Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In Les Misérables, Valjean’s benevolent bishop dies at the age of 82. He had been blind for several years, and dependent on his sister, who remained by his side. Hugo remarks on this tender relationship.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,--few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake--let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's arms,--God made tangible,--what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume I – Fantine; Book Fifth – The Descent Begins, Chapter IV, “M. Madeleine in Mourning”.]

 By contrast, Javert withdrew from society in the most destructive ways.

Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume I – Fantine; Book Fifth – The Descent Begins, Chapter V, “Vague Flashes on the Horizon”.]

Other novels and stories:

•   Polly Shulman, Enthusiasm (Putnam Juvenile, 2006): “It begins as Ashleigh Rossi, a sophomore at Byzantium High School, prevails upon her best friend and next-door neighbor, Julie Lefkowitz, to share her current obsession with Jane Austen. Ashleigh, a bit of a weirdo, is determined to speak, dress and act as much like an Austen character as possible.  The girls decide to crash a dance at Forefield, an exclusive boys' school, dressed like characters out of an Austen novel.”
•   Manuel de Lope, The Wrong Blood: A Novel (Other Press, 2010).
•   Paul Yoon, Snow Hunters: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, 2013): on “the search for connection by those who are . . . left outside society”
•   Tom Perrotta, Nine Inches: Stories (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), on “family and neighborhood life in the suburbs”
•   Amitava Kumar, Immigrant, Montana: A Novel (Knopf, 2018), is about a young Indian scholar newly in Montana, his sense of isolation, and his desire to connect.
•   Sigrid Nunez, The Friend: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2018): “Everywhere in this novel it is impossible to separate love and companionship from loss.”
•   Dorthe Nors, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal: A Novel (Graywolf Press, 2018): “If her subject is unwavering, her style remains restless, less out of a desire to be ‘experimental’ than out of playfulness and a genuine yearning, one feels, for contact and connection.”
•   Alex Schaitkin, Saint X: A Novel (Celadon Books, 2020): “Claire, who was 7 when the tragedy occurred, becomes obsessed with understanding not just what happened to Alison, but who she was. But around 70 pages in, the details of this family drama start to take a back seat to the larger story Schaitkin is really trying to tell . . . : about a single death that affects an entire community.”
•   Benjamin Nugent, Fraternity: Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “. . . four years of fumbling awakenings, both intellectual and sexual, in an environment where everyone struggles with the plague of masculinity, even the men.”
•   Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company, 2021): “A writer who dives into a gay love story along with one of mutual regard and affection between white and formerly enslaved people in the Deep South at the beginning of Reconstruction is clearly someone who wants to accomplish a lot and pose big questions.”
•   Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends: A Novel (Random House, 2021), “is brilliant about so much: the humiliations of parenting and of being parented; the sadism of chronic illness; the glory of friendship.”
•   Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop: A Novel (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021), “also about loneliness, and being unmoored from normal time, and missing people you’ve lost, and dealing with generational trauma and fearing an unknowable future.”

From the dark side:

•   Alix Nathan, The Warlow Experiment: A Novel (Doubleday, 2019): “Herbert Powyss, a gentleman botanist in 18th-century England, offers 50 pounds per annum, for life, to any man who will live alone for seven years in the basement of his manor, Moreham House. The man must not cut his nails or beard, and will not see or speak with another human being for the duration of his confinement. Meals will arrive, and trash be removed, by a dumb waiter. Powyss’s “real and fascinating thesis to test” is whether a human being can survive in absolute solitude.”
•   Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “Recovering from a breakdown brought about by complications of modern fame, Alice is morbid but openhearted, a secret idealist in wolf’s clothing. Eileen is the standard Rooney protagonist — ambivalent, sensitive, lethal in conversation. She’s got the classic mistrustful delusion of a younger child, needy and convinced of her own victimhood.”
•   Andrew Holleran, The Kingdom of Sand: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022): “. . . Andrew Holleran takes on loneliness, aging and a life post-cruising.”

Poetry

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough, / To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, / To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, / To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? / I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea. 

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, / All things please the soul, but these please the soul well. [Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book IV: Children of Adam, “I Sing the Body Electric” (4).]

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? / And why should I not speak to you? [Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book I: Inscriptions, “To You”.]

Other poems:

• Walt Whitman, “We Two Boys Together Clinging”
• Conrad Aiken, “Music I Heard with You”
• Robert Frost, “A Servant To Servants”
• Pablo Neruda, “Lone Gentleman”
• Pablo Neruda, “Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine, Love”
• Maya Angelou, “Alone”
• William Wordsworth, “I Know an Aged Man Constrained to Dwell”
• Walt Whitman, “A Glimpse”
• Edgardo Tugade, “Haiji After Work”

Books of poems:

• Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022): “She writes to counter isolation and to usher in change. Her poems presume aloneness and reach out to the reader to seal a sort of virtual communion.”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

The chamber ensemble conveys natural warmth of tone and feeling. Three giants from the classical era left us with large-ensemble works of this kind

• Ludwig van Beethoven, Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (1800) (approx. 41-46’)
• Beethoven, Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 103 (1792) (approx. 21-23’)
• Franz Schubert, Octet in F Major, D 803 (1824) (approx. 53-63’): Top recorded performances are by Oistrakh, et. al., in 1955, Wiener Oktett in 1958, Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble in 1978, Schubert Ensemble Budapest in 1992, Nash Ensemble in 1994, Mullova Ensemble in 2006, Faust, et. al., in 2018, OSM Chamber Soloists in 2018, Wigmore Soloists in 2021, and Philharmonic Ensemble Berlin in 2024. The spirit of conviviality is palpable in this live performance.
• Felix Mendelssohn, Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20 (1825) (approx. 28-34’): top recordings are by Vienna Octet in 1953; Heifetz, et. al., in 1961; I Musici in 1966; Academy Chamber Ensemble in 1966.
• Mendelssohn, String Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18, MWV R 21 (1826, rev. 1832) (approx. 30-32’); and String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87, MWV R33 (1845) (approx. 28-33’)

Tan Dun, Buddha Passion (2018) (approx. 100’) “began with a visit to ancient caves in the Dunhuang desert, which have hundreds of drawings and paintings featuring musicians, instruments, and orchestras. Dun was 'so deeply moved that I could almost hear the sounds emanating from the murals.'” “In the 1960s, Tan Dun was a young boy running barefoot through the fields of remote Hunan in China, yet always aware of the sounds and traditions surrounding him.” “The work unfolds as six acts (stories) that illustrate steps on the path to spiritual enlightenment, as experienced and taught by the Buddha.” “The work’s key message (is) that truth and interdependency are the basis for a harmonious world . . .”. The composer conducted the premier recording.

In 1991, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Marc Dresser and Gerry Hemingway made a set of recordings in Willisau, Switzerland (259’). By that time, the members of this quartet had become so familiar with each other musically that they felt they had nothing more to accomplish together as a unit, so they stopped playing together shortly thereafter. “They had reached a creative apex as a group that -- arguably -- could not be furthered.” In art, perhaps, that is how things are. In life, we might hope that the joys of companionship will sustain relationships, and that the creative power of uplifting relationships will bring us back to the people who elicit our best. In any case, we can listen to this music and hear a jazz quartet made extraordinary through mutual familiarity.

Chamber works by Michel Corrette:

• Concerto No. 1 in G major for Organ, Op. 26 (approx. 54’)
• Le Phénix (1735) (approx. 9’)
• Les Délices de la Solitude, Op. 20 (1739) (approx. 59’)

Other compositions:

• Niels Peter Jensen, 6 flute duets, Op. 16
• Johann Joachim Quantz, 6 duets for 2 flutes, QV 3:2, Op. 2 (1759) (approx. 53’): “These types of duets are quite different to other forms of Baroque chamber music and fit in well with the idea of ‘elegant conversation’. Quantz says that duets have ‘certain merits peculiar to themselves’ and describes them as ‘an elaborate music written in contrapuntal or imitative style.’”
• Charles Ives, Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting” (1911) (approx. 21’25’): “In an era when the United States was far less developed and densely populated, camp meetings were opportunities for isolated families and communities to worship and socialize together.” The work looks back “to Ives’ childhood impressions of a disappearing spiritual world.”
• George Enescu, Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 2 (1897) (approx. 24-25’)
• Amy Beach, Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67 (1907) (approx. 27-29’): “What this piece doesn’t have is overt, empty excitement. There’s no scherzo for the point of a scherzo, no cheap thrills. Instead of fireworks and big booms, what we have is a focused intensity and development, a fragrant, handsome, crackling fire that pops and roars here and there, but bathes us in warmth and beauty.”
• Luciano Berio, 34 Duetti per due violini (34 duets for two violins) (1979-1983) (approx. 40-42’): “Central to any study of the Duetti is Berio's idea of theater in music. He speaks of his theatrical ideal as bringing together opposite ideas, and having these opposites combine to make a third idea. For Berio, the ideal theatrical element in music consists of bringing together these opposites in  order to create a scene which had not existed before.”
• Edison Denisov, Sonata for Two Violins in C Major (1958) (approx. 15’)
• Franz Berwald, duos for string instruments (approx. 70’)
• Hayden Wayne, String Quartet No. 3 (approx. 22’)
• Wayne, String Quartet No. 4 (approx. 31’)
• Lennox Berkeley, Serenade for Strings, Op. 12 (1939) (approx. 13’)
• Michael Gordon, “Anonymous Man” (2017) (approx. 57’): the composer writes of his inspiration for the work: “When I moved into my loft on Desbrosses Street, the streets were empty, since few people lived there. Over time, the neighborhood changed from an industrial warehouse district to a residential area. Anonymous Man is a memoir about my block; it’s built around my memories of moving in, meeting my future wife for the first time there, and conversations I’ve had with two men who made their home on the loading dock across the street.”
• Franz Liszt, Soirées de Vienne, S. 427 (1846-1852) (approx. 71’): “Liszt was very fond of the Soirées and they featured in many of his performances in the mid-19th century.”
• Raga Jog is a Hindustani classical raag for late evening. “. . . Jog translates as ‘State of Union’ (derived from the Sanskrit concept of ‘yogi’)” Performances are by Shivkumar Sharma, Ankita Joshi, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ravi Shankar, and Kaushiki Chakrabarty.

Albums:

• Bill Frisell, “Valentine” (2020) (66’) “is a portrait of this trio at a creative peak. While not the liveliest record in Frisell's catalog, it is one of his most inquiring, rhythmically inventive, and lyrical.” “. . . Frisell, Royston and Morgan revel in the tight but loose interplay that is a hallmark of the best groups, plying a course as deeply lyrical as it is adventurous.”
• Orrin Evans and The Captain Black Big Band, “The Intangible Between” (2020) (65’): “Pianist Orrin Evans has a deep understanding of the unshakeable bond between fellowship, humanity and the creative process.” “. . . Evans makes every jovial jam by his current crew of vets and newbies tighter than a fresh facelift, yet still loosely soulful.”
• Oregon/Elvin Jones, “Together” (1976) (43’): “. . . rather than making the set a record that's dominated by the star, Elvin nicely finds the right sort of way to really mix his talents with the group!”
• Frank Kimbrough, “Quartet” (2014) (57’): “While Quartet is very much in line with Kimbrough's other work, and it exists in a comfort zone for Wilson and Anderson, it's something of a departure for Nash, a man who the jazz world is more accustomed to hearing in strict-time environments. Here, relieved from the requirement of firmly holding the rhythmic reins, he plays like a different man.”
• Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, “Il Tedesco” (2021) (65’), is an album about Rome in and about 1610.
• Houston Person & Bill Charlap, “You Taught My Heart to Sing” (2007) (57’): “. . . the mood is relaxed yet not moribund, nor does the duo succumb to adding weepy strings or sappy horn arrangements. Person and Charlap don't break any new ground with this recording; rather they continue to showcase their combined enduring passion for ballads.”
• The Nu Band, “Live at the Bopshop: A Tribute to Mark Whitecage” (2022) (64’): a collaboration of musicians, each with his own ideas and perspectives, united by common ideas
• Allison Miller & Carmen Staaf, “Nearness” (2022) (47’): “Staaf’s melodicism and Miller’s sense of control make for an exciting, unexpected conversation.”
• Joshua Redman, Brad Melhdau, Christian McBride & Brian Blade, “Long Gone” (2022) (47’): four great jazz artists, truly playing together
• Dominique Dalcan, “Last Night a Woman Saved My Life” (2023) (45’): “Displaying Lebanese women recount their daily lives, their hopes and dreams, conversing with a patchwork of oriental sounds composed by Dominique Dalcan.”
• Bill Laurance & Michael League, “Keeping Company” (2024) (43’): “. . . this contemplative album has multiple cultural influences, with the duo weaving a warm and earthy sound with the focus on intimate and spontaneous interplay. Some of the tunes are compact atmospheric vignettes that can seem like ideas that are not fully developed, but those that are shimmer with rhythmically hypnotic melodies and offer much to enjoy.”

From the dark side:

• Carolyn Hume & Paul May, “By Lakes Abandoned” album (2001) (59’)
• Tõnu Kõrvits, “Moorland Elegies” (2017) (approx. 54’), a nine-part cycle for chorus and string orchestra, “‘is a journey into the darkest, most mysterious corners of loneliness: to where one doesn’t dare to peek twice,’ Kõrvits has commented. A recurring topic in Kõrvits’s works is the enigmatic, introverted feminine loneliness that is simultaneously passionate and mild, yet marked by wild creativity . . .”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Seals and Crofts, “Summer Breeze” (lyrics)
• Neil Young, “Heart of Gold” (lyrics)
• Paul Simon, “Stranger to Stranger” (lyrics)
• Steve Lacy and the Riccardo Fassi Trio, “Together”
• Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (composer), “Air ”, expressing a longing for human contact.

On the dark side:

• Lewis Capaldi, “Someone You Loved” (lyrics)
• Courtney Hadwin, “Someone You Loved”

Visual Arts

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Le Grenouillére (1869)
• Jan Vermeer, Glass of Wine (1660-61)
• William Blake, Children Round a Fire

Film and Stage

• In The Remains of the Day, a man so devotes himself to his workas a butler that he has no time for personal relationships. It is a story about “the pain of self-denial,” here the denial of human intimacy. A closing scene captures the tragedy of lost opportunities as the camera focuses in slow-motion on two fingers barely touching at the end of an afternoon spent together but emotionally apart.
• The Breakfast Club, about five high school studentsin detention who find they have a lot in common.
• Every Man for Himself (Suave qui peut), exploring human relationships
• Husbands and Wives: a Woody Allentake on marriage
• The More the Merrier: a spoofon unconventional living arrangements
• Contagion: a city and a civilization falls apartwhen a plague destroys the community fabric. This is a film about our interdependence.
• The Wild Child(L’Enfant Sauvage), a dramatization about a real-life attempt to civilize a child who had been found in the wild
• The Spirit of the Beehive(El Espíritu de la colmena), a post-WWII Spanish film in which a young girl is taken by the scene in the 1931 film “Frankenstein” in which a young girl gives the monster a flower, is really about the girl’s longing for human contact in her world of disengaged parents and an older sister who does not understand her.
• WALL-E: a “rusty trash-compacting droid” escapes from “a world without people” and finds and illustrates the importance of companionship