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Title: Freedom and Solitude
Author: Marilisa Fiorina
Date: Spring 1978
Language: en
Topics: individualism, solitude
Source: Retrieved on 12th August 2021 from https://trashstratum.com/freedom-and-solitude/
Notes: Translated by Stephen Marietta, from Il Diverso # 1, Spring 1978 

Marilisa Fiorina

Freedom and Solitude

Anarchy is the negation of authority of whatever kind, it is affection

and solitude.

—L. Ferre

To be alone, liberated from the yoke of collective life. Here is the

most logical system for being truly free—free from convention, from

dependence and the extortions of others. It is solitude alone that makes

the individual really free.

Each day we are victims of hypocrisy, continually reciting the rules of

bourgeois etiquette: "thank you... excuse me... I am sorry." Others

flatter, judge, criticize. Others decide for us, others live on our

weaknesses, others cheat us, others steal from us, others, always

others, usurp our lives.

It is they who love us, who hate us, who betray us, rob us of our

thoughts, words, life. It would be logical to leave them all, to flee

physically and mentally to a proper island of solitude, self-sufficient

and courageous. Courageous? Courageous because it is difficult, because

we are incapable of living really alone, because we have need of contact

with others in order to express our feelings, to realize ourselves, even

for the simplification of our actions.

It is difficult for one individual, weak, even psychologically insecure,

to do without friendship, love and solidarity. And then, clearly, life

in solitude would appear monotonous because, as always, our emotions,

our adventures, arise from others, evolve among others.

There is another solitude, perhaps more understood, more naturally

respected, than that of the hermit. It is when you no longer feel a part

of these others, when you no longer participate in their mode of living,

making a world apart from them in which they no longer count, from which

they are excluded. It is when you no longer accept their love, their

benevolence, their hypocrisy—and your solitude then becomes freedom,

rebellion, it is open defiance of society.

Anarchist individualists are alone, their life lies outside the rules

imposed by others. They choose the individuals whom it pleases them to

have near, to listen. The others they regard as if they were

non-existent, or as enemies. Individualists live beyond the walls of

society—but not as those driven out.... They are mental, rather than

physical, fugitives, and their solitude is loved, it is the realization

of their free thought.