupéry deeply felt the priceless nature of human relations.
One cannot buy the friendship...of a companion to whom one is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship—those trees, flowers, women, those treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.{43}
Simple ideas, so obvious, yet so rarely seen, so rarely entering into modern life.
For Saint-Exupéry, being separate and alone, brought deepening awareness and growing wisdom into basic human values. He brought with him a rapturous commitment to his fellow man and within this commitment he discovered the foundation for compassion, self-fulfillment, and living happiness.
HERMANN BUHL
When Hermann Buhl reached the highest peak in the Himalayas, he did not feel any great joy and enthusiasm or any great thrill of accomplishment even though he was the first man to reach the summit. He had suffered great pain and had faced almost certain death. There was no moving exhilaration. He was alone, overcome with waves of shattering desolation. He had been cut-off from his expedition, warned by his leaders not to continue the climb upward to Nanga Parbat, the peak above 26,000 feet. But he went on—alone—in spite of the fact that he was warned, severely admonished, even ordered by his leaders to return to the Base Camp. There was no support, no affirmation from his group. He was on his own now in a journey to the summit. He was soon to experience horrors he had never known—avalanches, spraying his face and body with wet, heavy snow, freezing his boots, clogging his rubbers with rime as he climbed upward. He was to know terrible searing thirst, his tongue glued to his gums, his throat raw as a rasp. He was to experience the torture of murderous heat, a veritable agony of hell, driving him literally mad, causing dehydration, making his blood thick and viscous. His yearning for drinkable liquid—a single drop of tea—was deep, endless. He was to experience the most terrible fear and loneliness he had ever known, falling down, utterly exhausted, crawling, losing balance, taking each step upward and downward with almost complete immobility and loss of control. After every step his weary body sank down into the snow. But somehow when all his strength seemed gone, an inner spark emerged to keep him going. He was barely able to get up, to stand, to move on. But there was no other way to get back to living people and the desire for human companionship was as great as the need for liquid and food. He had to stand all night in total darkness on a meager platform, which barely provided room for both his feet—much too small to sit down. He could hardly stay upright. His head fell forward; his eyelids pressed like lead. He dozed off. He tried to keep awake but sleep kept defeating him—miraculously he did not lose his balance. He would wake with a start, realizing his isolation, knowing he was on a steep rock slope high up on Nanga Parbat, exposed to cold and darkness, with a black silent abyss waiting below. He found he had to yield continually under stress until he reached the end of his resources, until there was nothing left to yield with.
During the hours of extreme tension and loneliness, he had a “partner” with him, looking after him, taking care of him, belaying him. He was to hear voices calling his name, calling again and again. He wanted to shout, to cheer, to be recognized but he could not produce a sound. And when he struggled, fought nearly insurmountable obstacles, to go out to meet “them” there was no one there, nothing but a vast expanse of empty space. He knew he was definitely alone, isolated in a hopeless, endless waste of ice above 26,000 feet. And he was to feel many times he had reached the end of life. Yet in these terrifying, lonely hours, he discovered the precious nature of life, the sheer beauty of being alive. He knew the full meaning of having climbed the mountain and understood the simple truth that he climbed solely because the mountain existed. It was there to climb. His was a simple desire to see and feel and touch and experience the reality of the mountain peak and the lonely challenge it created. His whole life took on a new meaning in that lonely waste of ice. He resolved if he came out alive to devote himself to good and creative works. He realized as never before the richness and miracle of human companionship. In the struggle, on his way to reaching the top, he found a few genuine friends in his expedition—not the leaders, not the great climbers, but simple men who had gone as far as they could with him and wished him well in the final journey. He wrote on his return:
They never even asked whether I had gotten to the top; all that seemed to matter was that I was back safely. Our close communion at that moment was for me the most significant experience of the whole expedition, for we had established something more than the camaraderie of teammates—a true and deep friendship.{44}
In his loneliness, Buhl discovered the wonder and joy of life. He realized the absolute requirement of love and human companionship in deriving meaning and purpose in life. And he knew within himself that every reality in nature and humanity existed to be known in genuine experience.
ADMIRAL RICHARD E. BYRD
Admiral Byrd spent nearly six months alone on an advanced base in Antarctica. He wanted to gather meteorological data which would provide valuable information on Antarctica. But he also desired to be alone, to be by himself, to savor the peace and quiet and solitude of loneliness long enough to find out if he really believed in himself, if his values in life held genuine significance and enduring meaning. Beset by the complexities of modern life, he wished desperately for some silent place to re-examine his way of life and to search into his thoughts, to reason undisturbed, to some natural conclusion. He asked himself, “Must you go off and bury yourself in the middle of polar cold and darkness just to be alone? After all, a stranger walking down Fifth Avenue can be just as lonely as a traveler wandering in the desert.” Yet Byrd was a famous explorer. His commitments and fame prevented him from being alone long enough to discover what truly mattered in life. So he chose a life of self-isolation.
Alone in Antarctica, each sound took on a distinct and special meaning. Each experience held a vital significance. In temperatures which ranged to—74° F, if there were the slightest breeze, he could hear his breath freeze as it floated away and it made a tremendous sound like the explosion of a firecracker. There were sounds which were crushing, isolating. Byrd wrote:
There is something extravagantly insensate about an Antarctic blizzard at night. Its vindictiveness cannot be measured on an anemometer sheet. It is more than just wind: it is a solid wall of snow moving at gale force, pounding like surf. The whole malevolent rush is concentrated upon you as upon a personal enemy. In the senseless explosion of sound you are reduced to a crawling thing on the margin of a disintegrating world; you can’t see, you can’t hear, you can hardly move. The lungs gasp after the air sucked out of them, and the brain is shaken. Nothing in the world will so quickly isolate a man.{45}
In lonely hours, Byrd could realize a new meaning; he could discover the precious nature of each living thing. He could experience the harmony and unity of man and nature, the universal oneness of all beings, the relatedness of night and day, of man and the cosmos. He observed in the darkening twilight:
The day was dying, the night being born—but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence—a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps.
It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe. The conviction came that that rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance—that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man’s despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.{46}
Byrd soon discovered the brain-cracking loneliness of solitary confinement and the loneliness of futile routine. He tried to crowd his days with systematic but meaningful acts. But he found it exceedingly difficult to escape loneliness. He could not take it casually. It was too big, too compelling. Each new day opened and closed in darkness. The cold and darkness depleted his body and eroded his mind. He had to admit he was lonely. But only after much struggle to overcome his loneliness and to avoid dwelling on it, did he realize its significance. He tried to focus his mind, his thinking, only on healthy constructive images and concepts because he was frightened by lonely thoughts.
In spite of sheer concentration and every effort of will power, Byrd could not avoid the terrible evenness and loneliness of silence. For the quiet was as real and solid as sound, as awakening as the creaks of the ice barrier and the concussions of heavy snow, as relentless as the ticking of a clock.
Byrd anticipated the crisis of loneliness. What he had not counted on was how closely a man could come to dying and still not die or want to die. He suffered indescribable pain and terror, being poisoned by carbon monoxide, not believing he had the strength to live through months of severe illness, unaided and alone. Yet he kept going even when all his powers and resources seemed completely exhausted, even when he experienced excruciating fear and pain, as globules of ice clung to his eyelashes, freezing them together, blinding him until they melted, as his fingers froze, as the skin came off his face and hands as he touched metal surfaces. During his hours of bitter loneliness, when he became utterly aware and sensible, he understood the ultimate meaning of being alone. He realized how wrong his sense of values had been and how he had failed to see that the simple, the natural, the homely, the unpretentious things in life are what really matter.
Being alone, experiencing deep, raw loneliness helped Byrd find new meanings in old patterns, helped him evolve a humble set of values. He discovered the obvious—the simple beauty of every living creation in the universe—but he had to live through cataclysmic loneliness, and a totally debilitating illness to see and hear, and feel, and touch, and know the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive and being related.
NED LANGFORD
From ancient history to the present, the individual afflicted with leprosy has always been regarded as loathsome. The horror and revulsion of such a person is so great he is inevitably treated as a pariah. The disease so repels most people they prefer to keep entirely away from the leper, not wishing to come even within speaking distance. In the presence of leprosy, we forget that the afflicted person is a human being. We feel deep aversion and often become offensive in our rejection of him. He is made to feel that he is the invidious germ itself spewing out in all directions. His mental anguish is far more terrible than any physical discomfort. No one is more immediately isolated and cut-off from normal human intercourse, more totally rejected socially. It is easy to see from the brutal rejection why the individual suffering from Hansen’s disease can view himself as some inhuman creature crawling out from under a rock. No criminal condemned to solitary confinement is confronted with such torture and loneliness. The terribly painful, silently endured loneliness of the leper is impossible to comprehend except by those having faced the dreadful disease.
Something of the analogy to a pestilent, disgusting animal was the perception of Ned Langford when he knew with certainty, for the first time, that the growing, unfeeling spots on his body were the first stages of leprosy. The physician making the diagnosis took him to a dilapidated shack, in a place that was completely sequestered. Adjacent to the shack was the city dump. Ned Langford immediately realized the significance of this hideout, and as immediately he regarded himself as part of the refuse. His dull, gloomy state of mind made him feel as worthless as the heap of useless rubbish which surrounded him. At that moment, he knew he was lost to humanity. His life was totally devoid of any value. He was now to be shunned by society; totally left out. He belonged with all the other worthless leavings in the world.
But he did not immediately realize that he would have to fight for his place—even in a dump. As he opened the door of the broken-down shack, droves of large rats scurried through it. Terrified, he entered and quickly bolted the door. A sickening, savage battle resulted for prior claim. Perry Burgess tells the story for Ned, in the following passages.
There was one left, a huge devil of a rodent in the far corner, disputing possession with me. I started to the door to unfasten it, when, without warning, he flew at me, hit my leg with terrific force, his teeth ripping through my trousers. I lurched back, but I caught him with my foot and kicked, sending him against the opposite wall. He squealed shrilly and flew at me a second time. I snatched up the only chair and hurled it, and the thing went to pieces. He had turned and was on me again. This time he leaped high and I struck at him with my clenched fist and he clung to my coat. He dropped to the floor. I kicked at him but missed; he was too quick for me. I stopped to pick up the chair leg and like lightning he was on my hand, tearing, tearing! I grabbed frantically and found his throat. He let out one bloodcurdling squeal as my hands closed on him. He fought and clawed, cutting my hands until the blood streamed. I was afraid to let go. He was limp, he must be dead, but I hung on. Then I swung my arms and hurled him, dead, through the glass in the window.
With the sound of breaking glass something crashed within me. Alone, alone for all time: Mother! Mabel! Tom! Jane! Jane...Jane...for the first time in my memory I began to sob. I reeled across to the wooden bunk, threw myself down, and wept my heart out.{47}
This was only the beginning of Ned’s painful terror and the deadening isolation he was to feel. The impact of his dangerous infection seeped through his body, turning his veins to ice and shriveling his heart. He would never again see his family, his fiancée, his friends. He would never again enter his home, his town, which held his belongings and his treasures. He would never again know the world of his childhood and his youth. Now he would have to go through the motions of a meaningless existence.
For the next year his life was a hideous nightmare. He buried himself in an obscure shack in New York City while submitting to secretive medical treatment, as an experiment in arresting the disease. There were nearly five million people who shared the same spaces but he was not permitted to speak or be near any of them. He was to remain always alone. He avoided the subway, the trolley, the trains—any place where other human beings congregated. Many nights he could not sleep. He roamed the streets, keeping his distance from the laughing voices, merriment, and gala celebrations, from the bright lights and brilliant colors. His heart was filled with despair and sadness and his mind shook with thoughts of self-defeat and physical destruction. He walked and walked, away from people, alone. He thought and suffered to the point of extreme isolation and self-contempt. He wrote his brother Tom:
You could never believe how alone loneliness is. You have to move, live, breathe, see, hear, in the midst of millions of people, not daring to touch one of them, afraid to speak lest they become friendly—avoiding—avoiding—eternally avoiding.
There were times when he wanted to protest against his self-enforced isolation. He wanted to scream, “Look, everyone! Look at me! My name is Ned Langford and I’m a man, too. I’m a human just as much as you are.{48}
Yet Ned never attacked or condemned anyone or shouted for his rights when society did violence to him as a human being, and caused him drastically to deteriorate in his sense of dignity and integrity. He never blamed others for the hours he spent avoiding people, for the terror he knew at being singled out, for the pain he experienced in feeling accusingly fingered as a leper. There were times when he wanted to end his misery and loneliness through self-inflicted death, when he yearned for permanent peaceful slumber, but each time he thought of suicide he remembered his brother’s words, “Don’t ever just quit”; and he kept on fighting. Once in a great while he felt human and whole again, such as when his physician put an arm around his shoulder. This act moved him so deeply that his self-repulsion melted. He was momentarily warmed by the thought that the doctor cared enough to touch him spontaneously, lovingly, as a natural way to assuage that fitful terror in his heart.
After his year in New York, Ned decided he could not continue hiding, escaping from the world. He knew he would have to join others afflicted with leprosy; he would have to have human companionship to want to live. So he chose San Lazaro in the Philippines as his “sanctuary of sorrow.” His utter despair continued for a long time. His loneliness, his refusal to accept the disease as final, his unwillingness to believe that he would never again know his life in America, that he would never again be with his family, filled him with agony. The horror of it all struck him to the depth of his soul when he found his Filipino friend dying. The decaying body before him frightened him beyond description as he saw the eyebrows and eyelashes gone, the forehead covered with shiny, reddish welts, some of which were open wounds. The bridge of the nose had fallen in; the nostrils were swollen with festering tubercules. The lips were thick and enlarged. His friend tried to speak but his voice was queer and weak and hoarse. The strange sounds were incoherent, meaningless. Ned felt he was being addressed by a dead person. This final painful meeting left him with an indelible image even though he learned that most lepers do not deteriorate so completely.
Hope surged within him when he came to live with other lepers, when he submitted to the medical program. He kept alive a dream of recovery for many, many years—finding salvation and joy in work and in nature, and finding surpassing value in a lonely life. The dream lived on within him. Even when the disease began to spread, he plunged more deeply into creating and nourishing the flowers and grasses and trees surrounding his home, which had been bequeathed to him by a former leper who died in San Lazaro. But in the end the dream was broken. He was forced to surrender. On November 11, as the First World War terminated, he too signed an armistice with Hansen’s disease. He knew he would never recover. He accepted with final resignation the fact that he would never return home cured. On this momentous occasion, he signed his name as a symbol of submitting. Thus he abandoned his right to mingle with Americans without fear and without shame. At the same time he realized there was something very special in his life as a leper over the twenty-five years. There was something of rare significance in his years of loneliness when he was almost completely isolated from his own people. This life was special in a way he had not expected, in a way he had never known. For all the lonely suffering, he never had to pretend to be other than he was. He could always speak directly, honestly, without sham, without ulterior motive, without any objective beyond meeting the other person in a simple, open way. He said what he wanted to say and thought what he wanted to think. As a leper he had a striking independence different from anything he had known as a “normal” man. He had a community of neighbors who were open with him, who knew and respected him as a genuine person. And he had his home, his own place, partly created with his own hands, a home he had achieved through sheer exercising of his talents and capacities, a home achieved against sickness, against loneliness, against despair, against so many terrors and breakings of the heart and mind. For twenty-five years on a little island, Ned lived as a lonely person never reaching the full depths of human companionship but knowing the tender love and communion of fellow sufferers and joy and fulfillment through work. What did it all mean? Nearing the end, he understood the meaning of life. He came to know that no matter how life is lived it is always strange, always a mystery—that one must live with whatever comes—not being defeated or overwhelmed, but searching for glory in pain, finding victory in defeat, knowing relatedness in loneliness, and emerging with strength and fortitude from experiences of isolation and suffering. At last he saw that one must meet life with courage, without complaint, as it is, or be crushed and disowned by it.
Without warning, it came to Ned one night, with a full tide of feeling. He wanted to go to the home of his childhood. He wanted to touch American soil again. He was sick and old and tired. He yearned once more for the land of his youth and early manhood. He wanted to see the sun rising over the plains, the cattle grazing on the hillsides, the maples growing in the grove beyond the farmhouses, the fields, the roads, the sky, the fertile valley, the smoke from the factories, the red-brick stores. He wanted to see his countrymen; once again to be in the land he loved. In his final words, he spoke with joy and optimism.
...at the end of twenty-five years in a leper colony, this leper knows that he is, first of all, a man. For that man life has been worthwhile....In the flesh I am still in prison. But the essential “I” has escaped. I am free. My spirit is out in the fields, in the woods, running through the towns. I am living my youth, the youth that followed the flag to the Orient nearly forty years ago. All the years of suffering, of horror, of hope and despair, fade into oblivion. Tomorrow this train, and I in it, will pass through the very town where I was born!{49}
In his dying hours, Ned passed through his town. Briefly, he knew and held all the savoring visions of his early life in America. He had attained a growing individuality through a life of disease, through years of isolation and loneliness. He had grown a life which he himself came to regard and value as worthwhile.
EMILY DICKINSON
Emily Dickinson lived alone, in almost complete isolation, for a quarter of a century, the last years of her life. Privately, she loved a man for almost twenty years whom she had seen face to face no more than three or four times and who was unaware of the depth and intensity of her devotion. Much of her poetry was inspired by this intimate, monastic attachment. Its force continued to give direction to her productive capabilities for the rest of her life.
She was a rare, unusual, gifted person who could not find a place for herself in society, and whose only salvation was a lonely, solitary existence. She often stood out as the lone dissenter in her youth when she made efforts to meet others on an honest basis. She stated her convictions even when they removed her from the appropriate and acceptable modes of behavior and from the proper groups.
While attending Mount Holyoke Female Seminary she searched to find the existence of God but she emerged with less than absolute devotion. Her non-Christian ways created much consternation among her family, teachers, and classmates. She could not readily accept the standards of Christian living imposed by the college, nor the precepts and prayers for redemption. She lived a life of hardship as a non-believer in an institution founded and dedicated to Puritan rigor and religious worship. She was one of the few who did not rise when Miss Lyon, the Principal, wished to see the faces of all who had been saved. Rollo Brown wrote of her individuality, as follows.
The most heroic display of courage in New England was not at Concord Bridge or Bunker Hill, but in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Principal Mary Lyon had just made her announcement to the young ladies assembled in chapel that Christmas was to be celebrated as a fast. After she had awed—or bullied—the hesitant into acceptance, she asked—that is, dared—any dissenter to rise. And Emily Dickinson stood up.
Merely to be the solitary dissenter required courage enough. Unsympathetic eyes on every side, supported by stout authority, have driven many a college girl to surrender convictions that she had believed were laws of nature—and possibly were. Unsympathetic eyes on every side, without the official support, have caused many another to turn away from college broken-hearted. Emily Dickinson did not choose to surrender. Nor did she decide to go home—except for a rebellious celebration of Christmas. Instead, in a little world where it was proper to think as the majority thought, and where the majority had much of its thinking done by somebody else, she dared to express the sense of fitness cherished by the minority.{50}
Emily Dickinson remained spiritually intransigent to the end of her seminary experience. Even when she felt grave danger that one of her very few ties would be severed if she did not declare a Christian faith, she could not revise her ways, writing:
Sue—you can go or stay—there is but one alternative—we differ often lately, and this must be the last.
You need not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved—sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer than death—thus my heart bleeds so frequently that I shan’t mind the hemorrhage, and I only add an agony to several previous ones, and at the end of day remark—a bubble burst!
Such incidents would grieve me when I was but a child, and perhaps I could have wept when little feet hard by mine, stood still in the coffin, but eyes grow dry sometimes, and hearts get crisp and cinder, and has as lief burn. Sue—I have lived by this. It is the lingering emblem of the Heaven I once dreamed, and though if this is taken, I shall remain alone, and though in that last day, the Jesus Christ you love, remark he does not know me—there is a darker spirit will not disown it’s child.
Few have been given me—and if I love them so, that for idolatry, they are removed from me—I simply murmur gone, and the billow dies away into the boundless blue, and no one knows but me, that one went down today. We have walked very pleasantly—perhaps this is the point at which our paths diverge—then pass on singing Sue, and up the distant hill I journey on.{51}
Emily Dickinson did not give up the world but neither could she find I herself in the world, so she retired from it. Only by violating a purity of self, only by denying her inspirations, and values and purposes, only by distorting her private perceptions and experiences could she achieve an acceptable place and be approved by others. Only by compromising, by distorting, by abstracting from her total experience what could be confirmed, by using a common language, by employing recognizable standards and forms could she have lived in society. She had to resist being warped into something resentful and ugly by a practical society, by the values of a middle-class education and culture, and by the evangelical demands of her community. She resisted by choosing a life of seclusion as the only way of life by which she could consolidate her resources and express her talents in unique, poetic forms. The loneliness and simplicity of her life enabled her to live in accordance with her private experiences and convictions and to realize her talents. Her indifference to professional or artistic goals and to social recognition, she expresses in the following poem.
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears-
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity.{52}
Through a reclusive life she maintained her health and her sanity. She enjoyed a gentle peacefulness and serenity. Through loneliness, she preserved her integrity, her individuality. In this, she remained private, immovable, proud. She achieved a victory, living creatively in isolation, never being forced to bitterness, retaliation, hatred, but always maintaining a pure identity of love, gentleness, and understanding combined with wisdom, determination, and a powerful authenticity.
When the man she idolized moved to a distant state and her lonely heart was breaking, when his removal seemed a permanent living entombment, she portrayed the depth of loneliness and separation, the catastrophic yet beautiful experience, exclaiming:
I know that he exists, somewhere in silence
I envy seas whereon he rides
I tend flowers for thee, bright absentee
At least to pray is left, is left
Is bliss then such abyss
After great pain a formal feeling comes
It will be summer eventually
‘Twas the old road through pain{53}
Her poetry was her way of maintaining an inner life and growing in isolation and loneliness. In these poetic forms Emily Dickinson lives forever, bringing gladness and joy, depth of feeling and understanding, to thousands of human hearts. Her poems were conceived in lonely hours. They depict the incongruity of man and the universe, the loneliness man feels in separating himself from the universe, the tragedy of man’s self-estrangement and alienation from nature. Her poems empowered her to endure life and attain a fortitude and intuitive vision into the unknowable, into nature, beauty, the ordinary experiences of life, and into death and immortality.
The sense of cosmic loneliness in which nature participates in the loneliness felt by man is expressed with a deep perceptiveness in the following poem.
Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance is seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Calls forth his spectral canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now{54}
In the winter of 1871 she wrote, “The terror of the winter has made a little creature of me, who thought myself so bold.” In 1874, her father, for whom she held a peculiar but deep devotion, was seriously ill. He suffered from a disquieting inner loneliness much of his life. The sight of his lonesome face was more terrible to Emily Dickinson than any personal or social strife. She wrote, “I think his physical life don’t want to live any longer. You know he never played, and the straightest engine has its leaning hour.”{55} Edward Dickinson led a lonely life and he died a lonely death.
Her “death” poems bring the person immediately in touch, so close to the experience of death, so startlingly real, that one can feel its imminence and nature, as in the following poems.
Yet able to contain
A Rudiment of Paradise
In it’s diminished Plane.
A Grave-is a restricted Breadth-
Yet ampler than the Sun-
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on it’s small Repose
Bestows a single Friend
Circumference without Relief-
Or Estimate-or End-
*****
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space-began to toll,
As All the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here-
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down-
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then-{56}
Richard Chase describes Miss Dickinson’s victory, as follows.
Her antagonist was nothing less than society itself, and the public opinion through which the values of society were forced upon the individual. She was entirely content to be what the world called a “nobody” so long as her position as “nobody” could be used as a vantage point....And in her way she defeated the world, finally overwhelming its most stubbornly held redoubts. Her strategy was elaborate and extreme; it involved her own death. Emily Dickinson’s seclusion—sad as it was and unpropitious for our culture—was yet one of the notable acts of our history.{57}
In one way or another, most of Emily Dickinson’s poems bear irrevocably the depth of her isolation and loneliness. But it was a way of life she chose because she felt she must. She gave to her seclusion a range of significance beyond herself. She gave it a liveliness and beauty, an experiential quality that enabled her to commune with many frightened lonely souls, unaware of their own separation from life.