Between Solitude/'sɑlətud/and Loneliness/'lonlɪnɪs/
来源：http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/double-solitude
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[1]At eighty-seven, I amsolitary. I live by myself on one floor of the 1803 farmhouse where my family has lived since theCivil War. After my grandfather died, my grandmother Kate lived here alone. Her three daughters visited her. In 1975, Kate died at ninety-seven, and Itook over.Forty-oddyears later, I spend my days alone in one of two chairs. From anoverstuffedblue chair in my living room I look out the window at the unpainted oldbarn, golden and empty of its cows and of Riley the horse. I look at atulip; I look at snow. In theparlor’smechanicalchair, I write these paragraphs anddictateletters. I also watch television news, often without listening, and lie back in the enormous comfort of solitude. People want to come visit, but mostly I refuse them, preserving my continuous silence. Linda comes two nights a week. My two best male friends from New Hampshire, who live in Maine and Manhattan, seldomdrop by. A few hours a week, Carole does mylaundryand counts my pills and picks up after me. I look forward to her presence and feelreliefwhen she leaves.Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power andlonelinesstakes over.I am grateful when solitude returns.
[2]Born in 1928, I was an only child. During theGreat Depression, there were many of us, and Spring GlenElementarySchool was eight grades of children without siblings.From time to timeI made a friend during childhood, but friendships never lasted long. Charlie Axel liked making model airplanes out ofbalsawood andtissue. So did I, but I wasclumsyanddrippedcementonto wing paper. His models flew. Later, I collected stamps, and so did Frank Benedict. I got bored with stamps. In seventh and eighth grade, there were girls. I remember lying withBarbaraPopeon her bed, fully clothed and apart while her mother looked in at us with anxiety.Most of the time, I liked staying alone after school, sitting in theshadowyliving room. My mother was shopping orplaying bridgewith friends; my father added figures in his office; I daydreamed.
[3]In summer, I left myConnecticutsuburbtohaywith my grandfather, on thisNew Hampshirefarm. I watched him milk sevenHolsteinsmorning and night. For lunch I made myself an onion sandwich—a thick slice between pieces of Wonder Bread. I’ve told about this sandwich before.
[4]At fifteen, I went toExeterfor the last two years of high school. Exeter wasacademicallydifficult and made Harvard easy, but I hated it—five hundred identical boys living two to a room.Solitude wasscarce, and Ilaboredto find it. I took long walks alone, smoking cigars.I found myself a rare single room and remained there as much as I could,reading and writing. Saturday night, the rest of the school sat in the basketballarena,deliriouslywatching a movie. I remained in my room in solitary pleasure.
[5]At college,dormitorysuites had single and double bedrooms. For three years, I lived in one bedroom crowded with everything I owned. During my senior year, I managed to secure a single suite: bedroom and sitting room and bath. At Oxford, I had two rooms to myself. Everybody did. Then I had fellowships. Then I wrote books.Finally, to mydistaste, I had to look for a job. With my first wife–people married young back then; we were twenty and twenty-three–Isettledin Ann Arbor, teaching Englishliteratureat the University of Michigan. I loved walking up and down in thelecture hall,talking aboutYeatsandJoyceor reading aloud the poems ofThomas HardyandAndrew Marvell. These pleasures were hardly solitary, but at home I spent the day in a tinyattic room,working on poems. My extremely intelligent wife was more mathematical thanliterary. We lived together and we grew apart. For the only time in my life, Icherishedsocial gatherings: Ann Arbor’s culture of cocktail parties.I found myself looking forward to weekends, to crowded parties that permitted me distance from my marriage. There were two or three such occasions on Friday and more on Saturday, permitting couples tomigratefrom living room to living room. Weflirted, we drank, we chatted–without remembering on Sunday what we said Saturday night.
[6]After sixteen years of marriage, my wife and Idivorced.
[7]For five years I was alone again, but without the comfort of solitude. I exchanged themiseriesof a bad marriage for the miseries ofbourbon. I dated a girlfriend who drank two bottles ofvodkaa day. I dated three or four women a week, occasionally three in a day. My poemsslackenedand stopped. I tried to think that I lived in happy license. I didn’t.
[8]Jane Kenyon was my student. She was smart, she wrote poems, she was funny andfrankin class. I knew she lived in a dormitory near my house, so one night I asked her to housesit while I attended an hour-long meeting. (In Ann Arbor, it was the year of breaking and entering.) When I came home, we went to bed. We enjoyed each other,libertinelibertyas much as pleasures of theflesh. Later I asked her to dinner, which in 1970 always included breakfast. We saw each other once a week, still dating others, then twice a week, then three or four times a week, and saw no one else. One night, we spoke of marriage. Quickly we changed the subject, because I was nineteen years older and, if we married, she would be awidowso long. We married in April, 1972. We lived in Ann Arbor three years, and in 1975 left Michigan for New Hampshire. Sheadoredthis old family house.
[9]For almost twenty years,Iwokebefore Jane and brought her coffee in bed.When she rose, she walked Gus the dog. Then each of us retreated to a workroom to write, at opposite ends of our two-story house. Mine was theground floorin front, next to Route 4. Hers was the second floorin the rear, besideRaggedMountain’s old pasture. In the separation of our double solitude, we each wrotepoetryin the morning. We had lunch, eating sandwiches and walking around without speaking to each other.Afterward, we took a twenty-minute nap, gathering energy for the rest of the day, and woke to our daily fuck. Afterward I felt likecuddling, but Jane’sclimaxreleased her into energy. Shehurriedfrom bed to workroom.
[10]For several hours afterward, I went back to work at my desk.Late in the afternoon, I read aloud to Jane for an hour. I read Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” twice,the Old Testament, William Faulkner, more Henry James, seventeenth-century poets. BeforesupperI drank a beer andglanced atThe New Yorker while Jane cooked,sippinga glass of wine. Slowly she made a delicious dinner—maybevealcutletswith mushroom-and-garlicgravy, maybe summer’sasparagusfrom the bed across the street—then asked me to carry our plates to the table while she lit the candle. Through dinner we talked about our separate days.
[11]Summer afternoons we spent besideEagle Pond, on a bite-sized beach among frogs,mink, andbeaver. Jane lay in the sun,tanning, while I read books in a canvasslingchair.Every now and then, we would dive into the pond. Sometimes, for an early supper, webroiledsausageon ahibachi. After twenty years of our remarkable marriage, living and writing together in double solitude, Jane died ofleukemiaat forty-seven, on April 22, 1995.
[12]Now it is April 22, 2016, and Jane has been dead for more than two decades.Earlier this year, at eighty-seven, Igrievedfor her in a way I had never grieved before. I was sick and thought I was dying. Every day of her dying, I stayed by her side—a year and a half. It wasmiserablethat Jane should die so young, and it wasredemptivethat I could be with her every hour of every day. Last January I grieved again, this time that she would not sit beside me as I died.
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Sentences
Forty-odd years later, I spend my days alone in one of two chairs
Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over.
Solitude was scarce, and I labored to find it.
I found myself a rare single room and remained there as much as I could, reading and writing.
Finally, to my distaste, I had to look for a job.
I found myself looking forward to weekends, to crowded parties that permitted me distance from my marriage.
I woke before Jane and brought her coffee in bed. When she rose, she walked Gus the dog.
For several hours afterward, I went back to work at my desk.
Earlier this year, at eighty-seven, I grieved for her in a way I had never grieved before