“Should I also make a garden out of the desert?”: A Case Against Invisible Hermits Bernardo Marin Diniz Aires FERREIRA Abstract: Ever since Aristotle’s conjoining of the creative and the melancholic state of mind – in the 33rd section of Problems –, much has been written about the relationship between artistic output and melancholy, depression, isolation or even madness. The artist – but also the philosopher – is caught at the centre of a polarising and ongoing debate, with those who wish to see him in a purity of inward contemplation that is unreconcilable with communal living on one side, and those who believe that his main purpose should be to create for others, that there can be no humanity in the search for solitude, on the other. But the figure that best encompasses Aristotle’s description of melancholic isolation as well as its inwardness and detachment from the physical world is none other that the hermit. Keywords: Eremitism, Melancholy, Desert, Isolation, Space DOI: 10.24193/ekphrasis.21.3 |