Thinking the Poetics of Isolation with 12 Books
What literature says about self seclusion, and how it helps to bare these hard times
Social distancing is certainly the most effective way to control the Coronavirus outbreak. Each country in investing in different forms of it, from complete lockdown to just prohibiting people gatherings. However, even if you are a convicted introverted, forced isolation is hard to endure. Being apart from normal acquaintanceship and looking at ghostly streets is somewhat too sad. We also were well too trained by science fiction and dystopia, so it’s easy to fall into an end-of-the-world interpretation of the crisis we are facing.
It does help, though, to look at the situation by other angles. If you are isolated — which is, someway, also a privilege — or even quarantined, thinking about the poetics of isolation may help you to spend these times with more quality and integrity. By poetics of isolation, I mean the profound meanings or the metaphors that are related to people being kept secluded. Literature is full of those images — each one can bring us different meanings and perspectives.
A religious matter
Isolation, seclusion, solitude — the first images that come to my mind are those of the monks, friars, and nuns. It was in this atmosphere of religious retreat that lived one of the greatest Hispanic baroque poets — the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695). An educated wealthy woman, Sor Juana preferred the adhere to the cloister instead of marrying. As a nun, she could manage her own heritage, lands, and fortune, and also had the freedom to write and publish her work. Don’t presume her poems were just religious-themed: her most famous pieces were torrid love poems and even “feminist” statements. Isolation became Sor Juana’s possibility of freedom.
In European medieval times, religious people were not just isolated, but also kept and copied with them tons of books. Knowledge secluded in monasteries. They were able to preserve a lot of Ancient Greek and Arab knowledge, among others, during the darkest times of Middle Ages. A good contemporary image of them is the silent (and vile) monks of The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (1932–2016).
The idea of isolation as studying and keep knowledge has so much to teach to us, contemporary individuals. We cannot concentrate on a single task for more than a few minutes, mainly because we get distracted (or bored) easily; we scroll social media, sometimes with no purpose at all (watching Tik Tok dances, like, again?!); we watch anything on Netflix just to pass time, one episode after the other, without really getting absorbed by the story or the images. We are getting lesser and lesser capable of reading entire books — maybe you, just like me, have put on your "quarantine resolutions" to read more, with little or no success.
That’s why I feel so attracted by the idea of seclusion as a way to search for knowledge. Isolation just plays a tiny part in Musashi, the historical novel by Eiji Yoshikawa (1892–1962) about the great samurai. However, it’s a crucial part of the formation of the hero, and an interesting example for this little piece of mine.
Miyamoto Musashi, the real man, was not only a great warrior. He was also an intellectual, author of the classic A Book of Five Rings. He incorporates a true balance between mind and body. That might be the consequence of Musashi’s education since he was very young — he was raised by his uncle, Dajinbo, in a temple. This early formation is dramatized in Yoshikawa as a poetic isolation. In the novel, the samurai spends years of his early life in self-seclusion, reading all the great books written by the great sages of that time. Musashi knows that his actions are worthless or even harmful if they are not based on strong moral codes and principles.
The dedication of years of studying by Musashi can be seen as a metaphor. It represents true dedication to improve oneself. By studying or meditating — ideally, a combination of both — we can also aspire to new ways of thinking, finding new solutions, understanding better the world around us and construct a more tolerant society.
Times of enjoyment
Although the strategy of improvement is valuable in times of isolation (we could get out of this crisis as "better humans"), sometimes, it is also about just… living. Our times of isolation don’t need to be all about self-improvement — that would be mean (hello, anxious people!). The poetics of isolation can also be related to doing nothing, or, at least, nothing productive; doing things that are enjoyable just for the sake of it.
That explicitly happens in Decameron, a classic book that is easy to come to mind during our present pandemic. Written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), Decameron tells the story of ten young people — seven women and three men — during the outbreak of the Black Pest. They travel together to an isolated house in the courtyard to avoid the disease. With no social media to be distracted, the young hotties spend calm days by the sun telling each other love stories.
The book is pointed by specialists, like Mikhail Bakhtin, as one of the Renaissance oeuvres that most summon medieval popular culture. It means that, despite the elegance of these characters (the Renaissance perfume), the tales told are usually spicy and dirty (the medieval/popular/grotesque twist). They are mostly sex stories, with adultery, some abuse and a very loose sense of morality. Even if it’s a fourteenth-century book, it still provides contemporary readers a good fun, in most parts.
Outside the stories, in the daily life of these young people, Boccaccio’s universe is indeed idealized. In our contemporary virus outbreak, we simply cannot aspire to be ladies and gentlemen in the grass by sunlight alongside fluffy rabbits while the majority of us are confined in small apartments placed on crowded and polluted cities. But it shows a good counterpoint against a harsh situation outside. It’s like, if you ended lucky enough to get out of this unharmed, maybe it’s time for rejoicing.
Isolation, in Decameron, means joy and satisfaction, added to some love games. The days don’t need to be counted or the hours measured; there are no profound lessons to be learned. I know that sounds too superficial, but I also think this is a good exercise to make during our own times of isolation. It is too much to read about productivity, improvement, targeted objectives, and so on, and we mostly keep our minds worried about the future, post-crisis. It’s exhausting. Many times, between the risk of anxiety and/or depression, just "enjoy" can make the difference to surviving.
Life in isolation
Certain parts of Latin American literature resonates the poetics of isolation. It is frequently the isolation by space, created by geography — rural spaces with nothing but the landscape to see — or human flux — like people running away from poverty, leaving abandoned cities behind them. The author transforms it into melancholic situations, which are also extremely beautiful.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Marquez (1927–2014) tells us the sad and solitary life of the Buendía family through generations. But what really affected me was Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo (1917–1986). In this novel (a masterpiece of Mexican literature), the son of Pedro Paramo returns to his father’s old village — to discover only an abandoned city and its crying ghosts.
There is also a very depressing side of the poetics of isolation of the northern countries, that of profound loneliness; the impossibility, physical or not, to connect with others. Alone, depressing men flourish in literature, and particularly in modern novels, when they are also metaphors to existentialism. I am thinking of the Russian bureaucrat in Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), and the successful author in the novel by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), Death in Venice. The first one is physically isolated, self-deprecating on his own situation and life; but Gustav von Aschenbach, Mann’s "hero", is enjoying vacations in a hotel, in the sunny Venice, yet he feels completely alone. His object of desire — a young boy named Tadzio — is impossible to reach, so Aschenbach spends his last days of life in lonely contemplation.
I think these isolated men are the side of seclusion that we are frightened of facing. Loneliness, abandonment, a sad, ironic way of regarding life: what can be scarier than that? These are the poetics of isolation that we try to avoid at all costs.
But these two characters are men, and gender plays a huge part in thought and behavior in the nineteenth century. Men were considered made for the public sphere, so isolation is a strange situation for them. Women, on the other hand, were historically confined into the domestic spaces.
All female heroines of this time have suffered some degree of isolation: like the fierce Jane Eyre — in the homonymous novel by Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) — in Thornfield Hall, or the four sisters in Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (1932–1888). The damned family of The Wuthering Heights, by the other Brontë sister, Emily (1818–1848), is also the isolation of a group of people — both men and women — in the hands of the villain of the book, the treacherous Heathcliff. It makes total sense that the name of the novel is the name of the place — all characters are trapped there, isolated of what’s beyond.
What I do like about this nineteenth-century women novels, thinking about the poetics of isolation, is that they have the whole universe in one space. Au the contrary to men’s, there is nothing depressing about it. These books remember me a kinder way to pass through isolation, creating a poetic, metaphorical, and useful idea that what matters is inside, not out. They talk about taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. They remember us the huge and marvellous inner universe that exists inside our home, our friends, and our (even chosen) family.
Isolation of the world outside, which is physical but can also mental and spiritual, has this strange power that I am trying to think about. The most precious poetics of isolation, I would argue, is the opportunity to nurture and rethink ourselves away from the noise, hurry, and people’s expectations.
I tried to write on the poetics of isolation in part to help myself to get through the Coronavirus crisis and started a delightful journey among dear books I had to revisit. I hope I helped you too, at least a little. Please feel free to add your own choices of books regarding the poetics of isolation.
Thank you for reading!
Here are all the books referred to in this story:
Poems, protest, and a dream, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
The name of the rose, Umberto Eco.
Musashi, Eiji Yoshikawa
Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Marquez
Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo
Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
