The hermit keeps a window open onto the sky, without which the
world would perish from suffocation, ugliness and boredom. He is the
only one, along with the poet, who still speaks the language of the
beyond, who makes existence sacred, who gives life this verticality
without which humanity is buffeted about beneath itself. He is a rampart
against the assaults of mediocrity, nastiness, hatred that is
intolerant of its opposite. He is this force, made out of weakness, that
warms the atmosphere, melts the winter of the world. For men turned
toward secondary things, his presence recalls the existence of the
essential things: the order of the world, knowledge, the priority of
salvation and the adoration of the Supreme, by imitating the sunflower
whose heliotropism has much to teach us, who never turns away from the
trisolar brightness. Model and prototype, the hermit represents, in a
chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for
reference. He allows man to remain standing by recalling the Absolute;
when deprived of the Totality, man becomes totalitarian by
compensation.
- Jean Biès
