The Invention of Solitude

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    In that the world is monstrous. In that the world can lead a man to nothing but despair, and a despair so complete, so resolute, that nothing can open the door of this prison, which is hopelessness, A. peers through the bars of his cell and finds only one thought that brings him any consolation: the image of his son. And not just his son, but any son, any daughter, any child of any man or woman.

    In that the world is monstrous. In that it seems to offer no hope of a future, A. looks at his son and realizes that he must not allow himself to despair. There is this responsibility for a young life, and in that he has brought this life into being, he must not despair. Minute by minute, hour by hour, as he remains in the presence of his son, attending to his needs, giving himself up to this young life, which is a continual injunction to remain in the present, he feels his despair evaporate. And even though he continues to despair, he does not allow himself to despair.
    The thought of a child ’ s suffering, therefore, is monstrous to him. It is even more monstrous than the monstrosity of the world itself. For it robs the world of its one consolation, and in that a world can be imagined without consolation, it is monstrous.
    He can go no farther than this.
     
    This is where it begins. He stands alone in an empty room and begins to cry. “ It is too much for me, I cannot face it ” (Mallarme). “ A Belsen-like appearance, ” as the engineer in Cambodia noted. And yes, that is the place where Anne Frank died.
    “ It ’ s really a wonder, ” she wrote, just three weeks before her arrest, “ that I haven ’ t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out…. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end…”
     
    No, he does not mean to say that this is the only thing. He does not even pretend to say that it can be understood, that by talking about it and talking about it a meaning can be discovered for it. No, it is not the only thing, and life nevertheless continues, for some, if not for most. And yet, in that it is a thing that will forever escape understanding, he wants it to stand for him as the thing that will always come before the beginning. As in the sentences: “ This is where it begins. He stands alone in an empty room and begins to cry. ”
     
    Return to the belly of the whale.
    “ The word of the Lord came unto Jonah… saying, Arise, go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry against it…”
    In this command as well, Jonah ’ s story differs from that of all the other prophets. For the Ninevites are not Jews. Unlike the other carriers of God ’ s word, Jonah is not asked to address his own peo ple, but foreigners. Even worse, they are the enemies of his people. Ninevah was the capital of Assyria, the most powerful empire in the world at that time. In the words of Nahum (whose prophecies have been preserved on the same scroll as the story of Jonah): “ the bloody city… full of lies and rapine. ”
    “ Arise, go to Ninevah, ” God tells Jonah. Ninevah is to the east. Jonah promptly goes west, to Tarshish (Tartessus, on the farthest tip of Spain). Not only does he run away, he goes to the limit of the known world. This flight is not difficult to understand. Imagine an analogous case: a Jew being told to enter Germany during the Sec ond World War and preach against the National Socialists. It is a thought that begs the impossible.
    As early as the second century, one of the rabbinical commentators argued that Jonah boarded the ship to drown himself in the sea for the sake of Israel, not to flee from the presence of God. This is the political reading of the book, and Christian interpreters quickly turned it against the Jews. Theodore of Mopsuestia, for example, says that Jonah was sent to Ninevah because the Jews refused to listen to the prophets, and the book about Jonah was written to teach a lesson to the “ stiff-necked people. ” Rupert of Deutz, however, another Christian interpreter (twelfth century), contends that the prophet refused God ’ s command out of piety to his people, and for this reason God did not become very angry with Jonah. This echoes the opinion of Rabbi Akiba himself, who stated that “ Jonah was