Enjoying Loneliness
()
About this ebook
This is an essay, translated by Paola Canale, which only apparently depicts solitude as a “soul disease”, expressing instead a more intimate need, a spiritual state nowadays man has trouble to find in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
Pasquale Romeo is attracted by a sublime “Carpe diem” fascination and thinks loneliness is an “elevated moment of truth which doesn’t warm, but illuminates”.
Solitude, reminding Buddhist experience, in Pasquale Romeo’s opinion, is meditation and as such, it’s relative to different branches of knowledge: philosophy, literature, anthropology and psychiatry; he defines it as “a window on the world” in the field of human and social sciences. The author uses an “impressionistic” and “symbolic” writing style, taking particular inspiration from artworks of renowned painters such as Magritte, Gericault, Bosch or Escher in order to describe solitude as a form of alienation, and, at times, of insanity. In doing so, two keys to interpretation are given to us: the first one is a professional psychiatric point of view, a second one takes an absolutely poetic form. He looks at himself, in the artistic imaginary, within the painting to which he refers and in it he loses himself and invites us, although not explicitly, to lose ourselves in the deep realms of the psyche as a created form and dissolved at the same time in the work of art.
Romeo well defines these “golden moments” of solitude as a useful and fruitful condition, which let us fix the “co-ordinates” of our existence, and that can be experienced in total aloofness and detachment, but that everyone can experience staying among people.
Pasquale Romeo
Professor of Psychiatry at the University for Foreigners “Dante Alighieri”, Reggio Calabria, Italy I’m a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, author of many articles, Editorial Director of Research’s Magazine, responsible for many columns and a tv anchor. Winner in Reggio Calabria (Italy) of “Anassilaos- Youngs” Prize in 2001 in reason of my curriculum vitae et studiorum and of Pericle Prize in 2006 in Bovalino, Reggio Calabria (Italy) relating to social and cultural communication. National Responsible for Psychiatry in Forensic Science Research Group of University of Siena, Italy.
Read more from Pasquale Romeo
Love and Chaos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetraying Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Enjoying Loneliness
Related ebooks
Sacred Death: Reclaim Dying and Embrace Living Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGood Grief Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat Wisdom Whispers: Life Lessons in Love and Forgiveness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Personal Journal of an Ordinary Person Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDinos Don't Meditate Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAftershock Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Practical Guide to Conquering the Universe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo Be a Druid : A Synopsis on the History of the Druids and a Guide to Current Day Practices Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAwareness How Does That Relate To Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInside Out Heart Collection: Volume 1: Poems for my dying father & after; and, Volume 2: Diary notes of being with my dying father Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wellness Basket Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYOU ARE MORE THAN YOU THINK: Discovering Who You are is A great step for Living a fulfilled life, Maximizing your Potentials Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLessons Learned & Lost: A Book of Poetry and Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Spirituality of Dreaming: Unlocking the Wisdom of Our Sleeping Selves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStars in the Deepest Night: After the Death of a Child Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJournal of a Solitude Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLifes, Deaths and Immortalities: Expositing Scripture's Fate for the Human Race Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Unlearning: Awakening to Living an Aligned and Authentic Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrief: Mind Boggling, but Natural Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollecting Confidence: Start Where You Are to Become the Person You Were Meant to Be Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpace, Time, and Spacetime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trilogy of Life Itself: A Journey of Purpose and Self Belief - Boxset of Friday Bridge, Walaahi and Crossing the Line Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Placebo Effect Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutside the Inner Dialogue: A Haiku a Day for a Year Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Couldn't Find Her So I Created Her: Wrestling with new concepts, I got them from downstairs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCentrepiece Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeo Tolstoy: Life & Words Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNever a Day Go Bye: You Make Me Dream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWTF Just Happened?: How to Make Better Decisions by Asking Yourself Better Questions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Social Science For You
All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men Explain Things to Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Enjoying Loneliness
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Enjoying Loneliness - Pasquale Romeo
ENJOYING LONELINESS Pasquale Romeo
Published by Pasquale Romeo
Copyright 2013 Pasquale Romeo
Smashwords Edition
(Translated by dr.Paola Canale)
FOREWORD
This is an essay which only apparently depicts solitude as a soul disease
, whilst it expresses more intimately a need, a spiritual state nowadays man has trouble to find in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
The author defines this concept with a quasi-poetic slant, right from the first pages, when he quotes an image discussed by Milan Kundera who writes about his preference to sleep in trains, because of its old and reassuring din, rather than at home, because he can hear the noise of the new combustion motors. In quoting this, Pasquale Romeo turns upside down this concept, expressing the longing today we feel for what he defines as a little silence
: an absolutely exceptional fact in the chaotic society we live in.
Therefore solitude, reminding Buddhist experience in Pasquale Romeo’s opinion, is meditation and as such, it’s relative to different branches of knowledge: philosophy, literature, anthropology and psychiatry; he defines it as a window on the world
in the field of human and social sciences. The author uses an impressionistic
and obviously symbolic
style of writing, taking particular inspiration from artworks of renowned painters such as Magritte, Gericault, Bosch or Escher in order to describe solitude as a form of alienation, and, at times, of insanity. In doing so, two keys to interpretation are given to us: the first one is a professional psychiatric point of view, a second one takes an absolutely poetic form.
He looks at himself, in the artistic imaginary, within the painting to which he refers and in it he loses himself and invites us, although not explicitly, to lose ourselves in the deep realms of the psyche as a created form and dissolved at the same time in the work of art. In other words, he tries to penetrate not the semantic content of the work of art, but the fractals created by the brushwork, in the act of painting, therefore not in the completed work, but in the creative process is an act, intended as meditation and introspection, as a moment of solitude lived, not suffered. In this way, solitude is welcomed and at the same time shared: the painting becomes a mirror from which it is difficult to take one’ eyes off, a mirror of one’s own soul which looks through the so faint line that lies between the historical and anthropological dimension, on one side, and an alien one, on the other, leading, sometimes, to the point of insanity. The approach to the topic of loneliness, today, is such as to compel us to a kind of rejection of this mental state. In spite of this, Romeo well defines everyone’s need to get few moments of solitude (that he calls golden moments
) , as a useful and fruitful condition, which let us fix the co-ordinates
of our existence, and that can be experienced in total aloofness and detachment, but that everyone can experience staying among people. In the second hypothesis you can face with lack of understanding by people who don’t appreciate such absent behaviour
. In any case, although he doesn’t provide us a definition of solitude as a creative choice, he continuously evokes it, leading us to this interpretation, almost suggesting the pursuit of this condition, as he described in the first part of the essay, later brought back through the concept of floating attention
, or in other words, drawing ideas from the works of Pirandello, a mechanical phantasmagory
and yet from David Walcott visionary rage
, all conditions which, however are, each in its own way, creative and therefore destabilizing, subversive of an establishment state simply static and inactive.
Moreover, according to Romeo, there is another and more widespread solitude, different from the creative, artistic perspective, and it’s the solitude nowadays experienced by ordinary people, no matter what age they are, whether they are adolescents or adults. In this perspective, solitude is experienced as a confinement, therefore perceived as a failure because the sense of oneself is lost: autonomous, but all the while part of a society composed of nothing more than a multitude of other selves
who follow the same stereotype and respond to standardizing needs and urges, repeated to the point of obsession’s interiorization, almost reaching paranoia. Pasquale Romeo is attracted by a sublime Carpe diem
fascination and thinks loneliness is an elevated moment of truth which doesn’t warm, but illuminates
. This perspective, borrowed from Esoteric philosophy – Buddhism in particular – imply, however, in my opinion, a contradiction with the holistic vision of consciousness underlined by the author in his introduction. In such a meaning, we know that solitude can never be dissociated with the presence of one’s self, without becoming a pathology, and this is also what the author says in the central part of the essay; it doesn’t exist such a state of abstraction from reality that allows you to leave your body
. Consequently, solitude felt by