Day and Night – (Max Ernst)

“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”

Pablo Neruda

Unlike peace and solitude, a sense of absence can be powerfully disturbing and deeply emotional. What does the concept of absence mean to us? It touches all of us at some points in our lives, in different ways.

Below are 5 interesting thoughts about absence……

1. Neither Presence Nor Absence: Traces.

Traces. Abstract Painting 780-1 – Gerhard Richter. Wikioo.

“To live means to leave traces.”

Walter Benjamin

Absence and presence are not always clear cut and they do not have definitive boundaries. There is certainly something in between both of these opposites, and it sometimes feels quite mystical, affecting the atmosphere in a room.

Sun in an Empty Room.Edward Hopper. 1963. Wikiart.

“People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.”

Andy Goldsworthy

We leave traces of ourselves in our writings, music and art, through marks and indentations on our favourite chair, through our hair in a brush, perfume on our clothes….

The Old Chair. 1886.  – John Singer Sargent. Wikioo.

We leave behind our love in cards and gifts, tangible signs that we have had a life; there may be forgotten coins dropped down the back of the sofa, our voice recorded on a mobile phone, fingerprints on a window and coffee stains on a book, handwriting, bookmarks, a favourite pen, our clock still ticking on the mantelpiece……

Fingerprints – Charles Spencelayh. Wikioo

“We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.”

Lewis Thomas

We inevitably leave invisible traces, too, everywhere we have been in terms of our DNA…… and, of course, there are photographs….. sometimes generations of them.

Chopin. 1849, by Louis-Auguste Bisson. Wikimedia Commons.

“A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stencilled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.”

Susan Sontag

We inevitably leave such ‘trace-evidence’ behind us, whether we are leaving a place to go somewhere else, or, even more poignantly, when we die.

Dzibilnocac – Traces of Maya Painting. Wikimedia Commons.

“If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: “Nothing passes away.” I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.”

 Anton Chekhov

The traces we leave can serve as a kind of memory, or real evidence that we have been there, that we have existed. They can be distressing reminders, or they can bring comfort, or both.

Colour Study (Portrait Of His Wife, Josefa Lopez In Bed) – José Mongrell Torrent. Wikioo.

“Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasselled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odour on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: “The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.””

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2.  Absence And Relationships.

L’Absence – Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens. Wikioo

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If we love someone, we risk losing them, and having to face enormous grief. This is part of the life process, the human condition, taking risks in order to have good things.

Vilhelm Hammershøi – Interior with Windsor Chair (1913)Wikimedia Commons.

“There are empty rooms, and then there are rooms that feel crowded, corner to corner, with absence.”

Trenton Lee Stewart

There can also be a sense of absence, even when a person is there, with us. Then, they are simultaneously present and absent, there and not there.

Walter Richard Sickert. Ennui. c.1914. Wikimedia Commons.

“Presence is more than just being there.”

Malcolm Forbes

Presence means being there fully, listening, hearing, seeing another person. Being absent emotionally can be a painful experience for both the absent person and those around them.

It is a kind of preoccupied, cut-off feeling that shuts others out. Such detachment may be as a result of pain, boredom, trauma, hurt, or illness, either mental or physical. It can be a defence against further pain and damage. The person ‘absent’ in this way is often consciously unaware of how they are coming over.

Derrick Tyson. Absence. Flickr.

Absence is not a clear-cut concept. It can be complex and, sometimes, confusing. There are two contradictory sayings about absence, which may confuse us more: “Out of sight, out of mind” and “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

As is common with contradictions and paradoxes, both these sayings can be true. The first one, ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ implies that if someone goes away from us, we will certainly  forget them…….

Eyes Closed. 1890. Odilon Redon. Metmuseum.org

“When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.”

Victor HugoFish – Maurits Cornelis Escher. Wikioo.

“The process could be likened to relaxing on a riverbank and watching a fish leap out of the water, sparkle for a moment in the sunlight, then dive back in a graceful arc. There is no need to engage in a mental dialogue about the merits and demerits of the fish, emotionally react to the fish, or jump into the water to try to catch the fish. Once the fish is out of sight, it should also be out of mind.” 

Bill Vaughan

On the other hand, we are also advised that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ implying that we will miss the absent person so much that our love for them will increase.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder – John William Godward. Wikioo.

This is the opposite statement, the opposite scenario, where doing without someone make us love them- and pine for them- even more.

The reality of these proverbs is that, if we really love someone, then we will certain miss them terribly. However, if that love is not genuine, or strong, then we will forget the absent party with greater ease.

Joseph Mallord William Turner – The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1834. Wikimedia Commons.

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.”

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

Trophime Bigot Singer (1579-1650.) Candle. Wikimedia Commons.

“Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.”

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

True love will last, even if there are separations.

“I may not always be with you
But when we’re far apart
Remember you will be with me
Right inside my heart.”

View From An Open Window – Raoul Dufy. Wikioo.

“Your body is away from me,
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.”

Rumi

3. Absence Through Loss And Death.

Grief: Widow at the Window. 1928. Felix Nussbaum. Wikimedia Commons.

Grief – Jennings Tofel. 1950. Wikioo.

“At the temple there is a poem called “Loss” carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”

Arthur Golden

Grief is painful and often difficult to bear. Whatever the situation of event that led to our loss, the feelings we are left to cope with can be extremely testing.

The grief will remain with us and we will always miss the loved one; however, in time, we will usually learn to adapt to the loss and live our lives more fully again.

“If grief is deep and imponderable, it is because love is deep and imponderable, too.
The world presents us with opportunities for connection, and the flip side of these is the impermanence of opportunity…
The Buddha taught that at bottom, the more we love that which we lose,
the more grief we feel. The world is living and dying, full of birth and loss,
tragedy and change. It is “first truth” that runs like a tragic thread, through all of our lives.”

Michael Stone

The process may be long and very hard, and we will need the support of friends, family, and, perhaps, a therapist.

Cezanne. Sorrow. Wikimedia Commons.

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

Absence is absence, you know? The loss of someone can be just as devastating if they’re alive as if they’re dead.

Adam Silvera

Separation – Edvard Munch. Wikioo.

Separation 

Your absence has gone through me 
Like thread through a needle. 
Everything I do is stitched with its colour.

W.S. Merwin

Separation and divorce may mean that, at times, we miss the now absent person who has been in our lives for some time.

Even if the situation over separation was bad, as well as having angry and rejecting thoughts and feelings, we may find that we miss the good times and the good aspects of that other person.

We may also feel lonely, and may long for, not the person themselves, but the company or the feeling of security and intimacy that we may have had in the past.

4. When Absences are Necessary , Therapeutic and Important.

Jean-Pierre Beckius, Lärensmillen, la fiancée de l’artiste (vers 1932)Wikimedia Commons.

“The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.”

Ouida

Couple in the Woods – August Macke. Wikioo.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. ”

Khalil Gibran

Time out, away from family, friends and work, it highly important to our wellbeing. It refreshes us in mind and body, and can mean that we return renewed and more hopeful. Living our own lives is crucial in a relationship, so that it does not become stale, routine and tired.

“Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Rest – Edgar Degas. Wikioo.

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”

Maya Angelou.

5. Life’s Inevitable Gaps…..

Queen Elizabeth II – Peter Blake. Wikioo.

“How they craned to glimpse their lives again

in her death; reminded

of Time’s relentless removals, their own bereavements,

as she passed.”

(Extract from poem ‘Daughter’ by Carol Ann Duffy, 2022, on the crowd’s responses to seeing the Queen’s coffin passing by.)

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, it is very apparent that we can feel the absence of someone who we do not actually know. Most of us did not meet or speak to the Queen, yet there has been a public outpouring of grief. She symbolised so much for so many people.

As Carol Ann Duffy comments in the extract from her moving poem above, each person in the watching crowd is remembering their own losses and bereavements, and is reminded of the impermanence in their own lives.

Death and Life – Gustav Klimt. Wikioo.

“Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.”

Irvin D. Yalom

Knowing we will die is part of the human condition, something we all have to manage and face within ourselves in order to more fully appreciate the life we do have.

Mind the gap.2017, fot. Adam Gut. Tomasz W. Michałowski. Wikimedia Commons.

“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps…”

Helen Macdonald

©Linda Berman.