A hermitary is a dwelling for a hermit. Hermitary is an obsolete medieval English word, which, however, referred to enclosed anchorites more than to hermits. But that is by the way. The Oxford English Dictionary uses the word to mean all things “hermit.”

This “hermitary” is the dream hut of the pseudonymous Meng-hu, the dreamtiger, whose Western name is derived from a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The title of the story, entitled in English, is simply dreamtigers.

In that story, the narrator recalls that as a child he was impressed by the tigers in the zoo, then dreamed of them. As an old man, he tries to dream them again, but they are no longer the same shape or color or clarity. Instead, they are "dreamtigers."

So Meng-hu tries to dream, not of tigers, perhaps, but of what his face was like before his parents were born. But he does not worry about whether the dreamtigers are clear and distinct. It is enough that the sun shines, the trees in the forest sway with the breeze that is cool against his face, and that the birds still sing outside his ramshackle hut.

Regards,
Meng-hu

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