Grief Not Cured

Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus, ll. 317-8:

        Hee who acquainteth others with his moane,
        Addes to his friend's grief, but not cures his owne.

Nought But Death

Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus (written around 1630, when Cowley was only twelve years old), ll. 445-476:

        I trust (deare soule) my absence cannot move
        You to forget, or doubt my ardent love;
        For were there any meanes to see you, I
        Would runne through Death and all the miserie
        Fate could inflict, that so the world might say,
        In Life and Death I lov’d CONSTANTIA.                    450
        Then let not (dearest sweet) our absence sever
        Our loves, let them ioyn’d closely still together,
        Give warmth to one another, till there rise
        From all our labours, and our industries
        The long-expected fruits; have patience (Sweet)
        There's no man whom the Summer pleasures greet
        Before he tast the Winter; none can say,
        Ere Night was gone, he saw the rising Day.
            So when wee once have wasted Sorrowe’s night,
            The sunne of Comfort then, shall give us light.       460
                                                                                PHILETUS.

        Your absence (Sir) though it be long, yet I
        Neither forget, nor doubt your Constancie.
        Nor, need you feare, that I should yeeld vnto
        Another, what to your true Love is due.                       470
        My heart is yours, it is not in my claime,
        Nor have I power to give it away againe.
        There's nought but Death can part our soules, no time
        Or angry Friends, shall make my Love decline:
            But for the harvest of our hopes I’le stay,
            Vnlesse Death cut it, ere’t be ripe, away.
                                                                            CONSTANTIA.

The Process Of Projection

Carl G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, tr. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd edt., 1969 = Bollingen Series XX., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8), IV., General Aspects of Dream Psychology, On the Nature of Dreams, 264-266:

Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naïvely projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. Among neurotics there are even cases where fantasy projections provide the sole means of human relationship. A person whom I perceive mainly through my projections is an imago or, alternatively, a carrier of imagos or symbols. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. But if we are not aware that a property of the object is a projection, we cannot do anything else but be naïvely convinced that it really does belong to the object. All human relationships swarm with these projections; anyone who cannot see this in his personal life need only have his attention drawn to the psychology of the press in wartime. Cum grano salis, we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected. . . . So long as the libido can use these projections as agreeable and convenient bridges to the world, they will alleviate life in a positive way. But as soon as the libido wants to strike out on another path, and for this purpose begins running back along the previous bridges of projection, they will work as the greatest hindrances it is possible to imagine, for they effectively prevent any real detachment from the former object. We then witness the characteristic phenomenon of a person trying to devalue the former object as much as possible in order to detach his libido from it. But as the previous identity is due to the projection of subjective contents, complete and final detachment can only take place when the imago that mirrored itself in the object is restored, together with its meaning, to the subject. This restoration is achieved through conscious recognition of the projected content, that is, by acknowledging the “symbolic value” of the object.

. . . We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge.

Being Transported

Roger Scruton, Why Beauty Matters, 2009:

Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful, and satisfy our need for harmony; in a strange way, they make us feel at home; they remind us that we have more than practical needs; we are not just governed by animal appetites, like eating and sleeping; we have spiritual and moral needs, too, and if those needs go unsatisfied, so do we. We all know what it is like, even in the everyday world, suddenly to be transported by the things we see, from the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. A flash of sunlight, a remembered melody, the face of someone loved: these dawn on us in the most distracted moments, and suddenly life is worthwhile. These are timeless moments, in which we feel the presence of another higher world.

Silence, Solitude, Grief, Love, & Thought

Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime, from August 28, 1875 (tr. Mrs. Humphrey Ward):

I know that the world, which is only eager to silence you when you do speak, is angry with your silence as soon as its own action has killed in you the wish to speak. . . . Premature despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constant portion. Incapable of taking any interest in my talents for my own sake, I let everything slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by them had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found peace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better satisfied than my heart.

Does not all this make up a melancholy lot, a barren failure of a life? What use have I made of my gifts, of my special circumstances, of my half-century of existence? What have I paid back to my country? Are all the documents I have produced, taken together, my correspondence, these thousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes of different kinds, anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and will it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! A great many comings and goings, a great many scrawls—for nothing. When all is added up—nothing! And worst of all, it has not been a life used up in the service of some adored object, or sacrificed to any future hope. Its sufferings will have been vain, its renunciations useless, its sacrifices gratuitous, its dreariness without reward. . . . No, I am wrong; it will have had its secret treasure, its sweetness, its reward. It will have inspired a few affections of great price; it will have given joy to a few souls; its hidden existence will have had some value. Besides, if in itself it has been nothing, it has understood much. If it has not been in harmony with the great order, still it has loved it. If it has missed happiness and duty, it has at least felt its own nothingness, and implored its pardon.

. . . What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice in favor of any form, nationality, or individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest, or opinions of the moment. What does it all matter? Omnis determinatio est negatio. Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thought delivers us from personality. . . . To be a man is a poor thing, to be a man is well; to be the man—man in essence and in principle—that alone is to be desired.

That Nothing Is Forgotten; On Our Thoughts; On One's Journal; & On Virtues & Vices

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, entires taken from 1841, Feb. 8:

All we have experienced is so much gone within us, and there lies. It is the company we keep. One day, in health or sickness, it will come out and be remembered. Neither body nor soul forgets anything. The twig always remembers the wind that shook it, and the stone the cuff it received. Ask the old tree and the sand.

As time is measured by the lapse of ideas, we may grow of our own force, as the mussel adds new circles to its shell. My thoughts secrete the lime. We may grow old with the vigor of youth. Are we not always in youth so long as we face heaven. We may always live in the morning of our days. To him who seeks early, the sun never gets over the edge of the hill, but his rays fall slanting forever. His wise sayings are like the chopping of wood and crowing of cocks in the dawn.

My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn. The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the leaves as far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and mud, then I write with a reed.

. . . Every time we teach our virtue a new nobleness, we teach our vice a new cunning. When we sharpen the blade it will stab better as well as whittle. The scythe that cuts will cut our legs. We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. And when we cut a clear descending blow, our vice on tother edge rips up the work. Where is the skillful swordsman that can draw his blade straight back out of the wound?

. . . Go towards the sun and your shadow will fall behind you.

Goethe On Johann von Zimmermann

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Autobiography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life, tr. John Oxenford, bks. I-XX (London: George Bell and Sons, 1897), 15th bk., 572-576:

Zimmermann was also for a time our guest. He was tall and powerfully built; of a vehement nature open to every impulse; yet he had his outward bearing and manners perfectly under control, so that in society he appeared as a skilful physician and polished man of the world. It was only in his writings and amongst his most confidential friends, that he gave free course to his untamed inward character. His conversation was varied and highly instructive, and for one who could pardon his keen sensitiveness to whatever grated on his own personal feelings and merits, no more desirable companion could be found. For myself, as what is called vanity never disturbed me, and I in return often presumed to be vain also—that is, did not hesitate to enlarge upon whatever in myself pleased me, I got on with him capitally. We mutually tolerated and scolded each other, and, as he showed himself thoroughly open and communicative, I learned from him a great deal in a short time.

 To judge such a man with the indulgence of gratitude, nay on principle, I cannot say that he was vain. We Germans misuse the word "vain" (citel), but too often. In a strict sense, it carries with it the idea of emptiness, and we properly designate by it only the man who cannot conceal his joy at his Nothing, his contentment with a hollow phantom. With Zimmermann it was exactly the reverse; he had great deserts, and no inward satisfaction. The man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, but must wait and hope for their recognition and appreciation by others, will generally find himself but badly off, because it is but too well known a fact that men are very niggard of their applause; that they rather love to mingle alloy with praise, and where it can in any degree be done, to turn it into blame. Whoever comes before the public without being prepared for this, will meet with nothing but vexation; since, even if he does not overestimate his own production, it still has for him an unlimited value, while the reception it meets with in the world, is in every case qualified. Besides, a certain susceptibility is necessary for praise and applause, as for every other pleasure. Let this be applied to Zimmermann, and it will be acknowledged in his case too; that no one can obtain what he does not bring with him.

If this apology cannot be allowed, still less shall we be able to justify another fault of this remarkable man, because it disturbed and even destroyed the happiness of others. I mean his conduct towards his children. A daughter, who travelled with him, stayed with us while he visited the neighbouring scenes. She might be about sixteen years old, slender and well formed, but without attractiveness; her regular features would have been agreeable, if there had appeared in them a trace of animation, but she was always as quiet as a statue; she spoke seldom, and in the presence of her father never. But she had scarcely spent a few days alone with my mother, receiving the cheerful and affectionate attentions of this sympathizing woman, than she threw herself at her feet with an opened heart, and with a thousand tears, begged to be allowed to remain with her. With the most passionate language she declared that she would remain in the house as a servant, as a slave all her life, rather than go back with her father, of whose severity and tyranny no one could form an idea. Her brother had gone mad under his treatment; she had hitherto borne it though with difficulty, because she had believed that it was the same, or not much better, in every family, but now that she had experienced such a loving, mild and considerate treatment, her situation at home had become to her a perfect hell. My mother was greatly moved as she related to me this passionate effusion, and indeed, she went so far in her sympathy, as to give me pretty clearly to understand, that she would be content to keep the girl in the house, if I would make up my mind to marry her. If she were an orphan, I replied, I might think and talk it over; but God keep me from a father-in-law who is such a father! My mother took great pains with the poor girl, but this made her only the more unhappy. At last an expedient was found, by putting her to a boarding-school. Her life, I should observe in passing, was not a very long one.

I should hardly mention this culpable peculiarity of a man of such great deserts, if it had not already become a matter of public notoriety, and especially had not the unfortunate hypochondria, with which, in his last hours, he tortured himself and others, been commonly talked of. For that severity towards his children was nothing less than hypochondria, a partial insanity, a continuous moral murder, which, after making his children its victims, was at last directed against himself. We must also remember that though apparently in such good health, he was a great sufferer even in his best years;—that an incurable disease troubled the skilful physician who had relieved, and still gave ease to so many of the afflicted. Yes, this distinguished man, with all his outward reputation, fame, honour, rank, and wealth, led the saddest life, and whoever will take the pains to learn more about it from existing publications, will not condemn but pity him.

If it is now expected that I shall give a more precise account of the effect which this distinguished man had upon me, I must once more recall the general features of that period. The epoch in which we were living might be called an epoch of high requisitions, for every one demanded of himself and of others what no mortal had hitherto accomplished. On chosen spirits who could think and feel, a light had arisen, which enabled them to see that an immediate, original understanding of nature, and a course of action based upon it, was both the best thing a man could desire, and also not difficult to attain. Experience thus once more became the universal watchword, and every one opened his eyes as wide as he could. Physicians, especially, had a most pressing call to labour to this end, and the best opportunity for finding it. Upon them a star shone out of antiquity, which could serve as an example of all that was to be desired. The writings which had come down to us under the name of Hippocrates, furnished a model of the way in which a man should both observe the world and relate what he had seen, without mixing up himself with it. But no one considered that we cannot see like the Greeks, and that we shall never become such poets, sculptors, and physicians as they were. Even granted that we could learn from them, still the results of experience already gone through, were almost beyond number, and besides were not always of the clearest kind; moreover had too often been made to accord with preconceived opinions. All these were to be mastered, discriminated, and sifted. This also, was an immense demand. Then again it was required that each observer, in his personal sphere and labours, should acquaint himself with the true, healthy nature, as if she were now for the first time noticed, and attended, and thus only what was genuine and real was to be learned. But as, in general, learning can never exist without the accompaniment of a universal smattering and a universal pedantry, nor the practice of any profession without empiricism and charlatanry, so there sprung up a violent conflict, the purpose of which was to guard use from abuse, and place the kernel high above the shell in men's estimation. In the execution of this design, it was perceived that the shortest way of getting out of the affair, was to call in the aid of genius, whose magic gifts could settle the strife, and accomplish what was required. Meanwhile, however, the understanding meddled with the matter; all it alleged must be reduced to clear notions, and exhibited in a logical form, that every prejudice might be put aside, and all superstition destroyed. And since the achievements of some extraordinary men, such as Boerhaave and Haller, were actually incredible, people thought themselves justified in demanding even still more from their pupils and successors. It was maintained that the path was opened, forgetting that in earthly things a path can very rarely be spoken of; for, as the water that is dislodged by a ship, instantly flows in again behind it, so by the law of its nature, when eminent spirits have once driven error aside, and made a place for themselves, it very quickly closes upon them again.

But of this the ardent Zimmermann could form no idea whatever; he would not admit that absurdity did in fact fill up the world. Impatient, even to madness, he rushed to attack everything that he saw and believed to be wrong. It was all the same to him whether he was fighting with a nurse or with Paracelsus, with a quack, or a chemist. His blows fell alike heavily in either case, and when he had worked himself out of breath, he was greatly astonished to see the heads of this hydra, which he thought he had trodden under foot, springing up all fresh again, and showing him their teeth from innumerable jaws.

Every one who reads his writings, especially his clever work «On Experience,» will perceive more distinctly than I can express them, the subjects of discussion between this excellent man and myself. His influence over me, was the more powerful, as he was twenty years my senior. Having a high reputation as a physician, he was chiefly employed among the upper classes, and the corruption of the times, caused by effeminacy and excess, was a constant theme of conversation with him. Thus his medical discourses, like those of the philosophers and my poetical friends, drove me again back to nature. In his vehement passion for improvement I could not fully participate; on the contrary, after we separated, I instantly drew back into my own proper calling, and endeavoured to employ the gifts nature had bestowed upon me, with moderate exertion, and by good-natured opposition to what I disapproved of, to gain a standing for myself, in perfect indifference how far my influence might reach or whither it might lead me.

On Solitude; Isolating Oneself From Mankind; True Content; Egoism; Truly Great And Healthy Men; Morbidness & Human Weakness; Misanthropy; & Society

William Rounseville Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life (Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1867), 122-24, 126: (emphasis mine):

The man who separates himself from mankind to nourish dislike or contempt for them, has in him a morbid element which must make woe. True content, a life of divine delight, cannot be attained through a sense of superiority secured by thrusting others down; but only through one secured by lifting ourselves up, by communing with the great principles of morality, contemplating the conditions of universal good, laying hold of the will of God. Whoso would climb over a staircase of subjected men into a lonely happiness, will find it misery when he arrives. To be really happy one must love and wish to elevate men, not despise and wish to rule them. There is nothing in which the blindness and deceit of self-love is more deeply revealed than in the supposition with which misanthropic recluses frequently flatter themselves, of their complete detachment from other men, their lofty freedom. Spatial separation is not spiritual independence. Of all men the man-hater is the one who is fastened to his fellow-men by the closest and the most degrading bond. Misanthropy, as a dominant characteristic, if thoroughly tracked and analyzed, will be found almost always to be the revenge we take on mankind for fancied wrongs it has inflicted on us, especially for its failure to appreciate us and admire us according to our fancied deserts. The powerful and savagely alienated Arthur Schopenhauer, who said that, in order to despise men as they deserved, it was necessary not to hate them, was embittered, almost infuriated, by disappointment in not obtaining the notice he thought he merited. He came daily from his sullen retreat to dine at a great public table where he could display his extraordinary conversational powers. He eagerly gathered every scrap of praise that fell from the press, and fed on it with desperate hunger. He sat in his hotel at Frankfort, in this age of newspapers and telegraphs, a sublimer Diogenes, the whole earth his tub. An apathetic carelessness for men shows that we really despise them, but an angry and restless resentment towards them betrays how great a place they occupy in our hearts. Diogenes and Alcibiades were equally dependent on public attention; the one to feel the enjoyment of his pride and scorn intensified by the reaction of hate and admiration he called forth; the other to feel the similar fruition of his vanity and sympathy. . . . The greatest egotists are the most fond both of retirement and publicity. There they lave their wounds with the anodyne of self-love; here they display their claims to admiration. The truly great and healthy man is not dependent on either, but draws blessings out of both,—resolve, inspiration, consecration, sanity. In both he pleases himself by improving every possibility of indulging in sentiments of respect and affection towards his race.

The great danger of the courters of solitude is the vice of pampering a conviction and feeling of their own worth by dwelling on the ignobleness of other men. They are tempted to make the meanness and wretchedness of the world foils to set off their own exceptional magnanimity. They need especially to guard themselves against this fallacy by laying bare to their own eyes the occult operations of pride and vanity. An efficacious antidote for their disease is a clear perception of the humbling truth of the case, of the ignoble cause of the disease. For it is unquestionably true that the man who despises the world, and loathes mankind, is usually one who cannot enjoy the boons of the world, or has been disappointed of obtaining from his fellows the love and honor he coveted. He then strives to console himself for the prizes he cannot pluck, by industriously cultivating the idea of their contemptibleness. Rousseau demanded more from men than they could give him. His brain and heart were pitched too high; with the fine intensity of their tones the cold and coarse souls of common men made painful discords. Instead of wisely seeing the truth, and nobly renouncing his excessive exactions, he turned against the world and labored with misanthropic materials to build up his overweening self-love. Of course he was not conscious of this himself. It was a disease, and, fleeing from all antidotes, it fed in solitude; whence he looked abroad and fancied that he saw his contemporaries leagued in a great plot against him.

. . . Thousands have been impelled to solitude by resentment,—as the hermit confessed to Imlac he was,—where one has been led to it by devotion. The true improvement of our lonely hours is not to cherish feelings of superiority to our neighbors, but to make us really superior by a greater advancement in the knowledge of truth, the practice of virtue, communion with the grandeurs of nature, and absorption in the mysteries of God. He who is continually exercising scorn towards the pleasures of society and the prizes of the world, is one who has failed in the experiment of life and been soured by his failure. The truly successful man appreciates these goods at their genuine value,—sees that in their place they have sweetness and worth, but knows that there are other prizes of infinitely higher rank, and is so content with his possession and pursuit of these latter as to have no inclination to complain of the deceitfulness and vileness of the former. To dwell alone is an evil when we use our solitude to cherish an odious idea of our race, and a disgust for the natural attractions of life. It should be improved, not negatively for dislike and alienation, but positively to cultivate a more earnest love for higher mental pursuits, choicer spiritual fruitions, than the average community about us are wonted to. Scorn for man, disgust for the world, is no sign of strength, loftiness, or victory, but rather a sign of weakness, defeat, and misery. “The great error of Napoleon was a continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all community of feeling for or with them.” He deceived himself in fancying his ruling feelings unlike in kind to those of the bulk of men; they were the same in sort, only superior in scale and tenacity, and in the greater stage on which they were displayed.

The Certainty Of Being Alone

Hippolyte Taine, A Tour Through the Pyrenees, tr. J. Safford Fiske (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1875), 149-51:

This valley is solitary and out of the world; it is without culture; no tourists, not even herdsmen are to be found; three or four cows, perhaps, are there, busily cropping the herbage. Other gorges at the sides of the road and in the mountain of Gourzy are still wilder. There the faint trace of an ancient pathway may with difficulty be made out. Can anything be sweeter than the certainty of being alone? In any widely known spot, you are in constant dread of an incursion of tourists; the hallooing of guides, the loud-voiced admiration, the bustle, whether of fastening horses, or of unpacking provisions, or of airing opinions, all disturb the budding sensation; civilization recovers its hold upon you. But here, what security and what silence! nothing that recalls man; the landscape is just what it has been these six thousand years: the grass grows useless and free as on the first day; no birds among the branches; only now and then may be heard the far-off cry of a soaring hawk. Here and there the face of a huge, projecting rock patches with a dark shade the uniform plane of the trees: it is a virgin wilderness in its severe beauty. The soul fancies that it recognizes unknown friends of long ago; the forms and colors are in secret harmony with it; when it finds these pure, and that it enjoys them unmixed with outside thought, it feels that it is entering into its inmost and calmest depth—a sensation so simple, after the tumult of our ordinary thoughts, is like the gentle murmur of an Æolian harp after the hubbub of a ball.

Life's Endless Toil

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done (composed in 1844, and pub. in 1845 as an intro. to a compiled volume of lyrics Longfellow himself did; it was prefixed to a collection he titled The Waif):

                The day is done, and the darkness
                      Falls from the wings of Night,
                As a feather is wafted downward
                      From an eagle in his flight.

                I see the lights of the village
                      Gleam through the rain and the mist,
                And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
                      That my soul cannot resist:

                A feeling of sadness and longing,
                      That is not akin to pain,
                And resembles sorrow only
                      As the mist resembles the rain.

                Come, read to me some poem,
                      Some simple and heartfelt lay,
                That shall soothe this restless feeling,
                      And banish the thoughts of day.

                Not from the grand old masters,
                      Not from the bards sublime,
                Whose distant footsteps echo
                      Through the corridors of Time.

                For, like strains of martial music,
                      Their mighty thoughts suggest
                Life's endless toil and endeavour;
                      And to-night I long for rest.

                Read from some humbler poet,
                      Whose songs gushed from his heart,
                As showers from the clouds of summer,
                      Or tears from the eyelids start;

                Who, through long days of labour,
                      And nights devoid of ease,
                Still heard in his soul the music
                      Of wonderful melodies.

                Such songs have power to quiet
                      The restless pulse of care,
                And come like the benediction
                      That follows after prayer.

                Then read from the treasured volume
                      The poem of thy choice,
                And lend to the rhyme of the poet
                      The beauty of thy voice.

                And the night shall be filled with music,
                      And the cares, that infest the day,
                Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
                      And as silently steal away.