The Theme in the Work
Solitude in One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand begins as a desire and ends as a diagnosis. In Book I, Vitangelo Moscarda wants to be alone for an hour, and the question he puts to the reader is what that means. The common answer, staying in the company of oneself, he undoes at once with a sequence of memories that open one inside another, and the one he proposes is the reverse: to be alone is to be in a place where the self has no name or voice, and where the stranger is the visitor himself. Hence the paradox at the start, that of wanting to be without oneself, with a stranger around, and that stranger being him. The novel then turns the idea inside out. The more he tries to escape the eyes of others, the more he discovers that what he called himself was made of them, and that the solitude he sought does not exist, except as horror.
In chapter III of Book I the first definition is given in order to be undone:
Per voi, esser soli, che vuol dire? Restare in compagnia di voi stessi, senza alcun estraneo attorno., for you, being alone, what does it mean? To remain in the company of yourselves, with no stranger around.
In chapter IV of Book I comes the second, the one the book takes seriously, which places the reader in the role of the stranger:
La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sè e che per voi non ha traccia nè voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi., true solitude is in a place that lives for itself and that for you has no trace or voice, and where, therefore, the stranger is you.
In chapter III of Book V, hidden in an empty lot, he can only confide in someone who does not answer, and the bitch Bibi, who does not speak, is the only one he trusts. Even with her, he is afraid:
Io non posso più vedermi guardato. Neanche da te. Ho paura anche di come ora mi guardi tu, I can no longer bear to see myself being looked at. Not even by you. I am afraid even of how you are looking at me now.
In chapter IV of Book V the discovery turns around: consciousness, which we take for the most intimate thing, is the others within us, and that is why we cannot feel alone. This is what it means to know about solitude without feeling it:
Sapevo, sapevo la mia solitudine; ma ora soltanto ne sentivo e toccavo veramente l’orrore, davanti a me stesso, per ogni cosa che vedevo; se alzavo una mano e me la guardavo, I knew, I knew my solitude; but only now did I truly feel and touch its horror, before myself, in every thing I saw; if I raised a hand and looked at it
In chapter VII of Book V, in parentheses, he states the conclusion he does not say aloud: if we all looked as he looks, no one would live with false security.
E nessuno pensa che tutti dovremmo guardare sempre così, ciascuno con gli occhi pieni dell’orrore della propria solitudine senza scampo, and no one thinks that all of us should always look like this, each with eyes full of the horror of one's own solitude with no escape.
In chapter II of Book VI, after Dida leaves, isolation stops being an idea and becomes an empty house:
A toccarmi, a strizzarmi le mani, sì, dicevo “io„, ma a chi lo dicevo? e per chi? Ero solo. In tutto il mondo, solo. Per me stesso, solo., touching myself, squeezing my hands, yes, I said "I", but to whom did I say it? And for whom? I was alone. In the whole world, alone. For myself, alone.
And the question that closes it:
A chi dire “io„? Che valeva dire “io„, se per gli altri aveva un senso e un valore che non potevano mai essere i miei; e per me, così fuori degli altri, l’assumerne uno diventava subito l’orrore di questo vuoto e di questa solitudine?, to whom should I say "I"? What was the point of saying "I", if for others it had a meaning and a value that could never be mine; and for me, so far outside the others, taking one on immediately became the horror of this emptiness and this solitude?
The theme has two phases that contradict each other without canceling out. In the first, solitude is an absence of company that Vitangelo wants and cannot achieve, because his wife, his house, and his friends keep him present to himself. In the second, it is the loss of the inner other, the one that makes consciousness possible, and then it is a state he fears, which he discovers in chapter IV of Book V and in chapter II of Book VI. What unites the two phases is that solitude, in both cases, is a matter of a witness: whoever wants it wants to be unknown, and whoever suffers it has lost the other who made them conscious. The ending proposes a third phase, in which solitude ceases to be a problem because the self, which needed a witness, has dissolved into things.
Who Embodies It
Vitangelo Moscarda is solitude in all its phases: the sought solitude of chapter III of Book I, the feared solitude of chapter III of Book V, and the empty solitude of chapter II of Book VI. Anna Rosa is shared solitude, in chapter VIII of Book VII: after he tells her that whoever looks at themselves in mirrors does not live, the vision of irremediable solitude opens for both of them, and it is the moment when the book shows two people facing the same thing. The bitch Bibi is the presence that does not answer, and for that reason the only one that fits in the empty lot of chapter III of Book V. The madman on the terrace in chapter VII of Book VII is solitude that no one interrupts, and that the bishop treats as a years-long habit. Dida is the opposite: the person who, while close, leaves him most alone, because in the embrace of chapter II of Book V he feels he is holding a stranger and cannot tell her what she is like.
fiducioso nell’abbandono che mi faceva di sè, senza il più lontano sospetto che non si désse realmente a me, quel suo corpo, e che io, stringendomelo tra le braccia, non mi stringessi con quel suo corpo una che m’apparteneva totalmente, e non un’estranea, alla quale non potevo dire in alcun modo com’era, trusting in the surrender she made of herself to me, without the faintest suspicion that that body of hers was not really given to me, and that I, holding it in my arms, was not holding with that body of hers a woman who belonged to me entirely, and not a stranger, to whom I could in no way say what she was like.
Where It Appears
- Book I, chapter III: Vitangelo wants to be alone for an hour, and shows that being alone is not, as the reader thinks, staying in the company of oneself.
- Book I, chapter IV: True solitude is a place that has no trace or voice for the one who visits it.
- Book II, chapter I: Consciousness is not enough, because there is also that of others; if we were alone, there would be no consciousness.
- Book II, chapter IX: Vitangelo puts into the reader's mouth the wish to no longer be conscious of existing, like a stone or a plant.
- Book V, chapter III: Vitangelo speaks to the bitch Bibi in an empty lot because he can no longer bear being looked at.
- Book V, chapter IV: Consciousness is the others within us, and without their sight our eyes do not know what they see.
- Book V, chapter VII: Two empty eyes disturb more than any word, and everyone should look that way, full of the horror of solitude with no escape.
- Book VI, chapter II: Vitangelo's house empties, and saying "I" no longer has anyone to say it to.
- Book VII, chapter VIII: Vitangelo and Anna Rosa see irremediable solitude together, when he explains that a life that moves cannot see itself.
- Book VIII, chapter IV: In the almshouse fields, the city is far away, and Vitangelo lives whole in each thing outside.
Where the Readings Diverge
The novel's solitude can be read in two ways, and the difference is the ending. In one, it is the condition of everyone: the horror of one's own solitude with no escape, which Vitangelo imagines in the eyes of anyone who truly looks at themselves, and which social life serves to conceal. In the other, it is Vitangelo's alone: that of someone who lost the inner other by carrying out an experiment no one else carried out. The text supports the first when it says that everyone should always look this way (chapter VII of Book V), and the second when it shows that others live protected by the illusion that sustains them (chapter V of Book V).
The ending favors the first. When Vitangelo says that he does not need to think about death or pray, and that the bells speak for those who still have that need, he is saying that what others try to console with prayer and thoughts of death he has ceased to feel as a lack. The book does not decide whether this is health or dissolution, but it makes clear that solitude, once named, is not resolved by company: what makes it pass, in chapter IV of Book VIII, is the loss of the self that felt it.