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Lucy Irvine, “hermit”

An update on Lucy Irvine is published in the Independent, describing briefly her activity since publishing Castaway, which described her 1981 adventure on a deserted island. Irvine lives in rural Bulgaria among hills and plum trees, and relishes her isolation, though she returns to the UK to publicize her latest book. For a time she fluttered between reclusion and notoriety, and her biography is an interesting one, as are her books, giving an unusual approach to reclusion perhaps akin to proverbial writers and occasional celebrities rather than monks and hermits — classic “reclusion.”

URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/lucy-irvine-hell-is-other-people-898978.html

Also Lucy Irvine’s web site: http://www.lucyirvine.com

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Modern British “hermits”

An objective and positive article in the British Independent by Henry Hemming, author of the book In Search of English Eccentrics on the subject of hermits, recluses, and eccentrics in modern Britain. Looks at two contemporary recluses; includes a few historical notes about famous British eccentrics and mentions the historical travails of women hermits in England. Hemming concludes that “As well as reminding us that it’s possible to live without material possessions, by their example Woodcock and Leppard [his interviewees] remind us not to confuse the words ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’.”

URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/british-hermits-the-growing-lure-of-the-solitary-life-859656.html

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Zerzan on silence

John Zerzan maintains an “anti-civilization” view often identified as primitivism, derived in part from anarchist thought (Zerzan edits the journal “Green Anarchy”).  His essay “Silence” calls on classic authors from Heidegger to Picard to describe the place of silence, noise, and technology in the modern world. The opening lines:

Silence used to be, to varying degrees, a means of isolation. Now it is the absence of silence that works to render today’s world empty and isolating.

URL: http://www.greenanarchy.org/index.php?action=viewwritingdetail&writingId=666.

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Hermit nun interviews

Sister Laurel O’Neal, whose blog is Notes from Stillsong Hermitage, is a hermit of the Camaldolese Benedictine tradition. She was interviewed by Sister Julie Vieira, IHM, of A Nun’s Life. The two installments are: first and second.

Sister Laurel makes a realistic point appropriate to both religious and secular solitaries. When asked what she would recommend to someone interested in the eremitical life, she replies (among other things):

If you have substantial healing of your own to do, get to it before you make any commitments to eremitical life. The hermitage allows for such work to be done but actual commitments to the life need to have that out of the way as much as possible.

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Hermits in music & poetry

Of interest because of its themes of solitude and eremitism is a music program reviewed by the New York Times under the tile “Exploring Solitude, With the Help of Others.” The program by pianist and baritone Julie and Nathan Gunn, including choreography and visual projection, featured Olivier Messiaen piano works, Samuel Barber’s “Hermit Songs,” and Frank Ferko’s “Five Songs on Poems of Thomas Merton.”

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/arts/
music/17gunn.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin.