The Man who loved islands

This short story was unknown to me until I was introduced to it at breakfast by a Dulverton visitor. It fits in well with my blog thoughts for today.

The Man who Loved Islands

A short story published in 1929 by the British author D.H. Lawrence (who has garnered most of his reputation from the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover). This story's nameless protagonist attempts to disprove the axiom about human nature that "no man is an island"; he is rich enough to buy islands for himself, and he buys and successively lives on three of them, going through progressive stages of isolation as he does so.
When he moves onto his first island, he gets lonely at night; his imagination carries him away, and he has visions of the island's Celtic history (here Lawrence makes references to the Druids as portrayed in the records of Julius Caesar). So, the man decides to turn his island into a community. He gets some servants to work in his house, a few other people to live in cottages, and dreams of turning the island into a self-supporting farm. But the dream is in vain; not only can the island not turn a profit, the man is far from breaking even on the venture. So, he sells his island to a hotel: "There, take that, island which didn't know when it was well off. Now be a honeymoon-and-golf island!" And he moves to the second island.
On the second island, he is accompanied only by two of the families that he had gotten to live with him on the first island: a carpenter and his wife, and a widow with her adult daughter. On this island, the man feels at home, and spends his days typing up a book about flower classifications, until he gets involved in a love affair with the widow's daughter. The problem, according to Lawrence, is that neither of them really want the affair; the man feels the pressure of the woman's will, and the woman forces her will upon the man for no clearly identifiable reason (she herself is at a loss to explain her behavior). Eventually, the woman conceives, and she and the man marry, but the man refuses to spend the rest of his life in misery. He buys and moves to the third island, leaving his wife with ample means to support herself.
On the third island, the man is alone. Initially, he has a cat, and some sheep that were on the island when he got there, but eventually the cat disappears and he hires some people to herd the sheep off the island because their bleats begin to annoy him. He wants to dwell in absolute silence, except for the sounds of the sea, and this is what he gets. He forgets the sound of his own voice; eventually, printed words offend him, and he destroys anything on the island that might be construed as text.
He lives in a stupor of solitude, and all this might be well and good, until winter comes. Suddenly, the man finds that the island he was so comfortable with is a foreign landscape covered in alien snow. At first, he tries clearing paths, but eventually he gives up hope of ever reclaiming his space. The story ends forebodingly: "He looked stupidly over the whiteness of the foreign island, over the waste of the lifeless sea. He pretended to imagine he saw the wink of a sail. Because he knew too well there would never again be a sail on that stark sea. As he looked, the sky mysteriously darkened and chilled. From far off came the mutter of the unsatisfied thunder, and he knew it was the signal of the snow rolling over the sea. He turned, and felt its breath on him."
Lawrence's message is clear: without social contact, a person loses his/her humanity and identity; isolation should not be absolute. No one who is familiar with his other works should be surprised at this message.

The BBC Castaways

On their remote island off the coast of New Zealand the 14 castaways continue their adventure in survival and community formation. However each week so far they have voted a fellow castaway to be banished for a few days isolation on a minimalist beach on a neighbouring island to reflect on why they were chosen. Even in this situation the BBC has given a companion for the greater part of their stay.

St Cuthbert

These island thoughts started with the awareness that today is the feast day of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne who started out as a shepherd boy in the Scottish lowlands around the year 640. His lonely work gave him prayer opportunity leading to a vision of a saint being transported to heaven which led him to become a monk at Melrose. When he became abbot, and later bishop, of Lindisfarne he balance his life between travelling as a preacher and teacher and living as a hermit on Farne Island. As his death drew near he wished to be completely alone with God though just a few of his monks returned to be with him at the end.

Poustinia

This is a way of encountering God in silence, solitude and prayer deriving from the Orthodox tradition and introduced to Western Christianity by Catherine Doherty. I try to keep a day a month in a poustinia at Madonna House, Robin Hoods Bay along the coast from here.

"Solitude requires only a small place. It can be a room in a large convent or monastery. It can be a place in the attic or the basement of a family home. It may be part of a room, separated by curtains. That would be a sufficient temporary solitude for simple recollection and greater peace....Solitude, unless one is called to a lifetime of it by God, must always be a temporary thing, lest it cease to be solitude and become an escape......It is good to have periodic solitude. It is good to gather oneself up, to be awake with the Lord in Gethsemane, to watch not only one hour with him but perhaps more; to be with him along the way of his Incarnation and on to Golgotha, to the Resurrection, on to the bosom of the Father and the Spirit."

Solitude

"It is God who makes solitude holy. 'I will lead you into solitude and there I shall speak to your heart' (Hos. 2.16). ...Little solitudes are often right behind a door which we can open, or in a little corner where we can stop to look at a tree that somehow survived the snow and dust of a city street. There is the solitude of a car in which we return from work, riding bumper to bumper on a crowded highway... Think of the solitude afforded by such humble tasks as housecleaning, ironing, and sewing....But our hearts, minds, and souls must be attuned, desirous, aware of these moments of solitude that God gives us"