hermit's thatch

In offering advice to a young aspiring poet, Rainer Maria Riike specifically warns him not to read literary critics or editors because they will not understand the poet in terms of motive, spirit, or context. The poet must wait until the poem perfectly reflects these subjective elements, and has made them supremely manifest. This is the work of the poet not the editor.

Even so, the critic or editor seeks (consciously or not) to belittle anything short of their own notions of expression, making no attempt to understand the poet, less to accommodate or empathize with an alien notion short of the homogenized needs of the critic or the publishing house. This may be the self-perception of the editor, to shape the amorphousto conformity, to whittle the sculpture into a figure that is familiar to and pleases the critic. If the reply is that the editor is doing his job, then the poet must admit that he has not done (or finished) his own.

In finding the creative resources necessary to poetry, Rilke presents the exercise of self-awareness. Conscious understanding of the self and how it evolved into the present moment offered to the reader is prerequisite. This is intended literally. Discover in yourself how you came to be what you are, feel, do, today, here and now. “And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses – would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither. Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm. your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away.” Extrapolate from the primitive emotions of childhood into the evolved present moment to reveal the direction of self, where it in now, where it needs to go. (The adviceof Rilke is to a “young” poet, but the advice applies at any timein life’s journey.)

Ultimately, self-awareness is the penetration into solitude that will reveal the most intimate self. “But your solitude will be a hold and home for you even amid very unfamiliar conditions and from there you will find all your ways.”

For the artist, the poet, and the creative, solitude is a refuge not only for self but for the objects of art that will be nurtured, grown, and given birth, given reality. At this point, the object (the poem) must feel not so much polished by the poet but, as Rilke puts it, “necessary.” In the end, the creation requires a crafted and conscious solitude that can nurture the deepest self, obscured by the world and even by the reluctant self.

Two fairy tales by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) suggesting the origin of hermits are set in Africa and China.

“The Forest Dweller”(1917) is set in a thick primordial forest wherein the inhabitants fearfully dwell in arboreal darkness, shunning light, imagining that sunlight glare is blinding. They never leave their dwellings in fear of light and wild animals. Their ruleris an old man once (supposedly) blinded by the sun and since considered a priest and god, whose tyrannical rule is only opposed by a small circle of youths led by Kubu.

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“The Poet” (1913) is set in China and presents a young man happily ensconced in the society of his day. Han Fook is “a handsome and modest young man, pleasant in his manners and well rounded in his education. In spite of his youth, he had already made a name for himself with many an excellent poem, and he was known in the literary circles of this region. Without being exactly rich, he could nevertheless expect to have enough money to lead a comfortable life.” He was engaged to marry a “very beautiful and virtuous” bride. “ But still Han Fook’s greatest desire was to be a “perfect poet.”

One day, during the festival of lanterns, Han Fook sat on the river bank opposite the celebratory site, wishing to join the festivities but part of him craving poetry and solitude. An old man appears (a dream or real?), smiling at him and reciting several poems that move Han Fook. The man identifies himself as “Master the Perfect Word,” and suggests that if Han Fook wants to become a poet he should follow him. And Han Fook does follow the old master, learning to play the zither and flute, and to write magnificent poetry. Han Fook asks his father to postpone the marriage, one year, then two years, and finally renounces the past to follow the old poet, who lived by the river and at the base of the mountain, and in iubsequent years travels the land reciting poetry and playing hi stringed instruments. Many years later he ets out to visit the master but cannot find him.

What is the origin of the hermit? The hermit varies per culture, but historically is identified as contriving a purpose that opposes the larger society in which the individual lives and functions.The motive is often depicted as evolving from a restlessness or dissatisfaction, to a processsion of thought about how the eremitic life might emerge.

Most hermits are motivated by religious, spiritual, psychological or aesthetic reasons. Because the earliest hermits identified in popular culture are seldom touched upon by anthropology (if that is even possible), they are inferences and depictions based on mythology, hagiography, and folklore. Yet these recreations can still touch upon primitive psychological factors that can be observed in historical hermits.

In the Western world, stories of primitive hermit archtypes range from the biblical story of Cain and Abel to the modern fictional “fairy tales” of Herman Hesse. In the ancient West there is no hermit literary genre, only the first hints of what might evolve into eremitism.

The biblical Book of Genesis 4.9 presents the story of the brothers Cain and Abel. Abel is identified as a pastoralist; Cain is a farmer. In their sacrificial offerings, Yahweh favors the offering of Abel but less so that of Cain. This leaves Cain sullen and disgruntled. Yahweh sees the disposition of Cain and warns him that he must accept divine judgment. Yahweh tells him: “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” Thus the relationship to Yahweh is really based on the material production of the respective brother, not on efforts or reactions to favoror less favor. If such is Yahweh’s judgment, Cain will never find favor.

Cain attacks and kills Abel. Yahweh confronts Cain and exiles him, making him “a restless wanderer on the earth.”

The definition of ancient Hebrew and Judaic religious ritual and its economic foundation is here identified. The later temple priests and authorities thrived on animal sacrifice because a portion was always reserved to themselves, while wheat or other grain would have been distributed to the entire community. The animal of Genesis was a sheep, in later eras including bulls and cows. Of the sacrificed animal, the blood was poured over the altar, the fat burned on the altar, and the breast and right thigh aportioned to the priests. This later scenario is absent in Genesis. The livelihood and offering of Cain was bound to be belittled by Yahweh and his later representatives.

The “sin” that lurked at Cain’s door is not presented as murderous intent but as Cain’s resentment of Yahweh’s disdain for his labor. Yahweh condemned Cain to exile and wandering, adding — importantly —the curse that wherever Cain went and tried to farm he will fail.

The fate of the wanderer is to have no fixed home or homeland. With wandering comes alienation from people and society, and the curse of being unable to grow food prevents Cain’s option of resuming his survival skill and deprives him of being of service to his neighbor. Thus the prototype of exile as negative or involuntary eremitism.

Picking up from the previous entry about chickadees:

The black-capped chickadee dwells in tree hollows, those spaces within the trunks of trees that have been hollowed out by birds (especially woodpeckers searching for insects) or by injury or from sim[ple decay. These hollows are often deep and include pulpy wood. The hollows are relatively safe and comfortable … for birds.

Not only birds but humans can find especially large tree hollows attractive dwelling-places. A relevant hagiographical example is the 12th century Dutch hermit Gerlac.

Gerlac Valkenberg had been a secular, worldly character most of his life, a soldier and mercenary. When his wife died, he began wandering, reaching Jerusalem on a penitential pilgrimage. Upon his return to his Netherlands home, Gerlac renounced his possessions and became a hermit, finally settling into a oak tree hollow as his dwelling.

Gerlac’s eremitic life upset the abbott of a nearby monastery, who tried to convince Gerlac to join the monastery. Gerlac refused, and the abbot began spreading rumors about Gerald’s supposed thievery and robberies, even persuading the townsfolk that Gerlac was hiding stolen money and goods in his tree hollow. A mob marched to the tree and chopped it down, only to discover nothing hidden in the tree, vindicating Gerlac. Towards the end of his life, it is said, Gerlac communicated with Hildegard of Bingen and was counted her friend.

A delight of deep winter is offering sunflower seeds to birds, specifically, to black-capped chickadees.

The black-capped chickadee is probably the most resilient of birds. Around December first, when heavier snows are falling and temperatures dip below freezing -— and it becomes clear, too, that bears have gone into hibernation — the time is right for putting out feeders. The best feeder is vertically long and tapered to frustrate squirrels and avoid bird flu from busy horizontal trays harboring germs from other birds and retaining their feces. For chickadees, life is short enough without additional hazards.

The chickadee will probably live for a year or two. They are born in May and have several months of summer to build rigor and memory. These smart little birds actually retain memory of food source locations and flight patterns, and even come to recognize humans.

Chickadees live in the hollow of a tree, which is why one can create a box in which the chickadee will happily reside if the box floor is strewn with wood shavings. They will have reproduced during that first splash of new spring and summer, and prepare themselves for first winter. If they can survive winter, the chickadees can eke out another summer, but probably not survive the upcoming second winter. They seem to live consciously, with a repertoire of songs and calls, which will linger into late summer and early autumn.

To hear the songs and calls ofchickadees in late autumn conveys a great poignancy because we know that the bird that is singing may not survive much longer. So the modest chickadee joins its more decorous counterpart, the hototoguiso, the Japanese nightengale, which, however, sings in mysterious night of the arrival of spring.

Jalal Al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) is a complex poet. His frequent use of flamboyant, often sensual, metaphor to express mystical thought can both confound and illuminate. But Rumi’s Sufism denominates his spirituality as being derived ultimately from a monastic versus an eremitic tradition, or perhaps rather from an intellectual or artistic source given his poetic propensities.

Rumi approves of that necessary solitude that equates to occasional or routine spiritual practice or discipline. Hence, his advice on solitude, while not as compelling to pursue as is the trace of his fantastical poetry for its literary brilliance, is nevertheless helpful.

Here are most references of Rumi to solitude, citing the Coleman Barks translations.

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Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
from “A Community of the Spirit”

Be melting snow,
Wash yourself of yourself.
…..
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.
from “Be Melting Snow”

Be quiet and clear now
Like the final touchpoint of calligraphy.
from “Sanai”

Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates
that you haven’t been patient.
from “Craftsmanship and Emptiness”

Finally I know the freedom
of madness.
from “No Flags”

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field, I’ll meet you there.
from “A Great Wagon”

Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.
…..
Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks.
One is just a voice, the other just a color.
from “Tending Two Shops”

A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.
from “Buoyancy”

The next passage — the entirety of “One Who Wraps Himself” — contradicts the image of Jesus expressed in “Bouyancy” by advocating that the listener live, practice, and preach in the marketplace and not remain hidden and anonymous (like the hermit?). These views are reminiscent of Nietzsche’s dilemma for Zarathustra, where the latter comes to realize the futility of the marketplace, and, therefore, the necessary rejection of the world and of public teaching

God called the Prophet Muhammad Muzzammil, “The One Who Wraps Himself,”
and said, “Come out from under your cloak, you so fond
of hiding and running away.
Don’t cover your face. The world is a reeling, drunken body, and you
are its intelligent head.
Don’t hide the candle of your clarity. Stand up and burn
through the night, my prince.
Without your light a great lion is held captive by a rabbit!
Be the captain of the ship, Mustafa, my chosen one, my expert guide.
Look how the caravan of civilization has been ambushed.
Fools are everywhere in charge.
Do not practice solitude like Jesus. Be in the assembly,
and take charge of it.
As the bearded griffin, the Humay, lives on Mt. Qaf because he’s native to it,
so you should live most naturally out in public and be a communal teacher of souls.
from “One Who Wraps Himself”

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands, or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?
A little while alone in your room 
will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.
from “The Private Banquet”

The rich traditions of eremitism in ancient India established several categories of hermits common to Hindus, Jains, and early Buddhists. This history is useful in considering the forms of eremitism that can be pursued in modern society.

The trajectory of eremitism in ancient India can be charted in its highlights. The RigVeda is the expression of Brahmin culture, of the dominant religious and economic class. The era of the Upanishads represents the shift from Brahmin deity worship and ritual to Vedantic enlightment and focus on consciousness. Eremetism becomes a strong option for spiritual expression during this latter period. Historically, however, the shift is muddled and does not follow a straight line.

Even the original eremitic group of ancient India, the Kesin, are radically distinct in appearance and decorum from the staid and dominant Brahmin culture. The Kesin are known only from one hymn recorded in the RigVega (10, 136). The passage about the Kesin describes them as having “long, loose locks” and as being “all sky to look upon” (that is, naked, like the later Gymnosophist). The Kesin are considered muni or “inspired,” with the term muni later referring generally to holy men or saints. The Kesin worshipped the deity Agni, the god of fire. Their appearance alone suffiesto demonstrate the germ of rebellion aginst Brahminism.

Sramanas pursue the same asceticism as the ascetics of the sixth and fifth century groupings, but systemitize their meditative and yogic practices, influencing Buddhism and Jain. Sramanas more conspicuously separate themselves from the Brahmin class. This separation becomes a social necessity, reflective of the social break that historical eremites everywhere pursue.

Sanyasi are renouncers who affirm the life of detachment in order to pursue a solitary life. Their place in the fourth asrama as forest-dweller is a later formality. Many figures from kings to householders were reputed to follow ascetic practices to varying degrees, while remaining in the world. The evolution of the sanyasi from practitioner to renouncer completes a cycle.

This culmination presents the sadhu,a phenomenon both ancient and contemporary, eremitic and social, religious, pious, quietist, and also flamboyant, colorful, and public. The sadhu is renoncer of the world and yet embracer of the world in deliberate and public display. The sadhu is a unique historical and eremitic figure.

With the history of eremitism, the evolution of presentation in Hindu (and other) India is useful in understanding that eremitism evolves from practice and belief as well as personality and psychology. The modern solitary, with only a handful of acquaintances or living in the city and not the forest, may have more compelling reasons for renouncing the world than merely personal preference. It is difficult to conjure an ancient renouncer’s motive, especially since nearly the entirty of Hindu,Jain, and eearly Buddhist society of ancient India was at least sympathetic to his values if not outright supportive of renouncing. The spiritual and moral effort of the hermit could be more readily accepted in those special eras of history when the whole of society admired the spirituality if not the practice.

If April is the cruelest month because it encourages the growth of flowers but can suddenly cut them down with resurrected cold, autumn is its counterpart. The last warmth of summer lingers into autumn, and the trees reflect the turning of the season with their colorful, dying leaves. Thoreau says of autumn that the leaves teach us how to die. And the variations of color in this final process seem to crown life’s effort with triumphal portraiture.

But the progress of autumn reminds us of the dissolution of summer. Shall we look back at the flowers of summer only to reflect on their brevity in our fields and gardens? Last night, the robust flowers — yellow, orange, red, and violet — succumbed to an overnight frost. In the morning the shriveled flowers hung crestfallen and lifeless. Should we have anticipated this event and turned “modern” in our attitude? Have brought out the technologies: the plastic wrap, the warm covers? Who would encourage it?

Not the transcendentalists, who visited their flowers in visits to open nature, not by maintaining contrived and entrapped closures. Thoreau delighted in venturing to the woods, not in sitting stultified in a captured zoo-like presentation of nature. Emily Dickinson teaches us that the processes of the universe must necessarily take their course, just as nature intended. To militate against them, regret them and curse them, is to deny them and ourselves, of insight into what is true and wise and necessary. The cycle will go on with us or without us, and we are better to choose to be with it. The flowers understand, and yield, perhaps, however, dreaming that things should be otherwise.

From the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson is number 25 from the “Death and Life” poems identified by her subsequent editors:

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.

Solitude emerged in the early modern era, attempting to recover the motive of the medieval hermit, polished over several centuries to become a suitable alternative. But the process was slow and tortured, and has never realized the validity of eremitism. The validity of medieval eremitism was purposeful and spiritual, wherein life became a project, but by the early modern era had been identified as quaint, eccentric, and irrelevant.

Medieval eremitism had always been deprecated by the Church, and was attacked by the twin pillars of Augustine and Benedict as a practice riddled with thieves and vagrants. Eremitism was intolerable to authority because it represented the priority of the individual and the moral over the institutional and the rote. Still, great efforts by eremitic innovators of the central Middle Ages, from Romuald to Stephen Muret to the Beguines, attempted to reconcile the two. Eremitic religious orders patterned after the decentralized communities of the desert hermits thrived until the end of the medieval era, until Church and state combined to overthrow the remnants of eremitism. The subsequent wars of religion attacked eremitism from both a Catholic and Protestant critique. By the dawn of the Renaissance and early modern era, eremitism was formally ended.

A few early modern era thinkers (Petrarch, Montaigne), hearkening to Stoicism, hoped to salvage solitude for its core ethics. This core was noticed intuitively, hesitantly, tentatively, without a firm structure applied to living. Solitude in this era wavered between disintegrating into eccentricity and instability, presented one moment as a balm to society and at another a dangerous disaffection. Stoicism was insufficient. Solitude was not truly the hallmark of Stoicism, as Seneca (the chef ancient Stoic) reveals.

The hesitancy of Seneca in his moral advice to Lucilius is indicative of how the later moderns might proceed with solitude. Seneca knows that solitude is an aberration in society and cannot be justified because the world condemns solitude and the individual who is alone. The logic of Seneca is that aloneness, without check from a guardian, friend, or mentor, leaves the individual open to temptation and dissolution. (Of course, Seneca’s notion of solitude is not coming from a tradition of eremitism but from the somewhat cold-heartedness of ancient Greek Stoicism). The following passages (from Letter 25, to Lucilius) is indicative:

“There is no real doubt that it is good for one to have appointed a guardian over oneself, and to have someone whom you may look up to,someone whom you may regard as a witness of your thoughts. It is, indeed, nobler by far to live as you would live under the eyes of some good man, always at your side; but nevertheless I am content if you only act, in whatever you do, as you would act ifanyone at all were looking on; because solitude prompts us to all kinds of evil.”

What Carl Jung called “culture” in his assessment of social impacts on the stages of life, and in his presentation of the dichotomy between nature and culture, is here presented by Seneca as the strong censorious character of society that will pass judgment on otherwise innocuous social conventions. Thus, to the young Lucilius, Seneca cautions against an embrace of solitude because it will appears too anti-social, too youthful, too revellious, too flagrant. Not only that. Solitude will appear to be a cover for immoral behavior!

“You ought to make yourself of a different stamp from the multitude. Therefore, while it is not yet safe to withdraw into solitude, seek out certain individuals; for everyone is better off in the company of somebody or other — no matter who—than in his own company alone. The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd. Yes, provided that you are a good, tranquil, and self-restrained man; otherwise, you had better withdraw into a crowd in order to get away from your self. Alone, you are too close to a rascal.”

Clearly, Seneca is not a true proponent of solitude as it would be understood in modern circles. He is conscious of its attractions but uncertain if it would not alienate the solitary from all social interrelations, whether in society or even among friends. In the worldly sense, Seneca’s advice is sound, perhaps. If we must function in the world we may as well conform to certain (or many) conventions. This position reveals the absence of psychology and effectively leaves solitude to those who can afford it. And, perhaps, he is right. Perhaps the hermit is not made for society, not made to succeed in the world.

In searching for a prototype modern hermit, one is confronted by the reality that after the Middle Ages, hermits in modernity were destined by authorities to disappear. In order to survive, eremitism transformed into solitude, and hermits transformed into solitaries.

Unlike historical hermits, however, who seem so similar regardless of geography, culture, or era, solitaries present more variable phenomena. Life styles of modern solitaries depend more on circumstance and personality. Solitaries were not necessarily more accesptible to society, but at least were more readily disassembled and concealed.

Today, the topic of solitude is standard fare in popular psychology. Even the most aloof bureaucrat to the most troubled artist is tolerated for solitary behavior, indeed, even redeemable and rewarded for eccentricity and showmanship. In offering solitude to their audiences, columnists bid us to cultivate solitude as a preliminary to big events: athletic, business, legal, artistic, or personal. Solitude is treated as a homeopathic remedy: not too much such as to appear strange, but just enough of a suggestive remedy to overcome a lack of confidence or mettle, a meditative moment before embarking on stress.

How far solitude has come in the modern mindset, stripped from its roots and mental character, far away from eremitism. Thus, pop psychology plays a contradictory theme. Solitude in small doses is good for a fighting spirit, but too much solitude is neurotic and dangerous habit. Too much solitude leads to loneliness, isolation, and depression — a chief malady of the old, we are told, who do not socialize enough. The goal of the populoar adviser is often mercenary and views solitude flippantly yet like a prescription. How can one approach solitude not as a temporary remedy but a “lfestyle” that does not undermine itself? Can its link to erenmitism be restored or reconstructed?

A useful model for beginning this project is found in psychologist Carl Jung’s 1931 essay on “The Stages of Life.” In this essay, Jung moves through the individual’s psychological stages, but within the context of the perennial factors of Nature versus Culture. Here the danger of oversimplification also obscures the real context of our lives and the stage of life. Nature is not merely heredity but the autonomy of the growing person to come into contact with Nature and its context of universals. This is where each life stage discovers not only its self-interests but its relationship to our universe. In contrast, Culture (what some writers call Nurture, a midsleading term) is society, relationships, institutions, ideologies,in short, all the binding contrivances that we encounter in the stages of life, their character and impact relevant to the moment, intertwining their contrived content with the capacities and vulnerabilities of the individuial in the given culture. This presentation by Jung gives full reckoning with the influences of stages or situations, so that we cannot think of stages outsideof the context of material and cultural contexts. We cannot make the stages mere abstrctions. We can never know the content of the psyche without understanding that Culture is not merely a context but is content, depending on the individual.

This is all prelude to understanding solitude. Solitude could come out of the individual will, but it also emerges in relation to Culture, so that we are obliged to ask why this phenomenon of solitude, why now at this stage, why in this social context what it is? Could it not have been different? In fact, is it different elsewhere? Resisting the temptation to dismiss solitude as subjective also means resisting the temptation to view solitude as social failure or unintention, society letting down its guard. Revisting Jung restores complexity, but also reinstates simplicity, addressing the inner and outer factors while inviting us to look at their conjunction, the conjunction of what the individual is made of and what society is really all about.

All of these factors were, ironically, visited by the Rousseau versus Hobbes debate about human nature. Jung refreshes the debate with a subtle presentation of the psyche that neither Enlightenment progenitor coulod have addressed. Rousseau, however, was quite willling to concretize the historical chasms; Jung merely goes back and illustrates them with logic from psychology. All that’s needed is to plug the hermit of history into the conversations.