"Man the Solitary" from
Solitude in the Thought of Thomas Merton
by
Richard Anthony Cashen
Important as is the category of physical solitude, interior solitude, is more important, more fundamental than physical solitude. "There is no true solitude except interior solitude", Merton states bluntly. Physical solitude helps foster interior solitude, it is true, but it is interior solitude which gives physical solitude its validity. Without interior solitude, physical solitude might be a false or dangerous solitude, full of life denial and self-hatred, a flight from responsibility or spiteful separation from one's fellow man. . . .Solitude becomes for Merton, as Jean LeClercq has pointed out, the symbol of the 'absolute, ultimate and inexhaustible encounter with God and with humanity'. Merton's concept of interior solitude resembles the biblical concept of 'heart'. In fact, one of the finest summations of Merton's thought on interior solitude can be found in his own description of the scriptural 'heart'. One need only substitute the words interior solitude in place of 'heart':
heart (interior solitude) refers to the deepest psychological ground of one's personality, the inner sanctuary where self-awareness goes beyond analytical reflection and opens out into metaphysical and theological confrontation with the Abyss of the unknown yet present --- one who is 'more intimate to us than we are to ourselves'.
While physical solitude removes us from our fellow man, interior solitude unites us with him. It is communion with our fellow man on a much deeper level than the social fictions of life in a large city or a technological world allow. Physical solitude is not absolutely necessary for the process of interior solitude.
. . . a (person) becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary.
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