although i would, upon reflection, point out that some people who are neither hermits or mandarins, need to spend a lot of time alone to do their work. i am reading sullivan's (?) Spiritual Life of Beethoven, to see if i am willing to tackle thayer's classic and massive life of B, and the amount of work it takes beethoven just to care for and feed himself, as well as to process the suffering, just to get to the place where he can fucking write down what he's hearing (or not! what a story!) is worth distinguishing.
what i mean to say is that brother ass, the creative person's body and psyche, needs a lot of care which may or may not entail society (extroverts restore themselves in company, introverts ditto alone, no value judgement) -- before or during or after which the work asserts itself. and the work must and does assert itself, which can be mistaken for hermitry.