news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
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.
Perhaps a classic case of society versus individual is represented in this news article titled “Hermit Battles to Save His Hut,” about a man whom local city authorities wish to evict from a parcel of land on the outskirts of Cotswald, Brimpsfield near Birdlip, England. The man describes his makeshift home as “Hermit’s Corner” and is in trouble ostensibly for specific infractions of code. The authorities apparently want to oust him altogether. Interesting comments from readers, too.
And the district council’s decision was against the “hermit.” URL: http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771
&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231754&
home=yes&more_nodeId1=231776&contentPK=20465452
The theme of the Spring 2008 issue of the magazine <i>Parabola</i> is silence. Articles describe silence in varous spiritual traditions, from Judaism, Sufism, Taoism, Quakerism, Buddhism, etc. Includes a feature article accessible online. Thanks to a friend of Hermitary for bringing it to our attention.
Brief Guardian article entitled “Laptops but no beards for new hermits” on the revival of eremitism in Italy and “on why Catholics are signing up to be hermits.”
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/13/italy
In a brief somewwhat supercilious audio file entitled “The internet is OK but don’t muck around on YouTube” the writer expands on the topic.
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/mar/13/tom.kington.catholics.hermits
A new book by Italian sociologist Isacco Turina describes a growing trend in Italy: women embracing eremitism to become hermits. A Telegraph article (and there are others) sums up the book:
Professor Isacco Turina, a sociologist at the University of Bologna, tracked down 37 hermits for his work: “The New Hermits, The Flight from the World in Modern Italy.”
He said there are now as many as 1000 hermits in Italy, with several hundred more dotted across Europe and the US.
Turino’s research showed that the women were usually in their fifties, that most had dropped out of convents because they were dissatisfied with some aspect of Catholic practice, and lived in their own apartments. The women hermits were often writers or artists who had quit the rate race sometime between their thirties and fifties.
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/13/whermit113.xml