Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
Psyche, the web magazine, offers the 2015 11-minute film Summoning the Recluse, on the growing interest of Chinese youth in eremitism (includes English subtitles). NOTE: The film is included in the Hermitary Gallery, under videos.
URL: https://psyche.co/films/chinas-young-people-who-trade-parties-for-peace-at-a-mountainside-hermitage; in Hermitary: https://www.hermitary.com/gallery/videos/asia/
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is presenting a year-long exhibition entitled “Companions in Solitude: Reclusion and Communion in Chinese Art.” The exhibition centers on Chinese paintings featuring hermits and hermits in natural settings.
From the Metropolitan website:
“This exhibition will explore the twin themes of solitude and togetherness in Chinese art. For more than two thousand years, reclusion—removing oneself from society—has been presented as the ideal condition for mental cultivation and transcending worldly troubles. At the same time, communion with like-minded people has been celebrated as essential to the human experience. This choice, to be alone or to be together, has been central to the lives of thinkers and artists, and Chinese art abounds with images of figures who pursued both paths—as well as those who wove them together in complex and surprising ways. Companions in Solitude, presented in two rotations, will bring together more than 120 works of painting, calligraphy, and decorative arts that illuminate this choice—depictions of why and how people have sought space from the world or attempted to bridge the divide between themselves and others. In the wake of 2020, a year that has isolated us physically but connected us virtually in unprecedented ways, this exploration of premodern Chinese reclusion and communion will invite meditation on the fracture and facture of human connection in our own time.
Rotation one: July 31, 2021–January 9, 2022
Rotation two: January 31, 2022–August 14, 2022″
URL: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2021/companions-in-solitude
A February 2019 interview of Bill Porter, author of Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits, in Emergence Magazine. The interview is titled “Lone Moon Lights Cold Spring,” with the byline: “In this in-depth interview, Bill Porter, famously known as the translator Red Pine, reflects on his encounters with Chinese hermits and his long history with the great Taoist and Buddhist poets of China.” Among the range of China topics, Porter discusses his favorite hermits Cold Mountain and Stonehouse. Available as audio or transcript.
URL: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/lone-moon-lights-cold-spring/
South China Morning Post reports on the hikikomori phenomena in Hong Kong in an article titled “Hong Kong’s hidden youth: societal pressure driving city’s young into apathy and reclusiveness” and bylines: “Hikikomori trend is widely known in Japan, but receives little attention here, where up to 2 per cent of the population may be withdrawn.
Confucian societies are seen as more susceptible because of parental pressure and peer expectations.”
URL: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3009450/hong-kongs-hidden-youth-societal-pressure-driving; https://www.asiaone.com/asia/hong-kongs-hidden-youth-why-citys-young-are-becoming-recluses
China-based news source Sixth Tone features and article, with video, titled “The Hermit Culture Living On in China’s Misty Mountains” with byline “Disillusioned recluses have come to the Zhongnan Mountains for centuries. Now, a government campaign threatens their way of life.” From the website:
In the past decade, thousands of young people like Zhang have come to the Zhongnan Mountains hoping to connect with around 600 modern-day hermits, or yinshi, according to estimates by Zhongnan Cottage, a local civic organization. Hermitic lifestyles have a long history in China: During the dynastic era, the term was applied to educated, conscientious men who fled from the social expectation to join what they perceived as a corrupt, immoral government and eked out poor lives in remote rural China. Occasionally, emperors rewarded hermits with high-ranking government positions, believing them to possess deeper wisdom than conventional officials.
URL: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003932/the-hermit-culture-living-on-in-chinas-misty-mountains; https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-05-11/the-hermit-culture-living-on-in-chinas-misty-mountains-101414004.html