Lone Wolves

Richard Cobb (1917-1996), the English-born historian of the French Revolution, virtually became a Frenchman, evolving what he called a “second identity.” His first books were written and published in French, and he had at least one French wife. His first book in English was published when he was 52. He briefly contemplated becoming a citizen of France, a decision he describes in “Experiences of an Anglo-French Historian,” the first essay in Paris and Elsewhere:

“A great deal of Paris eighteenth-century history, of Lyon nineteenth-century history can be walked, seen, and above all heard, in small restaurants, on the platform at the back of a bus, in cafes, or on the park bench. I have at times been so much aware of this that, in order to improve my chances as an investigator of the past and to cast deeper roots in France, I have been tempted to apply for naturalization. Fortunately, I have been deterred on each occasion by the slowly grinding mills of French bureaucracy, as well as by the thought that I would no more belong in a French institutional framework than in an English one. I have tried to have it both ways: to increase my sense of involvement, and to preserve my status of Lone Wolf.”

Cobb’s final sentence is poignant and powerful. I smiled the first time I read it because an old friend, now presumed lost somewhere in madness, dubbed me “Lone Wolf” for my temperamental non-alignment and lack of school spirit. Once, while enduring the tedium of a pointless meeting, he drew on a paper napkin a lupine caricature of me howling at the moon.

Two writers, an unlikely pair, next came to mind: Thoreau and Zbigniew Herbert. Neither was a social misfit in the contemporary American sense. Both were dauntingly principled. No hermit, Thoreau played an active if cranky role in the social life of Concord, a town crowded with idiosyncrasy. Witness his outspoken support for John Brown, a hero or psychotic. Thoreau, to use Cobb’s schema, increased his “sense of involvement” while remaining a Lone Wolf -- an appellation he would have prized.

Herbert, without self-aggrandizement, never compromised with Nazis, Stalinists, neo-Stalinists or the post-1989 Polish establishment. He remained reproachfully himself. In a 1984 interview, Herbert said:

“Writing -- and in this I disagree with everybody -- must teach men soberness: to be awake. [Spoken in English.] To make people sober. It does not mean, not to try. But with a small internal correction. I reject optimism despite all the theologians. Despair is a fruitful feeling. It is a cleanser, from desire, from hope. `Hope is the mother of the stupid.’ [This is a Polish proverb.] I don't like hope.”

The urge to join and belong is powerful in our species, and the source of much of our suffering. Unlike Cobb, Thoreau and Herbert would never have contemplated a change in nationality. Both, by remaining uncompromisingly themselves, became quintessential national types.