'the misfortune of poetry'

[Captain Benwick] was evidently a young man of considerable taste in reading, though principally in poetry . . . though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets . . . he shewed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

—Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)

One soul to another

First you must forgive me, though, an old priest who has spent his whole life in relative comfort, for pointing out that your problem is nothing new. I don't see why it qualifies as a "crisis of faith" to notice that formerly good men, under strain, experience a breakdown of virtue and become bitter, angry, and less inclined toward God. Suffering can indeed incline one to sin, but it can also be turned to good (think of Isaac Jogues, or any of the martyrs, or any of the mystics, or Christ Himself). 

Your attempts to bring transgressions to command attention are salutary. But as for your religious duties, remember these suspected transgressions, if real, are but the eruptions of sin. Not sin itself. Never forget that, lest you be inclined to lose your pity for human weakness. Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, "the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly." Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another.

--Phil Klay, "Prayer in the Furnace," Redeployment (2014)

Nothing less.

Be satisfied with nothing less than Love....Never must any difficulty hinder you from serving people, be they insignificant or important, sick or healthy. And the sicker they are, and the fewer friends they have, the more readily must you serve them. And always bear with aliens willingly. As for all who slander you, contradict them not. And be desirous to associate with all who scorn you, for they make the way of Love broader for you.

—Hadewijch of Brabant, "Letter 24: Love through Virtues" (13th Century)

Death is Such a Physical Thing

"The worst of my disequilibrium had passed in a couple of years. I wouldn't bore even a highly paid psychiatrist with the details of my love life, my sex life, during this period, except to say that it was quite a lot less than nothing--that is, I couldn't bear to have so much as a single sexual thought, let a single desire so much as flicker in my mind, during the two years after I was widowed. Not only because my grief made me loyal to my wife, but also because I was grieving for someone who was dead, and death is such a physical thing. I didn't want physical things. I didn't even like facts about things, and in a secret way I came to hate the truth itself. 

This extra dimension of loneliness, this revulsion for the world and even, at first, for the stuff of which it was composed, seemed unique at the time. But I think I see now that it was completely typical, and that what revolted me above all was the understanding that everything passes away." 

--Denis Johnson, The Name of the World (2000)

Nothing Hung Together Any More

And then I entered the hall and walked into the kitchen, the living room, where everything was as it had been for almost ten years, the same posters on the walls, the same rugs on the floor, the same goddamn red armchairs, and yet not like that at all, not like it was in the beginning, when there were just the two of us against the world, just she and I, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, there is just you and me, we said to each other, just you and me, we said. But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.

-- Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time (2010)

What is that word known to all men?

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

—James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

'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)

Orphan in the World

He told the boy that although he was huerfano still he must cease his wanderings and make for himself some place in the world because to wander in this way would become for him a passion and by this passion he would become estranged from men and so ultimately from himself. He said that the world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them and therefore to know it one must look there and come to know those hearts and to do this one must live with men and not simply pass among them. He said that while the huerfano might feel that he no longer belonged among men he must set this feeling aside for he contained within him a largeness of spirit which men could see and that men would wish to know him and that the world would need him even as he needed the world for they were one. Lastly he said that while this itself was a good thing like all good things it was also a danger. --Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (1994)

two picture frames, both empty

PETER

It doesn't sound like a very nice place ... where you live.

JERRY

Well, no; it isn't an apartment in the East Seventies. But, then again, I don't have one wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. What I do have, I have toilet articles, a few clothes, a hot plate that I'm not supposed to have, a can opener, one that works with a key, you know; a knife, two forks, and two spoons, one small, one large; three plates, a cup, a saucer, a drinking glass, two picture frames, both empty, eight or nine books, a pack of pornographic playing cards, regular deck, an old Western Union typewriter that prints nothing but capital letters and a small strongbox without a lock which has in it ... what? Rocks! Some rocks ... sea-rounded rocks I picked up on the beach when I was a kid. Under which ... weighed down ... are some letters ... please letters .... please why don't you do this, and please when will you do that letters. And when letters, too. When will you write? When will you come? When? These letters are from more recent years.

PETER

(Stares glumly at his shoes, then)  About those two empty picture frames ... ?

JERRY

I don't see why they need any explanation at all. Isn't it clear? I don't have pictures of anyone to put in them.

—Edward Albee, The Zoo Story (1958)

A person has to have a way of dealing with SOMETHING.

JERRY

It's just ... it's just that ... (JERRY is abnormally tense, now) ... it's just that if you can't deal with people, you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! (Much faster now and like a conspirator)  Don't you see? A person has to have a way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people ... if not with people ... SOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach, with a mirror ... no, that's too hard, that's one of the last steps. With a cockroach, with a ... with a ... with a carpet, a roll of toilet paper ... no, not that, either ... that's a mirror, too; always check bleeding. You see how hard it is to find things? With a street corner, and too many lights, all colors reflecting on the oily-wet streets ... with a wisp of smoke, a wisp ... of smoke ... with ... with pornographic playing cards, with a strongbox ... WITHOUT A LOCK ... with love, with vomiting, with crying, with fury because the pretty little ladies aren't pretty little ladies, with making money with your body which is an act of love and I could prove it, with howling because you're alive; with God. How about that? WITH GOD WHO IS A COLORED QUEEN WHO WEARS A KIMONO AND PLUCKS HIS EYEBROWS, WHO IS A WOMAN WHO CRIES WITH DETERMINATION BEHIND HER CLOSED DOOR ... with God who, I'm told, turned his back on the whole thing some time ago ...

—Edward Albee, The Zoo Story (1958)

A lonely, quiet person...

A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions that others might shrug off with a glance, a laugh, or a brief conversation occupy him unduly, become profound in his silence, become significant, become experience, adventure, emotion. Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.

—Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1912) (trans. Clayton Koelb 1994).