Solitude / With the Life of the Author. In Two Parts

by Johann Georg Zimmermann

Pleasures of this description may, indeed be enjoyed, without visiting the romantic solitudes of either Swisserland or Italy. There is no person who may not, while he is quietly traversing the hills and dales, learn to feel how much the aspect of nature may, by the assistance of the imagination, affect the heart. A fine view, the freshness of the air, an unclouded sky, and the joys of the chase, give sensations of health, and make every step seem too short. The privation of all ideas of dependance, accompanied by domestic comfort, useful employments, and innocent recreations, produce a strength of thought, and fertility of imagination, which present to the mind the most agreeable images, and touch the heart with the most delightful sensations. It is certainly true, that a person possessed of a fine imagination may be much happier in prison, than he could possibly be without imagination amidst the most magnificent scenery. But even to a mind deprived of this happy faculty, the lowest enjoyments of rural life, even the common scenery of harvest time, is capable of performing miracles on his heart. Alas! who has not experienced, in the hours of langor and disgust, the powerful effects which a contemplation of the pleasures that surround the poorest peasant’s cot is capable of affording! How fondly the heart participates in all his homely joys! With what freedom, cordiality, and kindness, we take him by the hand, and listen to his innocent and artless tales!—How suddenly do we feel an interest in all his little concerns; an interest which, while it unveils, refines and meliorates the latent inclinations of our hearts!

The tranquillity of retired life, and the view of rural scenes, frequently produce a quietude of disposition, which, while it renders the noisy pleasures of the world insipid, enables the heart to seek the charms of solitude with increased delight.

The happy indolence peculiar to Italians, who, under the pleasures of a clear, unclouded sky, are always poor but never miserable, greatly augments the feelings of the heart: the mildness of the climate, the fertility of their soil, their peaceful religion, and their contented nature, compensate for every thing. Dr. Moore, an English traveller, whose works afford me great delight, says, that “the Italians are the greatest loungers in the world; and while walking in the fields, or stretched in the shade, seem to enjoy the serenity and genial warmth of their climate with a degree of luxurious indulgence peculiar to themselves. Without ever running into the daring excesses of the English, or displaying the frisky vivacity of the French, or the stubborn phlegm of the Germans, the Italian populace discover a species of sedate sensibility to every source of enjoyment, from which, perhaps, they derive a greater degree of happiness than any of the others.”

Relieved from every afflicting and tormenting object, it is, perhaps, impossible for the mind not to resign itself to agreeable chimeras and romantic sentiments: but this situation notwithstanding these disadvantages, has its fair side. Romantic speculations may lead the mind into certain extravagancies and errors from whence base and contemptible passions may be engendered; may habituate it to a light and frivolous style of thinking; and, by preventing it from directing its faculties to rational ends, may obscure the prospect of true happiness; for the soul cannot easily quit the illusion on which it dwells with such fond delight; the ordinary duties of life, with its more noble and substantial pleasures, are perhaps thereby obstructed: but it is very certain that romantic sentiments do not always render the mind that possesses them unhappy. Who, alas! is so completely happy in reality as he frequently has been in imagination!

Rousseau, who, in the early part of his life, was extremely fond of romances, feeling his mind hurried away by the love of those imaginary objects with which that species of composition abounds, and perceiving the facility with which they may be enjoyed, withdrew his attention from every thing about him, and by this circumstance laid the foundation of that taste for solitude which he preserved to an advanced period of his life; a taste in appearance dictated by depression and disgust, and attributed by him to the irresistible impulse of an affectionate, fond, and tender heart, which, not being able to find in the regions of philosophy and truth sentiments sufficiently warm and animated, was constrained to seek its enjoyments in the sphere of fiction.

But the imagination, may, in retirement, indulge its wanderings to a certain degree without the risk of injuring either the sentiments of the mind or the sensations of the heart. Oh! if the friends of my youth in Swisserland knew how frequently, during the silence of the night, I pass with them those hours which are allotted to sleep; if they were apprized that neither time nor absence can efface the remembrance of their former kindness from my mind, and that this pleasing recollection tends to dissipate my grief, and to cast the veil of oblivion over my woes; they would, perhaps, also rejoice to find that I still live among them in imagination, though I may be dead to them in reality.

The solitary man, whose heart is warmed with refined and noble sentiments, cannot be unhappy.—While the stupid and vulgar bewail his fate, and conceive him to be the victim of corroding care and loathed melancholy, he frequently tastes the most delightful pleasure. The French entertained a notion that Rousseau was a man of a gloomy and dejected disposition; but he was certainly not so for many years of his life, particularly when he wrote to M. de Malesherbes, the chancellor’s son, in the following terms: “I cannot express to you, Sir, how sensibly I am affected by perceiving that you think me the most unhappy of mankind; for as the public will, no doubt, entertain the same sentiment of me as you do, it is to me a source of real affliction!—Oh! if my sentiments were really known, every individual would endeavor to follow my example. Peace would then reign throughout the world; men would no longer seek to destroy each other; and wickedness, by removing the great incentives to it, no longer exist. But it may be asked, how I could find employment in solitude?—I answer, in my own mind; in the whole universe; in every thing that dies, in every thing that can exist; in all that the eye finds beautiful in the real, or the imagination in the intellectual world. I assembled about me every thing that is flattering to the heart, and regulated my pleasures by the moderation of my desires. No! The most voluptuous have never experienced such refined delights; and I have always enjoyed my chimeras much more than if they had been realized.”

This is certainly the language of enthusiasm; but, ye stupid vulgar! who would not prefer the warm fancy of this amiable philosopher to your cold and creeping understandings?—Who would not willingly renounce your vague conversation, your deceitful felicities, your boasted urbanity, your noisy assemblies, puerile pastimes, and inveterate prejudices, for a quiet and contented life in the bosom of a happy family?—Who would not rather seek in the silence of the woods, or upon the daisied borders of a peaceful lake, those pure and simple pleasures of nature, so delicious in recollection, and productive of joys so pure, so affecting, so different from your own?

Eclogues, which are representatives of rural happiness in its highest perfection, are also fictions; but they are fictions of the most pleasing and agreeable kind. True felicity must be sought in retirement, where the soul, disengaged from the torments of the world, no longer feels those artificial desires which render it unhappy both in prospect and fruition. Content with little, satisfied with all, surrounded by love and innocence, we perceive in retirement, the golden age, as described by the poets, revived; while in the world every one regrets its loss. The regret however, is unjust; for those enjoyments were not peculiar to that happy period; and each individual may, whenever he pleases, form his own Arcadia. The beauties of a crystal spring, a silent grove, a daisied meadow, chasten the feelings of the heart, and afford at all times, to those who have a taste for nature, a permanent and pure delight.