Hermits

Hermits PDF Author: Peter France
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473511631
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Ours is an age where solitude tends to be discussed in the context of the 'problem of loneliness'. However in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfillment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. In this lucid and highly readable book, Peter France shows how hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks to the present day, have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude.

Hermits

Hermits PDF Author: Peter France
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473511631
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ours is an age where solitude tends to be discussed in the context of the 'problem of loneliness'. However in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfillment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. In this lucid and highly readable book, Peter France shows how hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks to the present day, have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude.

The Book of Hermits

The Book of Hermits PDF Author: Robert Rodriguez
Publisher: Hermitary Press
ISBN: 9781736866504
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
A history of hermits and eremitism from antiquity to the present: Greco-Roman influences, early Christianity, hermits in medieval Europe and East Asia, decline in Western modernity, the rise of solitude, and rehabilitation of hermits.

The Hermits of Big Sur

The Hermits of Big Sur PDF Author: Paula Huston
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814685064
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tells the compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”

The Hermit in the Garden

The Hermit in the Garden PDF Author: Gordon Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191644498
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Tracing its distant origins to the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century AD, the eccentric phenomenon of the ornamental hermit enjoyed its heyday in the England of the eighteenth century It was at this time that it became highly fashionable for owners of country estates to commission architectural follies for their landscape gardens. These follies often included hermitages, many of which still survive, often in a ruined state. Landowners peopled their hermitages either with imaginary hermits or with real hermits - in some cases the landowner even became his own hermit. Those who took employment as garden hermits were typically required to refrain from cutting their hair or washing, and some were dressed as druids. Unlike the hermits of the Middle Ages, these were wholly secular hermits, products of the eighteenth century fondness for 'pleasing melancholy'. Although the fashion for them had fizzled out by the end of the eighteenth century, they had left their indelible mark on both the literature as well as the gardens of the period. And, as Gordon Campbell shows, they live on in the art, literature, and drama of our own day - as well as in the figure of the modern-day garden gnome. This engaging and generously illustrated book takes the reader on a journey that is at once illuminating and whimsical, both through the history of the ornamental hermit and also around the sites of many of the surviving hermitages themselves, which remain scattered throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. And for the real enthusiast, there is even a comprehensive checklist, enabling avid hermitage-hunters to locate their prey.

The Hermit's Story

The Hermit's Story PDF Author: Rick Bass
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547346689
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year: “Uniformly excellent” stories about our relationships with each other and with the treacherous natural world (Publishers Weekly). In the title story, a man and woman travel across an eerily frozen lake—under the ice. “The Distance” casts a skeptical eye on Thomas Jefferson through the lens of a Montana man’s visit to Monticello. “Eating” begins with an owl being sucked into a canoe and ends with a man eating a town out of house and home, and “The Cave” is a stunning story of a man and woman lost in an abandoned mine. Other stories include “The Fireman,” “Swans,” “The Prisoners,” “Presidents’ Day,” “Real Town,” and “Two Deer.” Each is remarkable in its own way, sure to please both new readers and avid fans of Rick Bass’s passionate, unmistakable voice. “Bass focuses a naturalist’s eye not only on the frozen lakes and interplay of predator and prey often found in his work but also on the ebb and flow of human emotions and relationships . . . Thought-provoking and entertaining, these stories move along quickly but continue to resonate long after the reader is done; several have been anthologized in award collections.” —Library Journal “Beautiful in their magical imagery, dramatic in their situations, and exquisitely poignant in their insights, these stories of awe and loss are quite astonishing in their mythic use of place and the elements of earth, air, fire, and water.” —Booklist “Bass puts his talent as a nature writer to terrific use.” —The New York Times Book Review “Bass’s language glistens with the beauty of the landscapes he evokes.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Idaho Loners

Idaho Loners PDF Author: Cort Conley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780960356652
Category : Idaho
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Gives accounts of twelve people in Idaho who have prefered to lead lives of isolation.

Road to Heaven

Road to Heaven PDF Author: Red Pine
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582439427
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A preeminent translator of Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts explores the traditions of Chinese hermits in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. A fascinating slice of Chinese life for armchair travelers—with insights into the history of Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen in modern China. In 1989, Bill Porter, having spent much of his life studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts, began to wonder if the Buddhist hermit tradition still existed in China. At the time, it was believed that the Cultural Revolution had dealt a lethal blow to all religions in China, destroying countless temples and shrines, and forcibly returning thousands of monks and nuns to a lay life. But when Porter travels to the Chungnan mountains—the historical refuge of ancient hermits—he discovers that the hermit tradition is very much alive, as dozens of monks and nuns continue to lead solitary lives in quiet contemplation of their faith deep in the mountains. Part travelogue, part history, part sociology, and part religious study, this record of extraordinary journeys to an unknown China sheds light on a phenomenon unparalleled in the West. Porter’s discovery is more than a revelation and uncovers the glimmer of hope for the future of religion in China.

Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950-1200

Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950-1200 PDF Author: Tom Licence
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199674091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Tom Licence discovers why medieval society invested so much in hermits and recluses, and examines how they gained their saintly reputation.

Famous Hermits

Famous Hermits PDF Author: Stacy Szymaszek
Publisher: Archway Editions
ISBN: 9781576879801
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Famous Hermits, Stacy Szymaszek departs from the annual journal form of her past three books yet still adheres to the belief that the potential for revelatory and revolutionary transformation exists in the power we have, when we claim autonomy, to organize the fabric of our day to day lives. The latest work from poet STACY SZYMASZEK, author of A YEAR FROM TODAY. In Famous Hermits, her sixth full-length poetry collection, Stacy Szymaszek departs from the annual journal form of her past three books yet still adheres to the belief that the potential for revelatory and revolutionary transformation exists in the power we have, when we claim autonomy, to organize the fabric of our day to day lives. Her New York City is present as a memory that interjects its expectations onto new Western and Southwestern landscapes that don't recognize its logic. The concept of the famous hermit is born out of a desire to experience integrity, to not go forgotten, yet with a fierce need to separate from liberal ideas of what poetry should publicly perform. She invokes other kindred artists such as Dante, Bob Kaufman, Tina Modotti, and Jean Seberg as guides as she writes her own statements of renunciation and ultimately of middle-aged self-love. The poems in Famous Hermits take surface narrative and give it deep glide, that deeper dive that happens when you approach the world as your confidante. Within a few lines, Stacy Szymaszek interlaces eons worth of intricate history to galvanize a poet's hangout — "I writhe / I am a human I think." There is tenderness in the assimilation of being human, to write the savage heart with a poet's restraint. In these pages, Basho meets the collective aporia — "my body takes me on a ride / I effloresce" — to enter a synesthetic space, where each allegory is its own parsed quench. Szymaszek shows her mastery of line and form by encapsulating cinematic propulsions that glint, in a flash, to then come back to our daily dialogue. Infiltrating cohesion with density, and a razor sharp wit, the poet's "elite city" appears as a temporal embrace in the heat of a desert, an emodiment of our migratory needs. What do we hold back, that may emote us, to enter, with simultaneity, our understanding of each other—of people, of poem—where all entrances are lived, all recollected stanzas othered? This richly focused collection explores our diurnal awakenings as cognitive planes, where each grouping of text is a radial entity, a hermetic investigation of a poet's walk. —Edwin Torres, The Body In Language: An Anthology (ed)

Of Herds and Hermits

Of Herds and Hermits PDF Author: Terry Reed
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875866867
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Celebrated for its commitment to independence and fearless individualism, America in fact dismisses independent thinkers and nonconformists in favor of the team player, the company man, and the go-along-to-get-along mentality. This anti-intellectual mindset despises and discredits those who are solitary and reclusive. While we look up to literary loners like Poe and Melville and Dickinson, the man in the street is a compulsive joiner of clubs, and herds from university frats to the Order of the Pink Goat. To the contrary, this book is a paean vigorously endorsing America''s lone wolves, cultural hermits, and all such independent thinkers, solitary and marginalized figures, who are the cultural bedrock of the nation that detests them.