The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne- I.39- On solitude.- I’ve often heard the saying that, ‘’Wherever you go, you take you with you.’’ I never realized until I closely read this essay that a version of this is attributed to Socrates...at least according to Seneca.
Socrates made the same remark to one who complained; he said: "Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels."
I couldn’’t remember this quote from Plato or Xenophon but it does sound like something that the Socrates of Plato’s Crito would have said...which considering how intertwined that Platonic dialogue is with the notion of citizenship...makes me a bit thoughtful nowadays.
Solitude, for Montaigne, is for a man (and only a man) with the means to afford the leisure time and one who has lived a life of some adventure and who is ready to retire from the world literally into a room of one’s own; that classical idea is here in the same form as it was with Seneca and even, I would argue, Socrates.
However, true solitude seems to be something that’s far from a leisurely activity, there’s always the self to conquer.
I agree that to have a true sense of solitude is not easy. I agree that it is necessary. I’m glad that we no longer think that solitude is simply for someone who is ready to retire.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- Skipped out on Sherlock this week. The Boscombe Valley Mystery is next.
I am reading:
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley- I’m gonna get back to this...I promise!
Bedlam: London and its Mad by Catherine Arnold- In the Stuart period now. The storytelling and the academic rigor is nice but Bedlam veers off a bit too much into the general state of mental illness as it was understood at the time. For example, I liked learning about the association of witches, widows, and spinsters to notions of madness but the section seems to have little or nothing to do with Bedlam, itself...there and in a couple of other places, the history could be tightened up.
The Paris Diary and the New York Diary (1951-1961) by Ned Rorem- I last read this when I was 20 or so years old. I liked it then and I like it now. I finished reading The Paris Diary, the subject of my LGBT Literature diary last Sunday.