Idealism and Liberal Education

Essayists and Solitude

Essayists and Solitude Much of our lives will be spent in solitary activities-thinking, reading, writing, studying, or waiting. Nevertheless, as effective as many colleges may be at nurturing admirable qualities, they are not as good as they ought to be at preparing individuals to confront the quiet and the solitude -the resounding silence-that the human condition inevitably presents and that many realms ofhuman satisfaction require. It is worth remembering that not long ago, one day ofevery week was sealed in relative silence and insulated against the clanging urgency of work. Then, the Sabbath was dedicated to prayer, worship, reading, and thinking. Imagine how different one's life would be today ifeach Saturday or Sunday were reserved solely for contemplative endeavors! It is appropriate , therefore, that we consider the importance ofsilence and ofsolitude in providing a respite from the chatter of the daily world, in nurturing the private self, and in creating a healthy and productive thoughtfulness. Everywhere we look, the world urges us to avoid the pleasures of silence-to turn on the radio or the television, to make a phone call, to see a movie, to leap to where the action is-above all, to be active. Many people, I fear, regard contemplative endeavors, like reading and writing, as too low-tech, too labor-intensive, too solitary, too quiet to be personally satisfying. We often act as if silence and solitude are conditions to be avoided at all costs-out of a fear, perhaps, that left alone with our thoughts and feelings, we may discover that we do not have any, or that we do not make very good company for ourselves, or, worst of all, that we utterly lack a private self. Unfortunately, it is those persons who enter a room like a marching band who commandeer our immediate attention. The voices of quieter, more thoughtful people-of thinkers and writers, of philosophers and dreamers-frequently get overwhelmed by the din. Some of those are the quiet voices ofthe printed page, and here I am thinking especially ofessayists . The essayist's craft is a function not only of creativity but also of an exceptional thoughtfulness and a rare ability to observe, describe, and analyze. Essayists lead us to think about things that we might otherwise 167 168 Idealism and Liberal Education not have thought about-ideas remote from our usual considerations, distant from the beaten track of our minds-informing profoundly what we see and do and think. More than many other writers, essayists explore what Socrates called "the examined life"-examined in the double sense of being keenly observed and deeply considered. That is the great appeal and power both of the classic essayists-Montaigne, Bacon, Addison, Steele, Emerson-and of the most engaging essayists of our own time-E. B. White, James Thurber, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, V. S. Pritchett. I should like to consider two essayists-one British, one Americanwhose works reward thoughtful and quiet consideration. They are George Orwell and Edmund Wilson. For many people the name George Orwell is synonymous with his two most famous books, which, although nominally novels, are in their didactic content closely akin to essays. The first, AnimalFarm, is a parable, a brilliant satire on the Russian Revolution, published in 1945, after four publishers (including T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber) had rejected it on the ground that it attacked a wartime ally. In it, Orwell set out his ironic formulation of the governing commandment of totalitarian revolution: "All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal than Others." The second, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), is one of the most important books ofthis century-a chilling cautionary tale ofa totalitarian society in which history, language, and truth itselfare manipulated to serve the police state. In the world of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is no science , for truth is only that false image of reality that the state has fashioned for its own uses. There is no literature, for language has been "cut to the bone" to remove nuance and to narrow the range of thought. There is not even any history, for the records of the past have been altered beyond recovery or recognition in order to serve the ends ofthe state. All that there is, finally, is Orwell's vision of "a boot stamping on a human face-for ever." Orwellian coinages like Big Brother, Doublethink, Newspeak, and Unperson have become cliches, precisely because they define phenomena all too familiar in the...