'Multitude, solitude: identical terms'

It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming.

Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd.

—Charles Baudelaire, "Crowds," Paris Spleen (1869) (trans. Louise Varèse 1947)

Lost in the Same Maze

The interminable probing of the causes of my melancholy and my inability to cope with life was fruitless and wearying.  Still I did not feel worn out or exhausted but full of dark urges, convinced that I would yet succeed in creating something deep and good, in snatching a bit of luck from life.  But would this lucky moment ever come?  I thought with bitterness of those high-strung modern artists who drove themselves to the pitch of artistic creation with the help of artificial stimulants, whereas I allowed my resources to lie untapped within me.  I tried to analyze what kind of block or demon was constraining my soul within this vigorous body.  Too, I was possessed by the notion that I was someone unusual, someone whom life had mistreated and whose suffering was unknown to anyone, who was misunderstood.

The diabolical thing about melancholy is not that it makes you ill but that it makes you conceited and shortsighted; yes, almost arrogant.  You lapse into bad taste, thinking of yourself as Heine's Atlas, whose shoulders support all the world's puzzles and agonies, as if thousands, lost in the same maze, did not endure the same agonies.  In my state of isolation and estrangement I too failed to realize that the traits and peculiarities of character I took to be exclusively mine were in fact part of my family's heritage, my family's affliction, and proper to all Camenzinds.

--Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind (1953)

'stand guard over the solitude of the other'

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter dated Feb. 12, 1902, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: Volume 1, 1892–1910 (trans. Greene & Norton 1945)

'the common world of the uninjured'

For who when healthy can become a foot?
Even a scratch we can't recall when cured,
But are boisterous in a moment and believe

In the common world of the uninjured, and cannot
Imagine isolation. Only happiness is shared,
And anger, and the idea of love.

—W.H Auden, from "In Time of War," XVII (1938)

'a little glance of grief and lonely recognition'

Miss Amelia let her hair grow ragged, and it was turning gray. Her face lengthened, and the great muscles of her body shrank until she was thin as old maids are thin when they go crazy. And those gray eyes—slowly day by day they were more crossed, and it was as though they sought each other out to exchange a little glance of grief and lonely recognition. She was not pleasant to listen to; her tongue had sharpened terribly.

—Carson McCullers, "The Ballad of the Sad Café" (1943)