arts, literature

Dan Afrifa: The Garden of Loneliness

Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors drew inspiration from the collection held by the Mauritshuis in The Hague. They looked at seventeenth-century paintings through the lens of an alternative history which they then brought to life in short but powerful texts. Dan Afrifa looked at The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens and addresses God. ‘Adam’s entire being reflected your eternal self; so is that also true for his loneliness?’

The Garden of Loneliness

God, please tell me how Adam could be lonely when you were with him in the Garden of Eden. The cause of this very first loneliness has always been overshadowed by later developments: Adam was given Eve, she gave him the forbidden fruit and mankind was banished from your abundance. Men had to start labouring for their daily bread and women for each new life. Besides, you opened our eyes to worldly temptations, making it all but impossible for us to transcend our wicked selves and ascend back to you after this life.

Did the loneliness perhaps enter Paradise on the back of the serpent? If so, then that was its first transgression, even before it tempted Eve to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But as a suffering soul, I ask for deliverance, not yet another scapegoat for the fall of man.

Pending the requested revelation, all kinds of ideas are swirling round in my head, although I don’t presume to place my thinking above your knowing. I just wonder how Adam could be lonely when the first human had been created in your perfect image. Adam’s entire being reflected your eternal self; so is that also true for his loneliness?

In that case I’m forced to believe that the cherry on top of your creation wasn’t merely a custodian of the berries and the beasties, but above all company for you. For a mortal like me, this dyad is no mystery. I too create a friend when my world is dark and empty, although mine remains inside my head. Likewise, I understand your surprise when it turned out that Adam needed somebody else besides you. Having to share friends feels like having your soul stolen. I think Adam was blissfully unaware and that Eve felt all the guilt. That’s why she shouldered the original sin: she offered you a reason to banish both so you wouldn’t have to face their happiness.

But what if, after Eve, you’d given Adam another friend? And another, and another, micromanaging all the way? That may sound like letting others into your bedroom to save your marriage. But whereas romantic love is all about to have and to hold, true friendship revolves around sharing; the more the merrier.

This earthly paradise full of laughing friends would generate a cloud of joy, raindrops of pure happiness, making the ground beneath one’s feet wet but never muddy. The true friends would follow and find one another without besmirching their footsteps with mortality, jealousy and other scarcity-based reasons for having to be strong. They’d wallow endlessly in one another’s weaknesses. They’d never try to convince one another to tell good from evil, because what use is metaphysics when you’re spending your days inside the soul of your platonic soulmate? At night, the friends would only have to hold hands to keep warm. In the morning sun nobody would want to let go, and the many would become one like the dew. One big friend; the best friend who’d deliver You from Your loneliness for all eternity.

• Brueghel
• Mauritshuis
• Rubens