In 1672 John Evelyn, Restoration courtier, diarist and polymath, formed a platonic soul union with Margaret Blagge (later Godolphin), a young maid of honour in Queen Catherine’s household. Both were devout Anglicans whose religious practices were shaped by their love of ‘recesse’. For four years they enacted a spiritual solitude à deux in an emotionally charged relationship lived out through private prayer and epistolary devotional exchanges, until Margaret’s marriage and death in childbirth. Solitude was then, as it had long been, highly contentious. In the 1660s Evelyn had debated it with a Scottish lawyer named George Mackenzie. In a spirit of mock argument common at the time, Evelyn had taken the anti-solitude side. Yet despite the playfulness of the debate, it highlighted tensions in Evelyn’s love of solitude that played out across his life, reaching an emotional peak in his soul union with Margaret. For Margaret, too, life with Evelyn was fraught as she struggled with melancholic miseries long associated with solitude, compounded by a conflict between her reclusive devotional life with him and her engagement to the courtier Sidney Godolphin. Tracking the story of this complex spiritual partnership provides intimate insights into the psychological stakes of the solitude tradition and its varying implications for women and men in Restoration Britain.

中文翻译：

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英国复兴时期的孤独与灵魂

1672 年，王朝复辟时期的廷臣、日记作家和博学者约翰·伊夫林 (John Evelyn) 与凯瑟琳王后 (Queen Catherine) 家中的年轻侍女玛格丽特·布拉格 (Margaret Blagge)（后来的戈多尔芬 (Godolphin)）形成了柏拉图式的灵魂联盟。两人都是虔诚的圣公会教徒，他们的宗教习俗是由他们对“休会”的热爱所塑造的。四年来，他们通过私人祈祷和书信虔诚的交流，在一段充满感情的关系中实施了精神上的孤独，直到玛格丽特结婚并死于分娩。孤独在那个时候，一如既往，充满争议。在 1660 年代，伊夫林曾与一位名叫乔治麦肯齐的苏格兰律师就此展开辩论。本着当时常见的嘲笑精神，伊芙琳站在了反孤独的一边。然而，尽管辩论很有趣，但它突显了伊夫林一生中对孤独的热爱所带来的紧张感，在他与玛格丽特的灵魂结合中达到了情感的顶峰。对于玛格丽特来说，与伊夫林的生活也充满了烦恼，因为她长期与孤独相关的忧郁苦难作斗争，再加上她与他隐居的虔诚生活与她与朝臣西德尼戈多尔芬的订婚之间的冲突。追踪这种复杂的精神伙伴关系的故事，可以深入了解孤独传统的心理风险及其对英国光复时期女性和男性的不同影响。