UK media site iNews features a profile of Pietro Anastasi. The feature title is: “I’ve lived on this remote Italian isle for half a century. I love my hermit life.” The byline reads: “Pietro Anastasi, 89, is the only year-round resident of the island of Filicudi, off Sicily’s northern coast, having moved there in the 60s.” The website requires a subscription, otherwise allowing the article to be visible about 20 seconds.
from Neuroscience News: “Balancing Act: The Mixed Blessings of Solitude on Mental Health.” Summary: A new study examines the nuanced impact of solitude on mental health among adults aged 35 and older in the UK and US. Tracking 178 participants over 21 days, the research found no definitive optimal balance between solitude and social interaction. While increased hours alone correlated with reduced stress and a sense of autonomy, it also led to feelings of loneliness and reduced life satisfaction, indicating the complex effects of solitude. URL: https://neurosciencenews.com/solitude-stress-mental-health-23530/
A ninetenth-century Italian-born monk and hermit became a famous resident of New Mexico, dwelling on a mountain that would be one day named Hermit’s Peak. Giovanni Maria de Agostini (1801-1869) had been banished from Brazil to Mexico for provoking masses of curious to follow. Agostini went to Mexico but found the same official ire, then going to Cuba, then to New York City, then to Quebec, everywhere resentd for his austerity, simplicity, and religiosity. Leaving Canada he traveled (always by foot) to New Mexico, where he finally settled, still drawing crowds of pious and curious. He died at the hands of unknown assailants.
The New Yorker Magazine carries an article about Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini , who “liked to be alone so much that she decided to live underground—and pursue a world record. ” The title of the article: “The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave.” The article describes Flamini’s feat as “gruelling and surreal.” Smithsonian Magazine noted that Flamini was “equipped with little more than books and art supplies to keep busy … living in a cave underground with next to no contact with the outside world.” Widely covered by media.
URL: New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/29/the-woman-who-spent-five-hundred-days-in-a-cave; Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/spanish-athlete-emerges-after-500-days-alone-in-underground-cave-180981998/
China Daiy offers a comprehensive essay on the painter Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) titled “Paradise Found.” Wen Zhengming was noted for “the public perception of him as a man of high moral standards who disavowed the seedy side of politics in favor of a secluded existence in the garden abode he built for himself.” In the tradition of reclusion, however, “Wen Zhengming’s self-imposed exile, as those orbiting around him might wish to call it, was lived out not in sheer harshness, but amid the many enjoyable things that Jiangnan had to offer, including its spring.” Jiangnan was a region of the southern Yangtze River Delta.
A clear inspiration for both Wen Zhengming’s artistic depiction of this paradise but also of the life of deliberate reclusion is the famous hermit Tao Chien or Tao Yuanming (365-427). In a fable, Tao Yuanming described Peach Blossom Spring as an idealized paradise . Wen Zhengming evokes this paradise in paintings of contemporary Xiaoxiang, as the region came to be known. In his paintings, he, too, presents “a place of reclusion and longing in view of its natural beauty.”
