'Be Not Solitary, Be Not Idle'

In a 1779 letter to Boswell, Dr. Johnson advised: “The great direction which [Robert] Burton has left to men disordered like you, is this: Be not solitary; be not idle—which I would thus modify: If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.”

Johnson’s advice is rooted in his own experience. Though immensely industrious, he feared idleness, and because he dreaded being alone, he was aggressively social. Behind both fears was an even greater fear – madness. He reads Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, about which he famously said, “It is the only book that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to rise,” and quotes it accurately to Boswell:

  

“Onely take this for a corollary and conclusion, as thou tenderest thine owne welfare in this, and all other melancholy, thy good health of body and minde, observe this short precept, give not way to solitarinesse and idlenesse. Be not solitary, be not idle.”

It’s like a gift to his friend, a practical prescription for living. By modern therapeutic standards, both men would be judged dysfunctional if not, at least on occasion, nuts. But there is another way to understand such conditions as idleness and solitariness. In “Progress Report,” Dana Gioia gently mocks what sounds like the Henry David Thoreau School of Philosophy and Mental Health: “It’s time to admit that I’m irresponsible. / I lack ambition. I get nothing done.” The beautiful, rolling Northern California landscape, especially the aerial shots, are enough to encourage a dreamy, lackadaisical lassitude. If it’s too much work to read “Progress Report,” watch Gioia read the poem in a brief video produced by Peter Constantine’s Blank Verse Films.