Abstract
Most studies of solitude have focused on the modern individualized sense of solitude, located or originating in urbanized Western cultures where solitude is seen as a companion to urban modernity. In this perspective the larger historical and cultural context goes almost unnoticed together with the fact that the preoccupation with solitude, in various forms and functions, has been around for a longer time span than Modernity and with a broader cross-cultural perspective. However, the basic cultural function of the various understandings of solitude is the same across cultures: a negotiation of the boundaries of the human life world, but in forms that are historically contextualized and differentiated. With texts from William Shakespeare to J. M. Coetzee and with references to older mythology and its modern recycling this paper tries to capture the broader historical development of solitude in European culture as an imagined position on the boundary of the human life world.
Highlights
Søren Kierkegaard was once asked by the Danish king if he needed solitude to write
In Discours de la méthode (1637) he first thought that complete solitude inside his lodging would serve his contemplation best, “tout le jour enfermé seul dans un poêle” (Descartes, 1991)
The city would be less a space to be explored than a social paradox to be experienced: crowded modern urban life, paradoxically and inevitably, generates solitude as in a desert
Summary
Most studies of solitude have focused on the modern individualized sense of solitude, located or originating in urbanized Western cultures where solitude is seen as a companion to urban modernity. In this perspective the larger historical and cultural context goes almost unnoticed together with the fact that the preoccupation with solitude, in various forms and functions, has been around for a longer time span than Modernity and with a broader cross-cultural perspective. M. Coetzee and with references to older mythology and its modern recycling this paper tries to capture the broader historical development of solitude in European culture as an imagined position on the boundary of the human life world
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