Those who love to resist loneliness will never be alone.

Those who love to resist loneliness will never be alone.

Text / Chumen

The Kafka writing house is located in the Chain Alchemist Lane in Prague and is a dead end. The hut is in the innermost part of the hutong, as simple as an ascetic house. It is said that Kafka went to work with a lunch box after work, until he came home late at night. He refused to talk to people, even his family. “Everything that has nothing to do with literature makes me bored,” he wrote in his diary. I can't help but wonder what kind of inner life of this humble insurance company's small staff, what kind of power is holding him up and making him so persistent in writing. Moreover, the ultimate goal of his writing was not for publication. When Kafka died, he asked his friend Marx Brod to burn all his manuscripts. What kind of love makes him face fear of true loneliness. When a person writes in a dark room, it doesn't matter if he writes something that nobody understands?

After Salinger became famous, he bought a piece of land and wrapped it with wire to reject everyone’s visit. It is said that he wrote himself in a basement and wrote it very hard. He went in with a lunch box every day and wrote until late at night. He only occasionally went to the town to buy things, and once he found out that others recognized him, he ran. Unlike Kafka, his work is widely known. In particular, the "Watcher in the Rye" has won him a large number of book fans. They mimicked Holden's dress and imitated his tone of speech. They worshiped Salinger as a god. Just then, he decided to live in seclusion and refused to publish any work, refusing anyone to visit.

The most recent book is Maugham's "The Moon and Six Pence" - an ordinary securities broker in London, a middle-aged man, a successful career, a happy family, one day suddenly throwing his wife and abandoning his son, giving up his career, being alone. Go to Paris to paint. In the end, in pursuit of inspiration, he fell alone on Tahiti Island and completed the greatest work of his life on the walls of the wooden house where he lived. Finally he got leprosy, his eyes blind, he died miserably, and asked his indigenous wife to burn the wooden house and the mural together after his death. This is the synopsis of the story. Maugham made this story wonderful. He shaped the painter to be full of personality. He did not have any human touch, abandoned his wife and children, and even killed the wife of a friend who had helped him. He doesn't care about himself either. Even if you are hungry and frozen, you willingly. He just wants to paint. In the words of the book, he seems to be possessed by the devil. Just like being controlled by some mysterious force, he has no way of doing it. But the paintings he painted are not understood. Others think that he does not understand painting at all. It was such a person who finally became a great painter. His paintings were collected in museums and were seen.

This story reminds me of Beethoven. The artist’s loss of his eyes is as deadly as a musician’s loss of hearing. It is said that Beethoven's most perfect work was created after he lost his deafness.

I also think of Hawthorne who writes about writing at home. Allan Poe, who was destitute in his life. Virginia Woolf, who wrote in "a room of his own"...may be lonely in the eyes of others, but they are happy in themselves. They are pursuing the moon instead of the sixpence at the foot. They all chose loneliness, or they chose them alone. Why? The world is saddened by loneliness. People who don’t know how to resist loneliness are never alone.