The Invention of Solitude

ultimate with drawal from the world. Sleep as an image of solitude. Oblomov curled on his couch, dreaming himself back into his mother ’ s womb. Jonah in the belly of the ship; Jonah in the belly of the whale.
    The captain of the ship finds Jonah and tells him to pray to his God. Meanwhile, the sailors have drawn lots, to see which among them has been responsible for the storm, … and the lot fell upon Jonah.
    “ And then he said unto them, ‘Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.’
    “ Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not; for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them….
    “ So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her raging. ”
    The popular mythology about the whale notwithstanding, the great fish that swallows Jonah is by no means an agent of destruction. The fish is what saves him from drowning in the sea. “ The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. ” In the depth of that solitude, which is equally the depth of silence, as if in the refusal to speak there were an equal refusal to turn one ’ s face to the other ( “ Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord ” )—which is to say: who seeks solitude seeks silence; who does not speak is alone; is alone, even unto death—Jonah encounters the darkness of death. We are told that “ Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, ’’ and elsewhere, in a chapter of the Zohar, we are told, “ ‘ Three days and three nights ’ : which means the three days that a man is in his grave before his belly bursts apart. ” And when the fish then vomits Jonah onto dry land, Jonah is given back to life, as if the death he had found in the belly of the fish were a preparation for new life, a life that has passed through death, and therefore a life that can at last speak. For death has frightened him into opening his mouth.  ” I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. ” In the darkness of the solitude that is death, the tongue is finally loosened, and at the moment it begins to speak, there is an answer. And even if there is no answer, the man has begun to speak.
     
    The prophet. As in false: speaking oneself into the future, not by knowledge but by intuition. The real prophet knows. The false prophet guesses.
    This was Jonah ’ s greatest problem. If he spoke God ’ s message, telling the Ninevites they would be destroyed in forty days for their wickedness, he was certain they would repent, and thus be spared. For he knew that God was “ merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. ”
    “ So the people of Ninevah believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. ”
    And if the Ninevites were spared, would this not make Jonah ’ s prophecy false? Would he not, then, be a false prophet? Hence the paradox at the heart of the book: the prophecy would remain true only if he did not speak it. But then, of course, there would be no prophecy, and Jonah would no longer be a prophet. But better to be no prophet at all than to be a false prophet. “ Therefore now, O lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. ”
    Therefore, Jonah held his tongue. Therefore, Jonah ran away from the presence of the Lord and met the doom of shipwreck. That is to say, the shipwreck of the singular.
     
    Remission of cause and effect.
    A. remembers a moment from boyhood (twelve, thirteen years old). He was wandering aimlessly one November afternoon with his friend D. Nothing was happening. But in each of them, at that moment, a sense of infinite possibilities. Nothing was happening. Or else one could say that it was this consciousness of possibility, in fact, that was happening.
    As they walked along through the cold, gray air of that afternoon, A. suddenly stopped and announced to his friend: One year from today something extraordinary will happen to us, something that will change our lives forever.
    The year passed, and on the appointed day nothing extraordinary happened. A. explained to D.: No matter; the important thing will happen next year. When the second year rolled around, the same