Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In a sense, Hugo tells us, two people who are romantically involved face the obstacle of spiritual separation:

Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VI, "The Battle Begun".]

The father too experiences a kind of separation:

Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him something in process of construction, and on the other, something which was crumbling away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of "the father." Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man. [Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VII, "To One Sadness Oppose a Sadness and a Half".]

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.  External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did. [Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave I: "Marley’s Ghost".]

Novels and stories:

• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbevilles, or A Pure Woman (1891), tells the tragic story of a young woman who seeks enduring romantic love, which eludes her, with tragic consequences. After giving birth to the child of a man she does not love, she desires another man; “Her whole future course of life is determined by the conduct and the competing claims of these two suitors”.
• Joyce Carol Oates, Sourland: Stories (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2010), “begins and ends with stories featuring graphic and violent sexual encounters, and the tangle of tales that lie in between explore emotional, physical and sexual hazard in all its forms.”
• Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (1901): “In the distinction between these two brothers we see decadent perverted types of the Dionysian and Apollonian. This distinction plays its way throughout the novel and is originally made by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that there were two strong forces in culture, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo stands for order and rationality whereas the Dionysian is representative of music, chaos and passion.”
• John Wray, Godsend: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018) A central character’s “blankness was surely intentional on Wray’s part. It universalizes, in some ways, Aden’s inchoate longing for meaning. Yet it also made me consider Donald Barthelme’s question, in his short story 'A Shower of Gold': 'How can you be alienated without first having been connected?'”
• Benedict Wells, The End of Loneliness: A Novel (Thorndike Press, 2019): “At the heart of the novel are three disparate siblings who are packed off to boarding school after their parents die in a car crash.”
• Caryl Phillips, A View of the Empire at Sunset: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018): “Caryl Phillips proudly upholds her standards in this austere, evocative investigation of a life caught “somewhere between colored and white.” It is a novel of acute psychological empathy and understanding.”
• Ben Lerner, The Topeka School: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019): “Adam’s faithlessness can no longer be written off as cosmopolitan neurosis. It is instead a symptom of a national crisis of belief, in which structures of understanding crumble and 'regimes of meaning collapse into the spread.'”
• Roddy Doyle, Life Without Children: Stories (Viking, 2022): “. . . Stories of Life in Lockdown”.
• Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening: A Novel (Graywolf, 2020): about the loss of a child; “The title refers to the point in the evening when cows begin to low and call for relief, their udders heavy with milk. The story is about painful repletion of another kind, and of solace that never arrives.”
• Bryan Washington, Memorial: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2020): “a Young Gay Couple Is Divided by Race, Class and Culture”.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts: A Novel (Knopf, 2021): “. . . the pain of the narrator’s isolation feels extremely real . . .”
• Sarah Moss, The Fell: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022) “inspired” by the COVID-19 pandemic: “They’re all temporarily stuck at home in the Peak District, in the north of England, eating awkward dinners with relatives on Zoom, avoiding the dishes or grumbling internally over one another’s bathroom etiquette. Kate’s agonized decision to break her mandatory 14-day quarantine and head out for a walk provides the book’s central drama.”
• Yasmin Zaher, The Coin: A Novel (Catapult, 2024): “. . . a rich, chic Palestinian schoolteacher in New York City grapples with displacement and American consumerism.”
• Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection: Fiction (William Morrow, 2024): “This book is so cold and lonely you could hang meat in it.”
• David Szalay, Flesh: A Novel (Scribner, 2025): “To read this cool, remote book — among its primary subjects is male alienation — is to feel you are eyeballing the action on a bank of surveillance cameras. There will be no conspiratorial glances at those cameras, no metafictional winks. ‘Flesh’ is the sound a writer makes when he has lined up and shot his darlings as if they were the Romanovs.”

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Felix Adler, founder of Ethical Culture, identified three primary spiritual pains. One is separation and alienation - the many ways into which we are separated and alienated from each other, and from our truest selves.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 7 ("Sinfonia Antarctica") (1952) (approx. 39-45’) captures the bitter cold and barrenness of the most hostile and remote region on Earth. “Ralph Vaughan Williams’ wife, Ursula, wrote that ‘The idea of great, white landscapes, ice floes, the whales and penguins, bitter winds and Nature’s bleak serenity as a background to man’s endeavor captured RVW’s imagination.’ At the same time, she recounted her husband’s horror as he discovered the amateurish nature of the expedition. 'He despised heroism that risked lives unnecessarily and such things as allowing five to travel on rations for four filled him with fury.'” Barbirolli in 1953, Boult in 1954, Boult in 1969 ***, Previn in 1969, Haitink in 1984, Handley in 1990, Andrew Davis in 1996, Manze in 2019, and Brabbins in 2023, conducted top recorded performances.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (1957) (approx. 33-42’) was by some indications drawn from Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the d’Urbevilles, a tragic story of a young woman who seeks but never finds the romantic ideal. However, “it is more tempting to hear instead it as a pessimistic verdict on humanity by an old man who had recently lived through the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.” Boult in 1958, Stokowski in 1958, Rozhdestvensky in 1989, Thomson in 1990, Handley in 1993, Andrew Davis in 1995 ***, Manze in 2018, and Brabbins in 2022 conducted top recorded performances.

Other compositions:

• Rag Bageshri (Bageshree): this classical Hindustani raag for late evening expresses the emotion of a woman awaiting her lover’s return. Usually, it is performed around midnight. Linked performances are by Nikhil Banerjee in 1971, Nikhil Banerjee in 1975, a more fully developed performance by Nikhil Banerjee, Shahid Parvez Khan, Vilayat Khan, Shivkumar Sharma, Kishori Amonkar, Rashid Khan, Ravi Shankar, K. Shridhar & K. Shivkumar, Jasraj, and Ashwini Bhide Deshpande.
• Raga Ramkali is an early morning raag, often pictured as a forlorn young man sitting next to a young woman, who has rejected him. “Bhairav strides forward with soulful, straighforward steps creating an energy that is one contemplation, devotion and longing - like a traveller who has endured an arduous journey but will move ahead, spurred by the yearning for his lover.” Linked performances are by Nikhil Banerjee & Kanai Dutta in 1970, Bhimsen Joshi in 1969, Amjad Ali Khan, Sharafat Hussain Khan, and Ravi Shankar.
• Raga Alhaiva Bilawal is a Hindustani classical morning raag about separation: “Which way has he gone? Hey friend, please tell me. He embraced me and crept away. He took my soul and then vanished down the lane.” Linked performances are by Budhaditya Mukherjee, Kishori Amonkar, Apoorva Gokhale, Ravi Shankar, and Ulhas Kashalkar.
• Karl-Birger Blomdahl, I Speglarnas Sal (In the Hall of Mirrors) (1951-52) (approx. 35’): “ . . . based on nine sonnets from Erik Lindegren’s collection, The Man without a Way (1942), an anxiety-loaded suite of pictures of the possibilities of life and death, perhaps easiest to read against the background of the madness of the second World War.” [Quotation is from Gören Bergendal, from the notes for this album.]
• Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Dialoge - Concerto for Two Pianos and Large Orchestra (1960, rev. 1965) (approx. 21’): the dialogue strongly suggests wariness.
• Isang Yun, String Quartet No. 4 (1988) (approx. 22’): The division between South and North Korea was a centerpiece of the personal relationship that led to this work.
• Yun, Concertino for Accordion and String Quartet (1983) (approx. 15-17’): The accordion struggles to find a measure of harmony with the string instruments.
• Kurt Weill, Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12 (1924) (approx. 30’): the odd combination of instruments, and Weill’s quirkiness characterize this work.
• Arne Nordheim, Solar Plexus, for voice, saxophone, piano/organ, recitation & percussion (2002) (approx. 10’), evokes a sense of being disjointed, as does The Return of the Snark, for trombone & tape (1987) (approx. 15’). Of the latter piece, Nordheim says: “During this co-operation (with trombonist Per Brevig), we uncovered some possibilities which seemed very difficult, even impossible, to put into practice.  Then I brought all the fragmentary material which we had recovered during the working of The Hunting of the Snark to an electronic studio.”
• Daniel Asia, String Quartet No. 1 (1975) (approx. 13’), String Quartet No. 2 (1985) (approx. 27’), and String Quartet No. 3 (2007) (approx. 26’), all evoke a sense of being unsettled and out of place, as much contemporary “classical” music does.
• Jonathan Leshnoff, Symphony No. 3 (2015) (approx. 35’), was inspired by letters home during World War I.
• Scott Wollschleger, “Hollow City” (approx. 16’)
• Bent Sørensen, L'isola della città (The Island in the City) (2016) (approx. 28’), evokes being alone in an urban setting.
• Arturs Maskats, Accordion Concerto, “What the Wind Told Over the Sea” (2021) (approx. 19’), is “a tapestry of longing and regret, suffused with images of the sea . . .”
• Jonathan Dove, In Exile (2023) (approx. 30’): “Jonathan Dove writes of the piece, ‘In Exile moves through a day in the life of an involuntary exile: waking alone in a foreign land; remembering the moment of banishment, the moment of departure, the voyage; remembering the homeland. The Exile feels the pain of being so far away in his country’s time of need, unable to help his own people.'”
• Carlos Smith, “Songs of Separation” (2023) (approx. 18’): “. . . I chose to use the timeless words of the 13th century Persian poet, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī to convey this inevitable human experience. Each of the four movements depict moments of grief, sorrow as well hope and encouragement. Rūmī reminds us through his words that ‘What hurts you, also blesses you’”
• Martin Bresnick, Self-Portraits 1964 (approx. 40’) (libretto) “. . . draws on the words of iconic authors of the last 150 years as they address confounding issues: the overwhelming, the unanswerable.”
• Mason Bates, Mass Transmission, for organ, electronics, and chorus (2012) (approx. 20-22’) “brings to life the true story of a distantly-separated mother and daughter speaking over the first long-distance radio transmissions between Holland and Java. Ethereal choral sonorities processed through a haze of radio static unfold into virtuosic organ toccatas.”

Some black metal groups express modern alienation with a high level of artistry. Tragically, some of them, or their members, carried their alienation into criminality and hatred.

• Darkthrone, with its extensive playlist, including its “Hate Them” album (2003) (39’);
• Bathory, with its releases, including its “Under the Sign of the Black Mark” album (1987) (36’);
• Mayhem, with its releases, including its “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” album (1994) (46’);
• Burzum, with its playlist, including its “Filosofem” album (1996) (64’);
• Immortal, with its releases, including its “Pure Holocaust” album (1992) (34’);
• Emperor, with its playlist, including its “Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk” album (1997) (60’);
• Old Man’s Child, with its playlist, including its “Revelation 666 – The Curse of Damnation” (2000) (40’) album.

Other albums:

• Jaap Blonk, “Irrelevant Comments” (2017) (50’): “As he delves further into electronics, Netherlands vocal improviser and experimental artists Jaap Blonk finds an ever-increasing array of approaches to modify his voice and set it into alien and astounding environments, here in 16 tracks of musique concrete, sound poetry, pulse based electronics, soundscapes, and inexplicable hybrids of the same.”
• Joseph Tawadros, “The Hour of Separation” (2009) (78’): the haunting quality of the music evokes a sense of separation, consistent with the album and track titles. Tawadros explains: “We used our ears, we looked at each other, we learned about each other’s playing and we inspired each other, and that’s why you can’t tell who’s leading who. There’s a magical balance which you really can’t analyze.”
• Jennifer Koh, “Alone Together” (2022) (97’): “Isolated By Pandemic, Violinist Jennifer Koh Nurtured A New Community Online”
• Carolyn Sampson & Kristian Bezuidenhout, “Trennung: Songs of Separation” (2022) (73’), is “a considerable sonic achievement; a dramatically well-realised concept; and, last but not least, a total mood.”
• Mostar Sevdah Reunion, “Lady Sings the Balkan Blues” (2022) (54’): the songs “speak about loneliness, a girl that ‘lonely lies down and lonely gets up’, about growing old while waiting for the loved one, about ‘the first one that caught her eye’, unwanted arranged marriage, wishes and dreams… about deep love desire and longing.”
• Voces8, “Winter” (2016) (65’) is an album of heart-tugging choral works, sung by an eight-member a capella chorus, evoking the desolation of a cold winter.
• Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily, “Love in Exile” (2023) (75’) “coax(es) an entire album’s worth of pathos out of a handful of Urdu couplets, crafting complex emotional inner worlds through the ritualistic repetition of just a few lines of poetry.”
• The Breath, “Land of My Other” (2023) (45’): “Ríoghnach’s father died in 2019. He was a piper and had been an active republican. That loss is omnipresent on the album but is overlayed with a much earlier separation, as she describes in the liner notes. 'My Dadaí got lifted when I was seven years old. My mum . . . was a badass and did her best.'”
• Chaz Knapp, “Escapism” (2021) (38’): “Most of his themes revolve around the desolation of life where, often, a small light will present itself.”
• Show Dem Camp, The Cavemen & Nsikak David, “No Love in Logos” (2024) (32’): “The project dwells on the stories around love in the entertainment hub in Africa, the personal experiences of the creatives behind the project and the reality of young people chasing substance in love right now.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Simon and Garfunkel, “Bleecker Street” (lyrics)
• Simon and Garfunkel, “Sounds of Silence” (lyrics)
• Miloš Karadaglić, “Sound of Silence”
• Disturbed, “The Sound of Silence”
• Acker Bilk, “Stranger on the Shore”
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Der Alpenjäger” (The Alpine Huntsman), D. 524 (lyrics): a young man thinks of his “distant beloved / Who remains at home”.
• Mary-Chapin Carpenter, “Come On, Come On” (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Der Jüngling am Bache” (The Youth by the Brook), D. 30 (1812) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Leiden der Trennung” (The Sorrow of Separation), D. 509 (1816) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “An die Entfernte” (To the Distant Beloved), D. 765 (1822) (lyrics)
• Franz Joseph Haydn, “A Pastoral Song”, Hob. XXVIa:27 (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Paul Delvaux, Loneliness (1956)
• Salvador Dali, Tristan and Isolde (1944)
• Paul Dalvaux, The Conversation (1944)
• Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)
• Edvard Munch, The Lonely Ones (1935)
• Salvador Dali, The Invisible Man (1932)
• Salvador Dali, Loneliness (1931)
• Rene Magritté, untitled (1926)
• Edvard Munch, Separation (1896)

Film and Stage

• Persona, an exploration of a relationship between two women, testing which, if either, is the caregiver; their spiritual pain only intensifies when they seemingly trade identities
• L’Avventura, a film that finds “a place in our imagination – a melancholy moral desert,” “exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection”
• Breathless (1961), about alientation in “the tough underbelly of modern metropolitan life.”
• Les Cousins (1959), a French wave film pervaded by “a deep cyncism that is expressed in absolute hedonism and a maudlin wish for death”
• The Crying Game, about how other people may not be who we think they are, and how we all are trapped, somewhat, in who we really are
• In a Lonely Place: the filmmaker’s “haunting work of stark confessionalism” explores alienation in several dimensions through one character
• Little Vera: an alienated teenager
• Klute: stalked by one of her customers, a prostitute “is forced to reconsider her detached urban life”
• Memories of Underdevelopment: a would-be Cuban dissident is blocked from acting on any of his ideas
• Midnight Cowboy: American decadence, a la 1960s New York chic
• Rebel Without a Cause, a 1950s view of alienated youth in the United States
• Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), about a young woman suffering from depression
• River’s Edge, a study of contemporary alienation
• The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain), about three lost souls in a romantic triangle in France during the sexual revolution of the 1960s
• Accattone (The Producer) (The Scrounger): a seemingly emotionless film about the spiritually lost
• Leap Year (Ano Bisiesto): the lovers’ “sexual synchronicity may derive from very different places and be headed toward very different goals”