I T is WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, that great coiner, who is given credit for the word. Coriolanus, one of his heroes, compares going into exile to a “lonely dragon” retreating to his lair. The Roman general was talking about a physical state: someone who was lonely was simply alone.
Then, thanks to the Romantic poets, the word took on emotional overtones. Loneliness became a condition of the soul. For William Wordsworth, who famously “wandered lonely as a cloud”, the natural world offered a reprieve from negative feelings of isolation-a host of daffodils could provide “jocund company”.
By the early 20th century loneliness had come to be considered one of the defining afflictions of urban life. Hannah Arendt lamented that a feeling that was “once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses”.
Her concerns resonate today, as loneliness is often identified as a serious public-health problem, an epidemic even, that afflicts the elderly and young alike. During the covid-19 pandemic half of Britons reported often feeling lonely; those aged between 16 and 24 struggled the most. Three new books have taken on the subject.
Mr Bruckner supplies a checklist for warding off enduring, corrosive feelings of loneliness: “Have we loved enough, given enough, lavished enough, embraced enough?
In “All the Lonely People” Sam Carr, a psychologist, collects stories of individuals who feel cut off or forsaken. A teenage Afghan refugee struggles to blend in at school in Somerset. An octogenarian languishes in a retirement home. Mr Carr handles this material sensitively, weaving their experiences together with his own, in particular his role as a single parent.
The author evokes the pain of bereavement, heartbreak and childhood trauma and underlines the stigma attached to being withdrawn and friendless. Continue reading “Three books examine the perils and pleasures of being alone”