Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
A forthcoming 2013 book by Gordon Campbell is titled The Hermit in the Garden, published by Oxford University Press. The author talks about the book in a YouTube posted by the press, described as “the cultural decline of the hermit”:
Author Gordon Campbell talks about the imaginary hermits of the eighteenth century, discussing the subsequent cultural void left with the disappearance of the great English houses and the rise of decorative garden gnomes.
Sara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence (2008), is interviewed by Telegraph (UK) correspondent Peter Stanford. Maitland lives in a shepherd’s cottage (shieling) in Galloway, Scotland, where she continues to write, her latest project being Gossip from the Forest, a reexamination of forests in fairy tales of Grimm and others.
Writes Stanford of Maitland’s solitude:
The things she misses in her shieling, she says, are simpler and very specific. “The first is physical contact in moments of stress, not the big ones, but when I come in from a walk and it has been raining and I am soaked and I have a deep desire for someone to be there to say, ‘God, you’re wet.’ And the second is when someone has annoyed me, usually by email, I have no one there to let off steam with, and so frequently I find myself telling the person I am angry with my reply. I need someone to puncture my rage bubble.”
The other thing she finds herself hankering after, she says, is the sort of catch-all conversation we are having. “I’m a profoundly frivolous person and I grew up with smarty-pants dinner conversations. If I am ever asked to be in Who’s Who, I will put as my hobby deipnosophy, banter-like exchanges round a dinner table.” Couldn’t she just break silence once a month and invite local friends over for a good set-to over supper? “You don’t understand,” she protests, a look of mock horror on her face, “there is hardly a soul within spitting distance of where I live.” Their loss is my gain.
In “Life Lessons from Modern Day Hermits,” a Telegraph article by Adam Lusher, the writer discusses his encounters three contemporary hermits:
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/9539104/Life-lessons-from-modern-day-hermits.html
The Independent interviews Jake Williams, “star” of the recent Two Years at Sea, a Scottish documentary film about his life as a hermit. “Life as a hermit: ‘My life is a great adventure'” is the article title, subtitle: “Jake Williams has lived as a hermit for 30 years and explains why he could not go back to ‘normal life.'” Includes several photos.
An item in the Daily Mail describes a British-born man (“Yorkshire’s Robinson Crusoe”) who bought a deserted Seychelles island (Moyenne Island) 50 years ago and has lived there in “blissful solitude” ever since. Includes photos.