Value for Tuesday of Week 04 in the season of Dormancy

Separation and Alienation

To be at one with all people and with the physical world is an ideal. One of our three great spiritual pains is that we do not live in that ideal state: we are often separated and alienated.

  • This is true of every creature, and it is more true of man than of any other creature. He is not only alone; he also knows that he is alone. Aware of what he is, he asks the question of his aloneness. He asks why he is alone, and how he can triumph over his being alone. [Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), Chapter 1.]
  • The Lord God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden . . . [The Bible, Genesis 3:23.]

Felix Adler, who founded Ethical Culture as a young man, identified three spiritual, or existential pains: separation, powerlessness and meaninglessness. As social creatures, humans suffer when they feel alienated, or separated from others.

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In a sense, Hugo tells us, two people who are romantically involved face the obstacle of spiritual separation:

Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VI, "The Battle Begun".]

The father too experiences a kind of separation:

Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him something in process of construction, and on the other, something which was crumbling away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of "the father." Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man. [Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VII, "To One Sadness Oppose a Sadness and a Half".]

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.  External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did. [Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave I: "Marley’s Ghost".]

Novels and stories:

Poetry

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play.
Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.
[Carl Sandburg, "A Fence," from "Chicago Poems."]
-
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
My boy, he went to sea, long and long ago,
Curls of brown were slipping underneath his cap,
He looked at me from blue and steely eyes;
Natty, straight and true, he stepped away,
My boy, he went to sea.
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
[Carl Sandburg, "All Day Long," from "Chicago Poems."]
 
Other poems:

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Felix Adler, founder of Ethical Culture, identified three primary spiritual pains. One is separation and alienation - the many ways into which we are separated and alienated from each other, and from our truest selves.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 7 ("Sinfonia Antarctica") (1952) (approx. 39-45’) captures the bitter cold and barrenness of the most hostile and remote region on Earth. “Ralph Vaughan Williams’ wife, Ursula, wrote that ‘The idea of great, white landscapes, ice floes, the whales and penguins, bitter winds and Nature’s bleak serenity as a background to man’s endeavor captured RVW’s imagination.’ At the same time, she recounted her husband’s horror as he discovered the amateurish nature of the expedition. 'He despised heroism that risked lives unnecessarily and such things as allowing five to travel on rations for four filled him with fury.' Barbirolli in 1953, Boult in 1954, Boult in 1969 ***, Previn in 1969, Haitink in 1984, Handley in 1990, Andrew Davis in 1996, Manze in 2019, and Brabbins in 2023, conducted top recorded performances.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (1957) (approx. 33-42’) was by some indications drawn from Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the d’Urbevilles, a tragic story of a young woman who seeks but never finds the romantic ideal. However, “it is more tempting to hear instead it as a pessimistic verdict on humanity by an old man who had recently lived through the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.Boult in 1958, Stokowski in 1958, Rozhdestvensky in 1989, Thomson in 1990, Handley in 1993, Andrew Davis in 1995 ***, Manze in 2018, and Brabbins in 2022 conducted top recorded performances.

Other compositions:

Some black metal groups express modern alienation with a high level of artistry. Tragically, some of them, or their members, carried their alienation into criminality and hatred.

Other albums:

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Film and Stage

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